Huawei Mate Xs Summary

The Mate Xs is the successor of the Mate X, Huawei’s futuristic foldable phone. While the Huawei Mate X was launched in November 15, 2019, the Chinese phone maker launched the Mate Xs on February 24, 2020.

This is the most expensive foldable phone so far, even compared with the premium Galaxy Fold from Samsung. 

Display

When unfolded, the Mate Xs sports a large capacitive touchscreen that measures 8 inches. When folded, it features a smaller 6.6-inch screen and another 6.38-inch display on either side.

The screen design is the same as its predecessor Mate X, a notch-less design with small bezels on the four sides.

The Mate Xs’ screen is OLED (organic light-emitting diode). This means the phone can display deep black levels and be lighter, thinner than an LCD screen phone. In low-light environments, the OLED display can boast a higher contrast ratio than the LCD screen.

In general, the screen looks elegant and feels good on the hand. Due to the nature of a foldable phone, there is a crease on the display where the hinge is placed but not very serious. Compared with the Galaxy Fold, the crease on the Mate Xs is already much less visible. However, it still feels fragile, requiring much care when in use.

Besides, there are partially deactivated sections on the screen when you fold the phone, and problems with touch sensitivity when you use it in the landscape mode. Button near the fold can be unresponsive if you don’t adjust the touchpoint and scrubbing through a video can be hard to activate.

With a resolution of 2200x2480 pixels for the large screen and 1148x2480 pixels for the smaller screen, a 414ppi density, and a 60Hz refresh rate, the Mate Xs is good enough for gaming, though not excellent as you may expect from such an expensive device. Though the 60Hz rate is nowhere near the high-quality 120Hz rate in some gaming phones, the Mate Xs displays good graphics for gaming.

Chip

The Mate Xs is powered by the Kirin 990 5G processor made by Huawei. This is one of the most powerful chips so far, comparable to the Snapdragon 865 from Qualcomm and the Exynos 990 from Samsung, all of which are only seen in highest-end handsets.

In terms of gaming, this chip can handle most games at the full frame rate without pressure, which shouldn’t be a surprise for this price point. Its gaming performance is equally good as its running score, assuring a smooth gaming experience and meeting all game needs.

There’s one major downside with this foldable phone, though. While it’s a very powerful and futuristic handset device, it’s limited in terms of services and apps due to being banned from Google’s system. Instead of the Play Store, you will only find Huawei’s App Gallery. Even a regular user can feel annoyed with this because we have been using Google apps like Drive, YouTube, Gmail, etc., for a long time. There is a workaround, in which you access these services via a web browser, but it’s not as convenient as having the apps installed on the device. The lack of Google services can be a deal-breaker, preventing the Mate Xs from being more popular on the foldable phone market.

Storage

This foldable phone features 8GB of RAM and 512GB of internal storage. With many phones these days featuring 4GB RAM as normal, 8GB offers much power to handle even heavy games. And you won’t likely experience overheating problems.

This RAM capacity should also let you perform multitasking easily, especially when the Mate Xs allows for three apps opened simultaneously, including two opened side by side and one on top.

Battery

The Mate Xs packs a non-removable 4,500mAh Li-Po battery with support for 55W Huawei’s fast charging, called SuperCharge, which will fill up to 85% within 30 minutes. It doesn’t support wireless charging.

This battery capacity is the same as the Mate X, and larger than the Galaxy Fold battery capacity of 4,380mAh. However, the Mate Xs has a bigger screen than the Fold’s, 8 inches as opposed to 7.6 inches, and its cover screen is larger than that of the Fold too. Yet, testing shows the battery life of the Mate Xs is a bit longer with 12 hours and 25 minutes.

This should be more than enough for gaming and productivity tasks, not to mention the fast charging support that will help avoid interrupting gameplays. Also, thanks to its effective cooling system, the phone doesn’t overheat when handling games.

Camera

The Huawei Mate Xs doesn’t have a front-facing camera like regular smartphones. Instead, all of its photography capabilities rely on a 40MP wide-angle lens, an 8MP telephoto lens, a 16MP ultrawide-angle lens, and a TOF 3D lens for depth sensing.

