Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Huawei Mate Xs Impressions: The Hottest Foldable!”.
Okay, so last month one of you, the viewer emailed me saying: oh, i saw your video where you’re talking about how you’ve never seen the huawei mate x like outside of a demo area, but i have i own one. Do you want me to like send one to you? Maybe you can make a video about it, so, first of all very generous offer and we really appreciated it, but turns out. It was just a little bit risky with international shipping and then just with the state of the world right now trying to insure it, because it was his personal phone and we definitely wanted to get it back to him, but it wasn’t fully guaranteed. So, instead we just went down the rabbit hole of trying to buy one just seeing if i could get my hands on one here once and for all. So as it turns out, you could probably guess it’s really hard to get one here in the u.s. They don’t want it, they can’t ship here, but then uh dbrand steps in and they’re like yeah. We can. We can secure one and if i’ve learned one thing over the years, it’s to never doubt dbrand’s ability to secure really hard to get things. This is the same company that secured 12 ps5s and 12 xbox series x’s at the same time, in the height of their demand, still not sure how they pull that off.
So yeah they got a mate x. So here we have it huawei mate xs in collaboration with leica, apparently so the funny part about the timing of just getting my hands on it now is we have rumors saying the successor is coming really soon and i’ll address that in a little bit, but i Just wanted to get this phone for myself and actually see what it’s about so right at the top is the phone with the plastic with a ton of warnings on it. But that comes right off, and this is the first time i’m holding the phone and wow. It’S a lot thinner than i expected i’ll get to that in a second behind the phone is another card with a printed set of the same warnings. The same precautions, then underneath is the rest of the hardware that actually comes with this phone. You get your paperwork and a bumper case that i’ll show you you get a usbc to usbc cable. Then you also get your power adapter for fast charging and you get your usbc wired, earbuds. Okay, so i wanted to get my hands on this phone because, like i said in my royal flex, pi 2 video i’ve literally never seen this phone before and now that i’m holding it and using it.
Well, there’s a lot of thoughts and observations that go straight to the top. So when it’s closed it looks like a normal phone. Just a big phone 6.6 inch diagonal phone, but you know you can see the fingerprint reader doubles as a power button. On the right hand, side you’ve got your volume rocker.
The screen goes pretty close to the edges, but then of course, there’s a couple obvious quirks, so you can see the fold of course, and you can also see the usb-c port is all the way over to the right-hand side and two, it’s very smooth feeling because Of course, the display is what’s wrapping around on the sides and they’ve polished and smoothed the right side to sort of look just like the screen wrapping around the left side. But when you look at it, you can kind of tell the bezel on the right is just a little thicker than their cutoff of the display on the left. Kind of reminds me of the first ever galaxy note edge, so you can use it closed. Just like a normal phone, but that’s not why you get this phone right. You got to be opening it up all the time to get your money’s worth so to open this phone up.
You flip it over and there’s a red button and you press that button and the back part of the display is spring loaded and it flips out halfway open and then it’s up to you to push it all the rest of the way, open and sort of Snaps into place when it’s flat and then you’ve got your full size, eight inch 2480 by 2200 oled canvas for all the productivity and big screen tasks in the world, okay, so a couple of thoughts. So, first of all, i was immediately pretty struck by how thin this is it’s 5.5 millimeters thick at the thin part, and that of course means when you fold it over. That’S 11 millimeters, that’s not much thicker than a normal smartphone these days, but the reason this whole thing is able to be so thin is mainly because these wings of the phone as i’ll call them are basically just screen and battery.
So the total combined battery is 4 500 milliamp hours with some battery in each side, but pretty much all the rest of the components of this phone are packed into this column over here that low key kind of acts as a grip. When you start to get used to holding it, but that’s why the usbc port is over here, that’s where the kirin 990 processor and eight gigs of ram and half a terabyte of storage are, and that’s of course, where all the cameras are. There’S no camera cutouts for a selfie camera or anything like that. All of the cameras live over here in this column and there’s four of them: there’s a 40 megapixel primary camera, an ultra wide, a 3x telephoto zoom and a depth sensor, and this is a review of these. Of course, this is just my impressions, but i do like the idea that in a folding phone you can take advantage of the main cameras for everything, including selfie stuff. So, with the mate xs, you hit the button to switch to a selfie, and then you literally flip the phone around and you’re, using those huge high quality main cameras to take selfies. So you can use the ultrawide or even the zoom, if you’re into that, and then also because this is screen on the back it’s off most of the time. But if you want to hit this button and turn the back screen on now, you can show people as you’re taking a photo of them.
