Huawei’s Consumer Business Group has unveiled its new line of premium products, including the latest Mate Xs device.
Despite a tumultuous 2019, the Chinese technology giant’s consumer business still managed to achieve market share growth, securing its position as the world’s second largest smartphone manufacturer, said CEO Richard Yu during the live-stream launch event from Barcelona yesterday.
Yu told the audience that Huawei’s smartphone business surpassed 240 million unit shipments in 2019, adding that it shipped more than 10 million 5G smartphones as of January 2020.
Both Huawei and its rival Samsung launched foldable smartphones last year.
The Mate Xs, a successor to Huawei’s debut foldable model Mate X, is described as its “most advanced and innovative” smartphone yet.
“The Huawei Mate X was our first foray into the foldable category and it set the standard for the industry,” said Yu. “The Huawei Mate Xs is raising the bar further with even more powerful connectivity and integrated user experiences. It’s the fastest 5G smartphone of its class.”
According to Huawei, the Mate Xsfeatures an improved falcon wing design and delivers a seamless user experience across smartphone and tablet modes. The new 5G-enabled device is made of a zirconium-based liquid metal alloy and features a redesigned 180-degree hinge that is said to be more durable.
Folded, the Mate Xs features a 6.6-inch main screen and a 6.38-inch secondary screen. Unfolded, it becomes an 8-inch tablet.
The camera system, with Leica lenses,remains much the same as on Mate X – arranged into a vertical array along the sidebar, the quad camera system features a 40MP main camera, 16MP ultra-wide angle camera, 8MP telephoto camera and 3D depth sensing camera.
The foldable phone-tablet device natively supports multi-window, which allows for two apps to be displayed side by side and interact with each other. Text, images and documents can be transferred easily by dragging and dropping the content from one app to the other.
Mate Xs will be one of the first Huawei devices to launch with a revamped Huawei AppGallery, the company said. Initially introduced in 2011, the AppGallery is the official Huawei Mobile Services app marketplace.
Huawei says it now offers “Quick Apps”, a new category of apps made for 5G devices. Developed based on industry standards, Quick Apps require no installation and use minimal system memory. At present, there are over 1 700 Quick Apps available on the Huawei AppGallery.
“Moving forward, we will continue expanding our app ecosystem in the Huawei AppGallery with hopes to not only create a secure and reliable platform, but also to provide consumers with more choice,” said Yu. “The continued success of this thriving ecosystem will remain one of our highest priorities.”
