the best flexible phone on the market

In February, Huawei introduced the flexible Huawei Mate X2, which never hit our market. However, we managed to get it exclusively for longer-term testing, we live with the phone for about two weeks, so we have a relatively good idea of ​​what to expect from it. The phone is trying to compete with the Galaxy Z Fold 2, which we also reviewed here. It should be said at the outset that at the time of the release, the phone cost over CZK 60,000 in China, so we had high expectations. We will say in today’s review whether they have been fulfilled.

Contents of the review Huawei Mate X2

Package contents

The Huawei Mate X2 phone will come to you in an attractive paper box, after which the phone itself will look at you. But we will talk about it later. After opening the top lid with the phone, two more boxes are waiting for us. In one is located headphones, charging cable and adapter, in the latter a clip for ejecting the SIM card and also a cover. This has the main advantage of having a small foot, which allows you to place your phone on a table and watch a video. The packaging made a perfect first impression on us. However, if Huawei picked up and offered one of its FreeBuds instead of wired headphones in the phone package for such an amount, it would be a complete hit. Damage.

• Huawei Mate X2
• headphones
• charging cable + adapter
• clip for ejecting the SIM card
• packaging

Quality of workmanship and flexible mechanism

The design of the Huawei Mate X2 is something that needs to be discussed in more detail. In our opinion, this model not only takes the era of flexible telephones one step further. One of the biggest ailments of flexible phones (for example, with Samsung) is gap between display in closed state. However, the Chinese giant managed to solve this by not being there. No, not a millimeter. It just doesn’t exist. In addition, the company claims that it is construction 2x more durable than the Mate Xs.

We can’t confirm that, but the phone works very well. The hinge bends for sure, it does not throw anything and there is no bending. The displays are attached to each other by magnets, thanks to which you can tap the phone very surely, but again it is not so easy to open it with one hand. But that’s probably not such a big problem. As for the materials used, they are of course premium with nothing else than metal and glass you will not encounter here. However, this also affected the weight. The phone weighs 295 gramswhich is really a lot for your phone. You have to realize that if you are thinking about a similar device at all, you just feel it in your pocket and often you don’t put it there at all. However, the Huawei Mate X2 is designed for those who are able to make the most of it.

If you plan to have it closed during the day, hang out in bed in the evening and watch it on Netflix, so it’s a nice bonus, but from the weight and overall dimensions of the mobile phone you will be annoyed. You’d better buy a normal phone and a cheaper tablet. Conversely, if you need a big screen every day and you are constantly working with your phone in some way, showing various presentations or documents, it could be an interesting choice. We admit that we do not feel that we have used the potential of the display to the maximum and for about half a day we used it in a closed state. It was just more convenient and a small display was enough for us to write off, receive calls, take photos or browse the web. The phone will then unlock either side fingerprint readerwhich works very fast or through face recognition using a selfie camera.

Displays

Displays are clearly the main attraction of the whole phone. So it covers the front 6.45 ″ OLED display with 90Hz refresh rate, 2700 x 1160 pixels resolution and 240Hz sampling rate. We spent about 50% of the time on it and basically there’s nothing to complain about. It has sufficient maximum brightness (up to 600 nits) and is reflected a little more than we would expect, but it is still sufficiently legible, even in direct sunlight. It is disrupted by a pill shot, where there is a 16MPx selfie camera with an aperture of f / 2.2. For normal selfies, it is perfectly sufficient, but the main fun comes when taking selfies with the rear camera. But about that later.

It will shine on you when you open the phone 8-OLED panel, also with 90Hz refresh rate, 2480 x 2200 pixels resolution and 180 Hz sampling rate. This is a slightly smaller value than on the front display, but we did not notice any significant changes during the entire testing period. The display is fast and responsive despite the lower sampling frequency. Of course, what fascinated us, apart from the flexible mechanism on the phone, after a few hours of use is the fact that the display is really flat, and if you swipe your finger in the middle of the display where the hinge is, you really have to try to register a smaller bump.

With normal use, you basically don’t have a chance to feel it and you really feel like you’re holding a tablet in your hands. It is definitely worth mentioning the surface treatment, which Huawei does not describe in any way, but the finger slides really perfectly on the screen. The only downside may be the greater capture of fingerprints, so you will often polish the display.

Hardware and performance

He takes care of the performance on the phone Kirin 9000 5G chipset, which is so far the most powerful chipset from Huawei, which was used, for example, in the Huawei Mate 40 Pro model. It is manufactured using a 5nm process and completes eight processor cores graphics chip Mali-G78 MP24. In our case, it has 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. According to the test results in the Geekbench 5 benchmark, he earned the phone 947 points in a single core test, 3431 points then in multicore testing. It surpasses in its performance for example Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G with chipset Exynos 2100.

Editors from the GSMAren server even noticed that the performance of your phone varies depending on which display you are using. Some games, such as Genshin Imapct, are blurred on the big screen, and this title has been quite choppy. According to our estimate, he ran at a maximum of 30 FPS, rather less. Some display games do not have a problem, for example PUBG Mobile ran without any problems. When the game works well, playing on the big screen is just great. You just have to reckon with the fact that some titles may be angry

User interface

The system in Huawei Mate X2 is EMUI 11 built on Android 10 and of course you can’t count on Google services. In addition, the flexible phone from the Chinese giant will be one of the first models to receive Harmony OS 2.0. So if you have recently used a Huawei mobile phone, you will feel at home here. There will be plenty of customization options, from Always-On through icons to entire themes, of which there is a really large number to choose from.