Huawei Mate xt- The first tri-fold phone impression (With critics)
Technology never turns back. It's always with advancement. Especially, in the era of Android, this has become more true. Widely famous Chinese-origin Android phone manufacturer company Huawei wants to negotiate with us with their first tri-fold phone Huawei Mate xt.
All right, so you've heard of flipping phones and folding phones also. Technology never slows down. So welcome to a phone with both. The world's first tri-fold phone Huawei Mate xt, is what it's called.
So I'd heard about this thing. I'd seen some videos online. But it was also a Huawei phone and China only. Knowing that I'm never gonna daily drive it. I didn't wanna get too caught up.
But it's so interesting. I just had so many questions like what it is like to use or what are the creases like, what are the trade-offs, how hard it is to carry a triple folding phone etc. I need answers.
To know all of those answers, I directly buy a Huawei Mate xt and I wanna give you a tour of it.
When it closes, you've got a pretty reasonable 6.4-inch sized phone. Well, I mean, reasonable from the front anyway. If you just look at it and use it, the screen gets plenty bright and it is 90Hz.
Somehow the bezels are pretty thin and even all the way around. The top and the bottom, the left and the right. Actually, the right side is the screen curving around the edge. So the software appropriately creates a fourth bezel to match.
And it looks honestly more like a normal phone than a lot of foldables out there. After using it, you pretty quickly feel that it is thicker than a normal phone.
But what's crazy is each of these slices individually is ridiculously thin, about four millimeters.
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| Image credit: Marques Brownlee |
So, in total, they add up to 13 millimeters thick when it's closed.
If it was a slab phone, but that is actually as same as the other single folds, like the Z fold 6.
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| Image credit: Marques Brownlee |
So then the power button/fingerprint reader combo button and the volume button on the right side here. They are pushed a little bit back of the center, not the end of the world (đ¤Ŗ), totally usable.
You will obviously notice that if you buy Huawei Mate xt, the part of the screen is a bit exposed and vulnerable if you're gonna put it in a pocket or in a backpack or something.
But overall just like a regular-sized single-screen smartphone experience, the Huawei Mate xt is actually respectable. This is like an eight out of ten and really close to the best I've seen, which is awesome.
But then you open it for the first time, you get to the small tablet mode.
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| Image credit: Marques Brownlee |
Size-wise basically matches with a lot of the other folding phones out there like the Pixel phone, Samsung Z fold 6, etc, Huawei mate xt has a 7.9-inch diagonal. That is roughly a square aspect ratio. It looks fine.
But I actually don't really think it was meant to operate in this form factor most of the time. I mean, why stop halfway when you're just one more fold away from greatness. But it is clearly perfectly usable like this.
The first crease is impressively small and very easy to ignore when you're actually using it. But yeah, thin bezels all the way around. Again, blacked-out pixels on the far left-hand side this time.
There are also still a couple little folding phone tricks, of course since the main camera is on the back. There is no selfie camera on these two pans.
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| Image credit: Marques Brownlee |
After taking a selfie with the main camera, get a full-size preview of the 6.4-inch screen that's still wrapped around the other side.
They are really good flagship quality triple cameras, by the way. I'll get to that in a second.
Get all the benefits of the display specs: the brightness, the 90Hz; it's really solid.
Obviously, it's just a little awkward that it's twice as thick in one hand as the other which is a little unbalanced.
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| Image credit: Marques Brownlee |
And then it is glass on one side and like sort of leather material on the other. So, it's a little bit weird in this way. But honestly, very impressive. I feel like 7 out of 10.
We're not done. So this is what we're all here for. The final fold opens this thing up to a full 10.2-inch corner-to-corner display. So this is now a full 3184 by 2232, 90Hz OLED display.
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| Image credit: Marques Brownlee |
With a whole-punch selfie camera over to the left side. Two creases and two hinges. This is not an iPad mini-sized screen in your pocket. This is literally a full-sized 10-inch tablet in your pocket which is actually incredible.
Now the more you play with it the more you start to notice, the little quirks. First of all, it's ridiculously thin. Now that is all open. It's actually kind of disorienting to hold the Huawei Mate xt. With a screen that big and bezels this small.
Like the whole thing is thin and just kind of a marvel. And then you look at the creases plural cause now you have two.
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| Image credit: Marques Brownlee |
You can actually see there is a small difference between the inward folding crease on the right side and the outward folding crease on the left. But they are also both impressively small.
You can kind of hack your way into getting some Google services on here. But a lot of this UI, a lot of these OS is still Chinese only cause it is Huawei made 'Huawei Mate xt'.
Like it's not gonna be great. It's probably missing some bands in the US too. But just wow.
It's a good amount of software tweaks for the triple-fold thing too. Like when you fully unfold it, the whole UI stretches out. But there is still one page on each side.
So they've kind of just played animation to stretch out two pages among three panels. But the animation is pretty smooth.
