Huawei Mate Xs review By GSMArena Official

Hey everyone: it's been a little over a year since I first got to try out the mate X for the first time it was an incredibly futuristic prototype, but it was also very far away from hitting store shelves. It was fragile. The software was a little rough around the edges and there was simply more to be done now. Kwame has released an update, called the mate XS, and we have our very own unit in for review. So if you can spare the cash, is this worth a buy and what exactly does it mean for the future of phones, I'm Andrew, for GSM marina, and this is our review of the mate XS. The mate XS is still unlike pretty much every phone you've ever seen.

It's super light for the size of its display and when fully opened it's incredibly thin, it has the same falcon wing design and most of the electronics are cased in the bar on the side of the phone, while the two central panels hold the batteries. Thanks to this form factor, it's easy to grip, even though the size of the phone feels slightly more slippery than last year. The back is made of the same high-quality plastic there's also a super-fast finger per meter on the side, which is pretty much instant and very reliable when closed. The phone's dimensions are that of a regular flagship smartphone in 2020. More importantly, you get a full size, smartphone display, unlike the galaxy folds, obnoxiously, tiny screen and since we're on the topic of comparing the two here.

There's no gap on the mate is closed, except for the small half circle. Where the hinges the hinge itself has been redesigned, it looks a little more streamlined but, more importantly, it means that there have been a lot of clever and intricate changes and how the excess folds. The hinge is now made of zirconium, which is harder than titanium alloy and should be more durable. Even the button that pops up in the display has been changed, and it now has a red line down the middle in general, the mate excess opens more smoothly than the X. It doesn't make.

Weird ratcheting sounds, and it feels a lot more natural to fold and unfold. I think that this might be the key thing here, despite how futuristic this phone is. It's also very easy to get used to. This was true of the original mate X, but it's even more true. Now, obviously, the design itself comes with a natural risk.

The screen is on the outside, so if you're not keep in a protective case, it's easy to get scratched. There's a new aerospace-grade protective layer added on top of the display that supposedly makes the design 80% stronger, but even though that adds extra sturdiness to this layer, it's unlikely to survive scot-free in the hands of a less gentle user. The top layer of the display also looks like it can be peeled off, even though it's an intrinsic part of the design, and that takes us back to some galaxy folds issues at launch on a more nitpick level. The display feels less pleasant than the original X. It says the fingers don't glide as smoothly, and this thing loves fingerprints and dust.

There is no IP protection either, and you can see part of the screen there. The little events in the middle of the phone, while Huawei, has made clear and significant improvements to its durability. The XS is still a few generations away from surviving a less cautious user. In this sense, it reminds me of the fragility of the first touchscreen phones, and it's really heartening to think about how we've gone from there to phones like the armored 7, which can survive a lot of abuse, we're still in the beginning, stages of sturdy, foldable and I think that this will be a key to their wider adoption by the public. Aside from durability concerns, the screen is actually great for a foldable when opened wide.

You can see the bend only where the reflections off the screen distort a bit. Otherwise, it lays pretty flat, and there is no distortion whatsoever on the image on the screen open. It's a generous eight inches across so well closed. At six point: six on the front and six point three: eight inches on the back, a Tatum weight. You can only use the back when you're taking a selfie, whereas before the phone would automatically light up, whichever side of the screen was up, it's a bit dim for 20/20 flagship, and we got a max reading of 448 nits.

It goes a bit lower when you have the entire screen unfolded as expected from an OLED, you get super deep blacks. Colors were accurate too, with a saturated vivid mode and a more accurate natural mode. There's no HDR 10 support, though now, due to the four by three form factors when open most videos won't take advantage of the space, be still get to enjoy it when using social media or browsing the net. Despite space constraints, the mate access has a hybrid stereo speaker. There is a fully fledged speaker on the bottom left side of the phone.

