When Huawei announced its answer to Samsung’s Galaxy Fold at Mobile World Congress 2019 in Barcelona on Sunday, it invoked the language of science fiction and space travel to emphasise the futuristic approach of the new Mate X.
The handset is a two-in one smartphone and tablet, using 5G connectivity for speed, a foldable screen for versatility, artificial intelligence for anticipating user needs, and a new mode of interfacing for an enhanced user experience.
Pic by Arthur Goldstuck.
The key to the foldable screen is a Mechanical Hinge called the Falcon Wing, simultaneously invoking the iconic Millennium Falcon and X-Wing spacecraft from Star Wars. The very colour of the device was invented for Huawei, which describes it as an “Interstellar Blue colour wave”. It says it “epitomises the beauty of technology and sets a higher bar for future smartphones”.
And then there is the positioning of the phone: “It represents a voyage into the uncharted,” said Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group, at the launch, echoing the classic Star Trek slogan, “to boldly go where no phone has gone before”.
Can it be all that? Star Wars, Star Trek and the very future of space travel, all in one device? Of course not, but then this is not science fiction. It is the practical reality of flexible and foldable displays finally entering the mainstream. The challenge is to convince the public to pay a premium price and, as with the Galaxy Fold, that is unlikely with the first generation of foldables.
What it does do, however, is confirm that Samsung has not been able to take a clear lead in foldables, having beaten Huawei by a mere four days with its announcement, and with a format more clunky than that of the Mate X.
The Samsung Fold has a 4.6-inch front display, and opens up to a 7.3-inch mini-tablet. In dramatic contrast, the Mate X has a massive front display measuring 6.6-inches, folding out into a 8-inch tablet. The fundamental difference is that the Fold display is on the inside of the device, separate from the cover display, while the Mate X is on the outside, allowing the cover screen to transform directly into the tablet display.
This has also allowed the Mate X to follow a more elegant design, with the two halves clipping neatly into the frame of the device. The Fold looks like two phones on top of each other. The result is that the Mate X is two thirds the thickness of the Fold, at 11cm compared to 17cm, when folded. That makes for a far bigger device in fact being far more compact.
Click here to watch the Gadget exclusive Huawei Mate X demo, recorded by Arthur Goldstuck.
Click here to see where Samsung leads, and pricing of the foldable handsets.
However, Samsung leads in two respects: availability and price. The Fold will go on sale in initial markets from April 26. The Mate X does not have a release date.
Bruce Lee, vice president of the Handset Business at Huawei CBG, said in an interview after the launch that, because it was the first foldable handset to use 5G, the next generation connectivity technology, it would have to wait for mobile networks themselves to introduce 5G.
“The 5G networks of the operators have not yet been commercialised, and we still need to do a lot of testing regarding interoperation of this phone before the phone can be put to market,” he said. “We estimate it will be by the middle of 2019, but there are a lot of changeable factors that affect the timeline of this launch.”
The other small advantage of the Samsung Fold is price, although the question is really academic, considering the high cost of both devices. The Fold will cost $1800 in the USA, which may translate into well above R40 000 in South Africa. That makes the phone not only highly expensive, but also prohibitively costly for what is clearly the first generation of foldable device from Samsung. Future versions will be sleeker, more elegant, with bigger screens, and at a lower cost.
That is also the one downside of the Mate X. Until Richard Yu announced the price, the audience had cheered almost every feature of the device as it was announced. The announcement of the price brought gasps of surprise: Euro2200, or the equivalent of $2600. That means a device that would cost as much as R60 000 in South Africa.
Again, however, the device is not geared towards sales, but to show technology leadership.
Said Bruce Lee, “Huawei never pursues an excessively high profit margin. We pursue providing the consumer with a better product with higher technology. The price is high not for pursuit of margins but due to the materials and technologies involved, due to the foldable screen. In future, we will work with partners to improve the technology, increase the production of foldable panels, and bring down the price.”
Click here to watch the Gadget exclusive Huawei Mate X demo, recorded by Arthur Goldstuck.
- Arthur Goldstuck is of World Wide Worx and Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram on @art2gee