Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Huawei Mate X2 Impressions: I Was Right!”.
Hey what’s up mkbhd here and i was right, i was right. I told you i look, i didn’t want to say i told you so, but i did didn’t i so i just recently made a video showing you guys, the huawei mate xs, one of the sexiest folding phones out, maybe the sexiest. But my conclusion was okay. It’S hot: i like this a lot, but it’s not practical, and so maybe we should stop the whole folding over the outside thing until the tech gets a little bit better, then we’ll come back to it. So now here we have the huawei mate x2 brand new.
Just got announced and i’ve got my hands on it and, as you can see, they’ve done the thing they’ve gone from an outside fold to an inside folding display. So now it’s doing a lot of things really. Similarly, to samsung z-fold 2, which i reviewed and really liked, but there’s actually a couple things here that are different – that make this the best folding phone hardware out right now. So, first of all, this outside screen, it’s even bigger and higher quality than samsung’s. To the point where it actually feels like a full-fledged smartphone – and i know we were just saying that about the z-fold 2, because it was so much better than the first fold and that’s poor excuse for a front screen. But the mate x2 clearly beats out the fold too, and it’s no contest it’s a full 6.45 inch diagonal. So it’s actually pretty huge and it’s wider. So it’s much closer to a normal aspect ratio, it’s 2700 by 1600 oled with thin bezels and a 90 hertz refresh rate plus they’ve.
Given it a 240 hertz touch sample rate. This looks like a normal smartphone when i’m holding it. It doesn’t quite feel like one still because of course, it’s still twice as thick and the fingerprint reader is on the bottom half as the power button, and obviously it’s not quite just like a normal phone.
But the goal is to remove as many trade-offs as possible and that’s what they’re all trying to do here, but yeah look at that just looks just like a normal smartphone, especially with that aspect ratio close to it anyway. A quick word on that selfie camera, though so you can see it’s a double wide pill shape cut out there, so you have the selfie camera itself and then i believe, a time of flight sensor next to it, which i bet they thought a lot about. On a phone like this, because that time-of-flight sensor is good for giving you a little bit of better depth information and potentially better focus.
Now, if i just want to hop on a random video call or just take a quick selfie, i just use the regular camera. I don’t need that it is cool to have autofocus in a selfie camera. Don’T get me wrong. The time-of-flight sensor helps with that, but i feel like if i actually care about an accurate portrait mode and the depth information, i’m doing more than just a regular selfie. Well then, on a phone like this, i can open up the phone and use the incredible high quality cameras on the back and take a way better. Selfie photo portrait mode videos all that stuff will be great.
So i was just thinking when i saw this. They probably could have left it out and just done a regular small cutout for the selfie camera, but obviously having faster autofocus for a camera like this, like they did in the p40 pro plus. Is a nice bonus, so not a huge deal cool to have the point: is this outside screen being a way closer to traditional 15 by 9 aspect ratio makes it way more usable than any other outside screen on a foldable phone? It’S a major strength of this mate x2. Now, when you go on the inside, that’s where you get your uninterrupted 8 inch display, uninterrupted, because there’s no selfie camera cut out at all, and it’s really nice.
It’S also 90 hertz, which is pretty good. It’S an 8 to 7.1 aspect ratio, so nearly square and there’s hardly any crease at all. I am very very impressed by how well this display and hinge combine to minimize the look and feel of any crease down the middle. Now. It’S definitely still there. It’S not totally gone and you can see it at the most extreme viewing angles, but it’s actually much better than samsung’s fold, and this hinge like really nicely firmly pops the phone open to flat. This is a good one. That is a good hinge right there.
It’S a good hinge shout out to the hinge engineers, the engineers, of course, um also when it’s closed it actually uh it’s closer to flat and and flush with the back of the phone, so it doesn’t really protrude as much. If you note, in the z fold two it kind of protrudes out the side a little bit and when you’re holding it, you feel like you’re holding more of that hinge. So it is impressive that they also managed to squeeze it further into the phone body itself.
