Huawei unveiled a folding smartphone Mate X. A photo
Although Huawei decided in advance not to show its new flagship P30 at Mobile World Congress (it will be presented later, 26 March in Paris), the company promised to show in Barcelona "something unheard of". And he kept his promise - in addition to new thin and powerful laptops the company talked about her Mate X, competitor recently introduced bent Samsung Galaxy Fold. On the eve of the presentation of something about the device already known, but now - official data.
Photos from the presentation of Huawei Mate X
Compared to the new Samsung Galaxy Fold presented today, a week ago already looks like an outdated relic.. The Chinese device is thinner, обходится одним экраном и одним массивом камер, предлагает больший по площади экран (как в сложенном, так и в раскрытом состоянии) и складывается без странных зазоров.
The Mate X's single curved OLED display does triple duty. When the device is folded, the user receives a smartphone with two screens (main and back). A secondary and narrower rear display allows you to take self-portraits and make video calls using the advanced main camera (фронтальной в смартфоне вообще не предусмотрено). Если Mate X открыть, пользователь получит почти квадратный (хотя и не совсем) планшет с минимальными рамками с трёх сторон.
In this way, from a functional point of view, the user receives three screens.
- main in folded mode - 6.6-inch (2480 × 1148 pixels, 19,5:9);
- rear folded, for self-portraits - 6.4-inch (2480 × 892, 25:9);
- tablet, when unfolded - 8-inch screen (2480 x 2200, 8:7,1).
In the tablet state, a thickening remains on one side, where are the cameras located, power button and USB-C connector. Оно выступает в качестве удобного держателя — весь остальной корпус отличается толщиной всего 5,4 mm. Даже в сложенном состоянии Mate X не такой уж тучный: Total 11 mm (vs 17 мм у Galaxy Fold с одного из краёв), largely thanks to that, that there is no gap in its fold.
The company was able to achieve such an elegant design by bending the screen outward, not inside. But there are also disadvantages to this: the bendable screen cannot be protected by the usual hard glass like Gorilla Glass, and therefore the use of a special protective cover is strictly recommended, что в значительной степени портит эстетику и вредит удобству эксплуатации. У Galaxy Fold, eg, такой проблемы нет.
В основе конструкции Mate X лежит то, что Huawei называет петлёй Falcon Wing («Крыло сокола»), which, thanks to a sophisticated design of more than a hundred parts, allows the screen to bend outward as accurately as possible. A similar scheme has already been found in the first commercial bendable smartphone - Royole FlexPai, whom we met at CES 2019. Batteries are located on both sides of the hinge, которые в совокупности дают зарядную ёмкость 4500 mAh. It is slightly larger, than 4380 мА·ч у Galaxy Fold. А благодаря улучшенной 55-Вт технологии SuperCharge пополнить 85 % заряда аккумуляторов Mate X можно за 30 minutes.
Unfortunately, Huawei рассказывает пока не все характеристики Mate X. for example, не ясно, соответствует ли система камер новинки показателям смартфона Mate 20 Pro (что было бы логично)? Тройная система камер носит ту же марку Leica, but the exact configuration of lenses and matrices has not yet been reported.
But the company told, that the Mate X is based on a 7nm Huawei Kirin processor 980, same, as in Mate 20 Pro и Honor View 20. В связке с этим мощным решением используется собственный новенький модем Balong 5000 5G от Huawei, обеспечивающий поддержку 5G, как и положено для устройства будущего (let there be no cellular networks yet and they won’t be relevant any time soon). Huawei promises, that her modem is Balong 5000 allows you to achieve twice the speeds compared to Qualcomm Snapdragon X50. The Mate X's four antennas and chip deliver up to 100% download speed on 5G networks. 4,6 Gbps vs 2,3 Gbps for Snapdragon X50.
The smartphone supports installation of two SIM cards, one of which can be replaced with a Huawei Nano memory card. The fingerprint scanner is located on the side, in place of the power button near the volume rocker.
Unfortunately, a more elegant design and advanced characteristics compared to the Galaxy Fold did not come for free. Huawei Mate X version with 8 GB of RAM and 512 GB storage will go on sale mid-year for €2,300 (about $2600). for comparison: Samsung has set a price for its foldable smartphone at $1980 and scheduled the launch for April.
A source: Huawei
