Chinese tech company Huawei has launched its Mate X, a foldable 5G ready smartphone, at an event attended by around 3,000 people held on the eve of the 2019 Mobile World Congress (MWC2019) which opened on Monday. The launch is days after Samsung launched a similarly foldable phone.

The Mate X has a 6.6-inch screen, which can be opened out into an eight-inch OLED screen to allow the user to read or view videos.  "The Huawei Mate X is a step into unknown territory,” confirmed Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group.  He said the phone was a "masterwork of engineering” and that it folded in an "almost perfect” manner, while its 5G capacity would help "change the world that we currently know”.  The Mate X has a Balong 5000 processor, 8 GB of RAM and 512 GB internal memory, which Yu commented would make it the "reference point for the 5G smartphones still to come”.

Other points in favor of Huawei’s new smartphone are its lightness and the fact that even when folded it is only 11 millimeters thick. Meanwhile Yu highlighted that the Mate X’s two batteries give it 4,500 milliamps per hour (mAh) which is "well above that of its competitors”, and these batteries can be recharged in just over half an hour.  It will retail for 2,299 euros (2,607 U.S. dollars) and is expected to be available to the public "by the summer”.

Xinhua