Feels less obtrusive that way, but then there is one especially wild thing about this phone and you might have noticed it by now in the footage. But it’s it’s a wedge shape. Look at this! It’S a wedge going from the thinnest all the way on the left. 4.4 millimeters all the way to the thickest heaviest part on the right hand, side, and that is of course, intentional huawei’s got their reasoning for it, which is it feels better in the hand so hear me out or hear them out. They argue that with phones like the z-fold, because the center of gravity is further from your hand when you hold it that little bit of wobble feels extra heavy like there’s a lot of weight really far from your hand and that’s what makes the phone feel heavy.
So, by putting more of the weight closer to your hand, the center of gravity is now closer to where it would be in a normal phone and the thinner lighter bit. That’S outside feels lighter, and i buy that. I really do. I feel like this phone feels less heavy.
It is still overall a pretty heavy phone, but you can tell it feels different in the hand when it’s open and i think that feels better than the z-fold too it’s nice now when it is closed. It’S got this slanted mid line, that’s kind of funny, but that’s totally fine. It still goes pretty much flush protects the inside screen and really the only possible downsides of this particular shape. Is it rocks a lot on a table thanks to the big camera bump? But you know it’s just annoying. It’S not a deal breaker a lot of phones rock, but also the total combined battery size is 4 500 milliamp hours, which is a little bit small for something with this much screen. It is funny, though it is, it’s very tempting to just give this phone the foldable phone hardware crown like straight away, just because even more so than samsung, they are using very close to their flagship bits and specs inside this phone.
It’S already the 90 hertz much bigger, better display on the outside. It’S already a better like hinge design, but also this mate x2 actually has just about the same camera system as their top end p40, pro plus or mate 40 pro plus, which are really good cameras. That’S a 50 megapixel gigantic one over 1.28 inch primary camera you’ve got a 3x telephoto and a 10x periscope zoom lens and a slightly downgraded ultrawide. But then it’s still got a fairly advanced speaker system that pairs a driver at the top with one at the bottom.
For a pretty wide stereo sound as a bonus and yes they’ve – put some pretty beefy specs inside too so kieran 9000 chip, 8 gigs of ram 256 gigs of storage, it’s 5g capable it’s got wi-fi six, it’s just overall, a very high-end piece of hardware. In a lot of ways, it does 55-watt fast charging with the charger that comes in the box, which is pretty nice, it could potentially i mean i haven’t, used this phone long enough to review battery life, but it could potentially offset the concerningly small 4 500 milliamp Hour battery because it’s a 8 inch, 90hz display and a high-end chip, no wireless charging, though that is a bummer. But overall i am very impressed with this phone as a piece of hardware i got ta say now: the software situation is the same as the first mate x, which means no google app support, and this one it’s not coming to the us or anything. I just wanted to get my hands on it to test it, but i just i appreciate it for how impressive and cutting edge this piece of hardware is to me, though, i’m keeping this in the back of my head every time i see and get to test A new folding phone, which is the end game for folding phones, is you want to get it as close to just another feature as possible? They want to remove as many caveats of having a folding phone as they possibly can a lot of the first gen ones. It was really cool that they folded in half, but they weren’t really a great idea in a lot of other ways, but eventually, if they can get it to be just as usable without folding and just as good of a battery life and just as good specs And cameras and all that stuff and the folding in half part is just another feature and the price is pretty close to the same as regular phone.
That’S when people will start to want them so yeah this phone to me, it’s a step towards that. It’S got a great outside screen. Obviously it’s a little bit short on battery, but a lot of the high-end specs, really great cameras and just a really refined.
Maybe that’s the word, a refined experience really nice hinge. So i like it a lot it’s on its way. We’Ll get back to the outside fold stuff later either way.
That’S been it thanks for watching i’ll catch, you guys the next one: peace, [ Applause, ], .