There is a wrong way to fold it too by the way. And it tells you about it. So obviously you can close it pretty easily. The correct way to unfold it is to get the two panels on the inside.
But you unfold it the wrong way like that it actually tells you. It says, 'Fold it a different way to use the device please'. You're doing some kind of weird here. Which is totally fair.
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| Image credit: Marques Brownlee |
This has to be 10 out of 10. I mean there's a fact that I'm able to fit a 10-inch display, reasonably in my pocket. That by itself, is something no other device can do. So I gotta love that.
Another question I had early when playing with this. I mean people put cases on every phone. What are the cases for this phone like?
Turns out, it does come with a case in the box. Which is this thing. Really it's just one back piece of the phone that it can protect when it's fully closed.
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| Image credit: Marques Brownlee |
So this case snaps onto the back of the phone like this and then protects also a little bit of the exposed screen on the side, so it makes sense.
They don't wanna get any debris in there.
It has a kickstand on the back which can rotate around and support it at a couple of various different angles. So you can watch videos like this if you're into that.
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| Image credit: Marques Brownlee |
And it can also rotate out of the way to expose the wireless charging coils because it turns out. This phone also supports wireless charging.
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| Image credit: Marques Brownlee |
If you just flip it sideways on certain charges, you can get it to line up and work with wireless charging.
There's one type of person who will use the kickstand built into the case. But there is another type of person, by the way, a totally reckless psycho that would unfold weirdly and then use the phone itself as a built-in kickstand.
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| Image credit: Marques Brownlee |
And it totally works, like the UI responds to it and you can watch YouTube on a larger part of the screen.
But you're also totally scratching the outside part of the screen when you're using it as a kickstand. So I'm not gonna recommend that.
In case you're also wondering about specs on something like this. It's fit flagship specs inside despite being these crazy thin slivers of a phone.
It's the flagship seven-nanometer Kirin 9010 chip made by Huawei.
Huawei Mate xt is also up to 16 GB of RAM and terabytes of storage, which is crazy. Triple cameras on the back as you can see.
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| Image credit: Marques Brownlee |
That's a 50 MP main camera, a 12 MP ultra-wide, and a telephoto.
Huawei Mate xt runs through a 5600mAh battery chopped up and distributed in here with 67-watt fast charging along with 50-watt wireless charging, I should say this is kind of insane.
And then the whole thing will retail It's in China. So if you sort of do conversion price this like, top-end model with the terabyte of storage is like 3500$. It's remain within 3000$ to 3500$.
That's actually not much more expensive that's some of the highest-end folds that we have.
So why is this the only tri-fold phone? Maybe that's the main question you're wondering after all of this.
Because it's so cool. It's just the fact that I can actually fit all of these in the dimension of something that fits in my pocket is nuts.
And they've done a lot of things like nice software touches that actually make it feel really well-considered. But yeah, there are also some trade-offs, of course.
I think the biggest weakness of course on paper is gonna be the battery, the 5600 milliamperes. Again the fast charging is great so that can offset it. But the more time you use this wide open with the 10-inch screen. The tougher that gonna be on the battery.
If you look at typical larger tablets, even the thin ones, the 10-inch tablets have 8000 plus mAh batteries pretty often. So that's probably the biggest weakness here.
Huawei Mate xt speakers are also truly terrible. It's interesting cause sounds come out of the right-hand corner and the left-hand corner.
When it's open, but it's so thin, there's not enough room for big chambers for huge speakers. Yeah, the speakers are pretty tinny and pretty bad.
And then, there is no IP rating for dust or water resistance. Some of the newer foldables have water resistance now. This Huawei mate xt, not so much.
And then, of course, the price is obviously gonna keep some people away. But honestly, that's a pretty small list of trade-offs. But there is something shockingly different and new, that I'm impressed.
For you,
This had the potential to be the world's greatest concept phone. This could have been the coolest concept phone ever.
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| Image credit: Marques Brownlee |
This phone also just happens to have a variable aperture lens on the main camera. So it can switch between f/1.4 wide open for some real background bokeh to f/4 and getting more things on focus.
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| Image credit: Marques Brownlee |
Insanely fast charging that comes with an 80-watt charging brick.
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| Image credit: Marques Brownlee |
It has fast wireless charging in a body barely thick enough to have an entire USB-C port.
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| Image credit: Marques Brownlee |
Huawei Mate xt comes with a pre-installed screen protector that I'm just never gonna remove.
Also read: EZVIZ H9C security camera review
So, it's the Huawei Mate xt review and a deep overview of its aspects. The reviewer here almost depicts all the pros and cons of the world's first tri-fold phone Huawei Mate xt. If you are satisfied with Huawei Mate xt, then say something in the comment box and share this article on social media.
Reviewed by: Marques Brownlee
Jobair Tuaha
Hi, I'm Jobair Tuaha, owner of the 'Tech Defense' website. From curiosity of knowing unknown, I'm passionate of writing Tech blog as well as modern Tech Gadgets review. By this attempt, I formed this platform.