What that photo’s going to look like so yeah there you are so now with the viewfinder mirrored on the back. You can imagine being able to hand the phone to someone and like direct them, exactly how to take the photo based on what you see. So i feel like we all kind of know. Huawei’S software experience here in the us is a bit nuked because they don’t have a relationship with the us anymore, and so, even if you are able to get the phone here, there’s no google play services, it’s not ideal, but there are some pretty nice software features In here, where you get control over app scaling, so some apps get column support on the big screen.
So there’s a lot of good stuff, but – and this is the other side of the coin – there’s downsides too – and you’ll probably saw these coming so the crease there’s. No getting around it, there’s still a crease on folding phones and it can kind of catch your eye sometimes, but i feel like this – is as good as it gets with the current tech when you’re actually looking at the contents of. What’S on the screen, you really don’t notice the crease, it’s just when you run your fingers straight over it or it catches a light, a certain way. Then you do notice it, but, speaking of catching the light, a certain way, the built-in screen protector.
That’S on this phone, which is super important for protecting the super soft flexible oled doesn’t uniformly go up to the edges, so there’s notches and cutouts everywhere, and it caught my eye all the time. So i’m not going to pull it off because i know better. I know better than that, but the dust collecting on these uneven edges and just the way the light hits it. You can’t tell me that wouldn’t eventually bother you a little bit but hey better, to have a screen protector than not because, unfortunately, i’ve placed this phone down like a normal phone a few too many times, and i’ve ended up with some scratches on the back plastic, Because well, when you put it down, it literally touches the ground.
So if you put it on a desk, that plastic is touching a desk if there’s any sort of grit or any particles or materials at all. On that surface, that’s going up straight against the plastic, and most phones are cool with that, of course. But this plastic screen protector is like scratches at a level one with deeper grooves at a level breathing too hard. So i’m not shocked that it’s already starting to see some marks, but of course the whole point is you get the marks in the screen protector and you’re not damaging the screen? Basically, the bumper case that comes with this phone is like the best possible solution, because then it sort of raises it up off of whatever surface you put it down on. So if you’re super never want to get any sort of scratches on it. Put the bumper case on it’s a little less elegant, but then you don’t get scratches and then the hinge here on the xs is slightly improved from the x. So you can see, there’s these dust caps now and the metal back to the hinge to keep it almost completely gapless when it’s folding, but of course it’s still not going to be water or dust resistant or anything they’re just doing the best they can.
So, at the end of the day on one hand, this feels like the most advanced sexiest folding phone. I’Ve ever seen. It’S it’s pretty stunning hardware, but, on the other hand, like i was saying in the flexpi video i’ll link it below it’s just it’s just not quite technically ready to be doing this outside fold thing. So i’m really curious about the next version because, like i said word on the street, is the huawei mate x2 or whatever this next version is called, is supposedly coming out within the next month or so and headlines suggest it’s going to be switching to the inside Folding design like the galaxy fold, which would make a lot of sense, given the current state of the tech, you know, there’s a couple other things i’d like to see i’d like to see a 120 hertz display, i like to see ho, maybe a slightly bigger battery. I know they want to keep it all thin and sexy like this, but yeah, i’m very curious now about how folding stuff goes forward, seeing how this ended up you know, do we go straight to folding on the inside and then come back to the outside fold When the folding screen tech is better we’ll see, let me know what your thoughts are below.
If you think we should still do the outside fold stuff or not, that’s pretty much it i’m glad. I finally got my hands on the stone and uh. Now i know that’s been it thanks for watching catch, you guys in the next one peace, .