The earpiece doubles as a second channel. They run in stereo only when you hold a phone and landscape orientation. The excess has a total battery capacity of 4500 million of hours to power, the large display, and it got an endurance rating of 84 hours and the device was closed and 69 when it was open. Well, this isn't very impressive in comparison to regular phones. It's actually a very good result, especially when you consider that the battery is powering an unusually large display in a very new form factor.

In any case, the charging speeds were fantastic, and we got from 0 to 80% in half an hour and a full charge in 57 minutes. There's no wireless charging. Here, though, the maid excess supports the Karin 995 G chipset. It seemed to test a little slower than the P 40, but there was no significant difference in terms of real-world usage, you're, getting flagship, great performance. Despite the thermal constraints, the phone remains comfy to hold even under sustained heavy loads.

You also get 5g support. The mate excess runs, Android, 10, emu 10 point 0.1 on top, which is actually missing a few elements from mew 10.1, which was introduced on the p40 now before I get him sell. All the details. I have to point out that you'll still be missing the Play Store for apps, as well as other Google native apps. You might like to use like Google, Maps or YouTube.

You can find many of the apps or there alternatives on Chloe's app gallery, but even though it's expanding constantly certain apps are still noticeably absent. So finding your favorites might involve a bit of back-and-forth with different third-party app stores or transferring them from your old phone. So overall, getting apps in this phone is gonna, be a bigger hassle than what you're probably used to that said. If you don't need the latest games and apps or if you're a power user that knows their way around an APK file. You're, probably gonna, be fine for the most part.

This you will feel super familiar to you if you use a Huawei or honor device in the past couple of years, there's a lot of customization options, and it's far from a stock Android experience, you'll find a dark mode and speed and a disappointing lack of an app tour. The UI has been improved from last year in terms of foldable usability, but in general, while ways approach has been one of simplicity. When do you open and close the fold app switch from the full 8-inch display to the more common 6.6 inch, most apps seem to scale quite nicely and simply switch over to their dedicated tablet. UI. We did run into a few issues with that functionality, so your mileage will vary depending on the app you have open.

The whole system works well in practice, and it adds a certain flow to the user experience. There's now, a multi window mode which lets you use two apps side by side and have one floating above them. It even lets you drag and drop files from the gallery to an email. You can even use this feature when the phone is folded into its more standard form. Factor.

I have to say, though, that this, unlike their unfolding experience, is less intuitive and some features were difficult to get used to. What is missing here is some more creativeness and taking advantage of the unique form factor. Their keyboard options, for example, are rather limited. I miss having the floating keyboard, which is available on the Galaxy fold. Also, the side strip remains unused by the UI.

There are no animations that span between the front and back of the phone, no matter how you place it, there is always a bit of the screen showing or a lot, and yet it behaves like a conventional display, perhaps as foldable become more common and more developers get to use them. They'll think of new ways to take advantage of the new form factor and Huawei will be inspired and turn the cameras on the mate. XS are pretty much the same ones that you'll find on the P30 Pro, albeit with slightly different image. Processing. There is a 40 megapixel, main camera and 8 megapixel telephoto snapper, a 16 megapixel ultra-wide and a 3d depth sensor.

You can shoot either in folded or unfolded mode, but the latter feels unnatural because it hardens back to using a tablet for taking photos doable but awkward in daylight. Shots from the main camera come out at 10 megapixels by default. They have plenty of detail, a wide dynamic range and slightly more muted colors. In some competition all around the meet access had more mature processing, fine geometric patterns here and there I come out looking a little different from they do in real life. The only thing you really should note is that man cam had inconsistent white balance and switch drastically from one photo to another low light, tended to make it worse.

If you turn on the master, AI enhancement, you'll get a wider dynamic range, slightly more saturation and more sharpness. You can go in and force the camera to output images in a full 40 megapixel resolution, but this offers few real-world benefits the telephoto cameras. Natural resolution is 8 megapixels, so dub scales images a little and outputs in the same resolution as the main snapper 3 times. Zoom is supposed to be optical, and, unsurprisingly, images were sharp and detailed that we saw haze in some areas. Dynamic range is more narrow than the main cams, but colors were comparable between the two at 5 times zoom.