The Time-of-flight sensor is the most advanced photography technology currently available in high-end smartphones right now. It uses infrared light to better measure the accurate distance from the camera to the object. Except for TOF, the Mate Xs doesn’t offer any outstanding camera features compared with other high-end devices.

In comparison, Samsung Galaxy Fold sports 5 cameras in total, including dual 10MP selfie cameras, an 8MP RGB depth lens, a 12MP telephoto lens, a 12MP wide-angle lens, and a 16MP ultrawide-angle lens. The Fold has dedicated lenses for taking selfies while with the Huawei Mate Xs, you will take selfies by folding the phone, point the camera at yourself and the smaller screen will become the camera interface. This can be both a pro and a con.

Having to fold the phone each time you want to take a selfie can be annoying. But you can take advantage of the wide-angle and ultrawide-angle cameras when taking photos of yourself, which you can’t do on the Galaxy Fold. For example, if you are traveling alone and want to take a selfie that includes all the beautiful natural landscape behind, the Huawei Mate Xs will be perfect for the job.

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Huawei Mate Xs Full Specifications

Price
  • Dollas $2343
  • Rupee ₹195290
network
expand
  • Technology GSM / HSPA / LTE / 5G
  • 2G bands GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 - SIM 1 & SIM 2
  • 3G bands HSDPA 800 / 850 / 900 / 1700(AWS) / 1900 / 2100
  • 4G bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 17, 18, 19, 20, 26, 28, 32, 34, 38, 39, 40, 41
  • 5G bands 1, 3, 28, 38, 41, 77, 78, 79 SA/NSA
  • Speed HSPA 42.2/5.76 Mbps, LTE-A Cat21 1400/200 Mbps, 5G (2+ Gbps DL)
launch
  • Announced 2020, February 24
  • Status Available. Released 2020, March 5
body
  • Dimensions Unfolded: 161.3 x 146.2 x 5.4 mm Folded: 161.3 x 78.5 x 11 mm
  • Weight 300 g (10.58 oz)
  • Build Plastic front, aluminum back, aluminum frame
  • SIM Hybrid Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by)
display
  • Type Foldable OLED capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
  • Size 8.0 inches, 205.0 cm2 (~86.9% screen-to-body ratio)
  • Resolution 2200 x 2480 pixels (~414 ppi density)
  • Folded cover display: 6.6", AMOLED, 1148 x 2480 pixels (19.5:9)
platform
  • OS Android 10.0; EMUI 10 with HMS (no Google Play Services)
  • Chipset HiSilicon Kirin 990 5G (7 nm+)
  • CPU Octa-core (2x2.86 GHz Cortex-A76 & 2x2.36 GHz Cortex-A76 & 4x1.95 GHz Cortex-A55)
  • GPU Mali-G76 MP16
memory
  • Card slot NM (Nano Memory), up to 256GB (uses shared SIM slot)
  • Internal 512GB 8GB RAM
  • UFS 2.1
main camera
  • Modules 40 MP, f/1.8, 27mm (wide), 1/1.7", PDAF 8 MP, f/2.4, 52mm (telephoto) 16 MP, f/2.2, 17mm (ultrawide) TOF 3D, (depth)
  • Features Leica optics, dual-LED dual-tone flash, panorama, HDR
  • Video 2160p@30fps, 1080p@30fps
selfie camera
  • Modules No - uses main camera
sound
  • Loudspeaker Yes
  • 3.5mm jack No
comms
  • WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, hotspot
  • Bluetooth 5.0, A2DP, LE
  • GPS Yes, with dual-band A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS, GALILEO, QZSS
  • NFC Yes
  • Infrared port Yes
  • Radio No
  • USB 3.1, Type-C 1.0 reversible connector
features
  • Sensors Fingerprint (side-mounted), accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass, barometer
battery
  • Non-removable Li-Po 4500 mAh battery
  • Charging Fast charging 55W, 85% in 30 min (advertised) Huawei SuperCharge
misc
  • Colors Interstellar Blue
  • Models TAH-N29m