Hands-On With The Tri-Fold Smartphone: Huawei Mate XT
Expensive… but innovative
Smartphones have become harder to review these days. Most notably, whenever I reach the ‘performance’ section of my reviews, I’m left scrabbling for content and things to say.
They all feel the same. They’re all fast. They’re all buttery smooth. They all perform like one another in everyday use. The same often goes for the displays and the camera systems (although, arguably, the latter is a very subjective topic).
Then, something comes along which is genuinely fascinating.
Enter the Huawei Mate XT. If you follow tech — even casually — you’ll have no doubt seen images and videos of this tri-fold beast in your feeds. It is immediately interesting, unlike anything most of us have seen, and I’ve had a (brief) session with it.
My time with the Huawei Mate XT
When you first pick up the Mate XT, it feels like a regular, if slightly chunky, foldable phone. The 6.4-inch display is big enough for pretty much anything you need to do, and it’s as bright, responsive, and as engaging as one might expect from a flagship device.
Then, you open it. And open it again. Suddenly, you’re presented with a huge 10.2-inch tablet-sized phone. If we were to be picky, we’d call the Mate XT a bi-fold phone, but Huawei gets away with the tri-fold label because the display consists of three parts.
What strikes you immediately about the Mate XT when unfolded is how ridiculously thin it is. Shockingly so, in fact. It feels sturdy, too. You wouldn’t want to test the bendability of it in the opposite direction, obviously, but it does feel like it could take some stick.
It’s light, as well. And, when folded, it’s almost identical in girth compared to the Samsung Z Fold6. Hilariously so, in fact.
Huawei isn’t directly quoting the specs, but the Mate XT felt snappy and buttery smooth during my very brief testing. I didn’t have long enough with it to put the camera system through its paces, but I hear on the grapevine that it’s flagship-worthy in terms of image quality and optical focal lengths.
The big question is, of course, the battery life. In my experience with foldable phones, it’s often the weakest element, and the Mate XT has the added challenge of powering that huge internal display. Given how much R&D goes into Huawei devices, one would have to assume that the Mate XT’s stamina has been a significant focus for the company.
Who is the Mate XT for?
The Huawei Mate XT is only available for pre-order in China at the time of writing, and the pricing equates to around $3,000. Given the technology involved and the fact there is, basically, zero competition for it at the moment, that lofty price shouldn’t come as a surprise. But it does raise one very big question.
Who is the Mate XT for? And what use case is there for that massive display?
The forty minutes of hands-on time I had with it in Barcelona this week wasn’t enough to answer that question, I’m afraid, but it’s fun to make some assumptions about the kind of person who would lay down that kind of cash for a device like this in 2024.
If reports are to be believed, there are a lot of those people, with preorders for the Mate XT apparently surpassing three million.
The Mate XT feels like the ideal combination of tablet and smartphone. The fact that it’s so thin and consequently folds down into such a practical package is where the innovation and demand lie. The problem is that it is vastly expensive, and very hard to get your hands on both in China and, of course, throughout the rest of the world.
This makes the Mate XT an elusive and, consequently, incredibly interesting device. That might be why so many people are apparently willing to lay down a lot of hard-earned money for Huawei’s first-ever tri-fold phone.
Final thoughts on the Mate XT
Boy, do we need devices like this. Smartphone innovation has stagnated in recent years with design flourishes and the continuous flood of consumer AI features being the main focus for most manufacturers.
The Mate XT avoids falling into those traps by instead focusing on design and innovation. Make what you will of the pricing and availability, but at least the Mate XT is interesting. It’s also likely to spawn many competing products from other brands.
I’m not sure if or when I’ll get my hands on the Mate XT again, but I’m glad I had that fleeting time with it in Barcelona.
More of this stuff, please!
