Huawei Mate X2 has been officially presented: it's a well-kept foldable smartphone with great hardware and cameras signed by Leica.
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 finally has a real competitor, both for performance and for format: it's the new Huawei Mate X2 and it seems to have been designed just to challenge the Korean foldable smartphone because, unlike the Mate X and Mate Xs, it doesn't fold outwards but inwards.
Compared to the Galaxy Z Fold 2, however, the Mate X2 seems to be the child of a next-generation project because, at least on paper, it cleverly solves some of the flaws that characterize Samsung's smartphone. What is certain is that, compared to its predecessors Mate X and Mate Xs, the leap in quality is visible to the naked eye and is also highlighted by an excellent design, both open and closed. Under the shell, then, there is the best of the hardware made in house by Huawei and, not for nothing, Huawei Mate X2 will be the first device to receive the new HarmonyOS 2.0 operating system. Which, by now we know, is actually nothing more than a derivative of Android 11.
Huawei Mate X2: how it's made
The foldable Huawei Mate X2 presents itself, when closed, with a 6.54-inch OLED external display with 21:9 aspect ratio and 2,700×1,160 pixel resolution. The refresh rate of this screen is high, but not very high: 90 Hz.
The internal foldable screen, on the other hand, is an 8-inch OLED with 8:7.1 ratio (so almost square) with 2,480×2,200 resolution. Also for this screen the refresh rate is 90 Hz.
The peculiarity of this foldable is to be asymmetrical: on one side is thinner (4.4 millimeters). This allows the device, when closed, to become a perfect parallelepiped and look like a traditional smartphone, simply thicker.
But not only that: the double thickness allows you to hide the cameras in the largest part of the shell, so much so that the "bumper" that houses the sensors is very little pronounced (at least compared to the average of the current top of the range).
The SoC at the base of Huawei Mate X2 is Huawei-HiSilicon's 5nm Kirin 9000, with integrated 5G modem, flanked by 8 Gb of RAM and 256 or 512 GB of internal storage. The battery is 4,500 mAh with 55-watt fast charging, while the overall weight is 295 grams. All in all, not excessive.
Huawei Mate X2: the cameras
The internal camera is not there: it is located in the external screen. Ciò vuol dire che non è possibile usare lo schermo principale aperto per farsi un selfie, si dovrà scegliere se usare quella o le quattro fotocamere presenti nel grosso modulo collocato nell’altra parte dello smartphone. In ogni caso la selfie cam è da 16 MP con apertura f/2,2.
Sul retro, invece, i moduli fotografici sono quattro e sono realizzati in collaborazione con Leica:
- 50 MP Ultra Vision Camera, apertura f/1,9, con stabilizzatore ottico
- 16 MP Cine Camera ultrawide, apertura f/2,2
- 12 MP Zoom ottico 3X, apertura f/2,4, con stabilizzatore ottico
- 8 MP Zoom ottico 10X, apertura f/4,4, con stabilizzatore ottico
Come è facile capire leggendo i dati, quindi, anche il Mate X2 nasce come un ottimo cameraphone e strizza l’occhio agli appassionati di fotografia.
Huawei Mate X2: how much does it cost
Foldable smartphones cost a lot and the Huawei Mate X2 is no exception: it costs 2,290 euros in China, it is not yet known what the European price will be but it will certainly not be lower. On the contrary, it's almost certain that it will be higher and this, combined with the software issue we're about to address, doesn't give it an advantage over Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2, which costs 2,049 euros in Europe.
Mate X2, finally, will be launched with EMUI 11 interface based on Android 10 and will not receive Android 11: it will be the first to receive HarmonyOS 2.0, the "new" operating system from Huawei.