We saw some extra softness, though, if you don't pixel peep shots for me perfectly usable, you can take photos at a max of 30 times, digital zoom they're usable, if shot with a steady hand or a tripod, but the results never came out perfectly sharp the phone's 16 megapixel ultra-wide camera was good, but nothing really impressive. There's some barrel distortion around the corners and there was a noticeable softness throughout the frame. The Name grain was more limited than the main cams and colors were more muted. He also saw a tiny bit more noise than on the main camera. Some of this softness gets better if you switch on the master.

Ai and low-light images were once again improved by the AI. There's plenty of detail and good in emic range and shadows and highlights are balanced. Color retention is great too. When it comes to night mode, you have to wait upwards of seven seconds without moving and though the real-time image stacking is fascinating to watch, it's actually not much better than the regular shots with HDR. Perhaps if it's a very dark scene, then the night mode will actually be of use, but for the most part, just use the eye, and you'll be plenty happy with the results.

If you decide that you really want to zoom in low-light, you won't get amazing results. The shots will be usable for social media, but the aperture. It simply is too dim for amazing photos. The ultra-wide camera performs pretty similar in the evenings, though it produced slightly better results with more resolved detail, it sends it to be more underexposed and for best results. We had two locks by exposure.

There's no selfie camera here and if you want to take a self, you need to close the meet and turn the cameras to face you. It's a brilliant solution in terms of saving space, but it doesn't mean you can't have a video chat on the full unfolded display. Considering how important video have you come in this day and age? That's pretty unfortunate. Selfies were unsurprisingly, very good with plenty of detail and great colors, but here, like before, there were inconsistencies in terms of white balance, skin tones its cue from pinkish in one shot to yellowish in the next. It is a software bug, though, so.

Why wait we'll, hopefully clear that up with an update, more infuriating, Li Huey? We had disabled the ultra white in selfie mode. Well, this is fine for most selfies. This would have been amazing for group. Selfies I mean post pandemic. Of course, selfie portraits and regular portraits are one and the same thanks to the cameras, configuration results were impressive, and you had a wide variety of beauty options available.

The phone can shoot a max of 4k at 60fps, but there's no 8k here. You also can't disable the EIS footage from the main camera was flagship level with plenty of detail. Good sharpness and great dynamic range colors were a little more muted than we would have liked. Though Floyd videos had slightly less detail than what you'd see for the main, cam and dynamic range. It was a little more limited ? other than this.

We really like videos from the ultra-wide and colors were similar to the footage from the main camera. The telephoto, on the other hand, struggled with videos. It had an issue with focusing and elevating and lowering the ISO at random should that be fixed three times room videos, look great, there's plenty of detail and good dynamic range. Huawei has done a great job with this phone, and it's definitely making big strides away from it being just a prototype. Early adopters are gonna, have a lot of fun with this new form factor.

Also, the cameras are powerful. The chips at a speedy and the screen. Well, the screen is the star here. That said, this foldable is far from being perfect and there are some important things that need to be ironed out. We expect that in future generations, foldable are going to be more durable, but in terms of this particular device, its Achilles heel is actually software.

The camera was inconsistent. The Apple supplier used to be launched in a slightly more intuitive way and, sadly, the lack of Google services on this phone really takes away from what the full experience should have been while early adopters in Western markets with cash to burn are going to have a lot of fun with this foray into the future of foldable. Maybe it's a good idea for them to keep their old phones as a backup just in case, but that said, I really love them 8xs, and I can't wait to see what else Kwame has in store for us in terms of foldable, thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this video hit, the like button down below subscribe, hit, the bell, Ike and, more importantly, stay safe, and I'll. See you guys next time.

Source : GSMArena Official