Huawei on Monday, launched a significant high-end Mate X2 foldable Smartphone in the market. The Mate X2 is Huawei’s third foldable Smartphone, which succeeds the primary Mate X and Mate Xs. It’ll be first made available in China on the fourth week of Feb with a starting price of 17,999 Chinese Yuan (or approx Rs 2, 01,566). Unlike, the first Mate X which had one display board that wraps around the entire phone’s body, the Mate X2 is heavily inspired by the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2. The phone gives access to its large 8-inch tablet display when it is open and when it’s closed it gives a separate 6.45-inch phone screen. Both these screens are OLED displays and have refreshed rates of up to 90Hz. The phone is powered by Huawei’s very popular Kirin 9000 chipset, the same processor that is equipped in Mate 40. There are four cameras on the rear of the phone, including a 50MP wide-angle lens, which also has an 8MP “Super Zoom” camera with a 10x optical zoom.
The launch of the Mate X2 helps Huawei to capture the market again as it comes at a time when Huawei’s future seems uncertain within the smartphone market. In past, the Trump administration had put Huawei under Department of Commerce “entity list” in May 2019, isolating access to key components utilized in smartphones. The Trump administration allegedly called Huawei a national security risk, thanks to its alleged ties with the Chinese government. Huawei has repeatedly denied the allegation, saying the United States government had never produced concrete evidence of the charge.
Last year, Huawei rose to a position within the Smartphone market worldwide, beating both smartphone giants Apple and Samsung. But its market share, soon collapsed because the company couldn’t get access to the raw materials and chips won’t power a smartphone. In November last year, Huawei announced that it sold its budget Honor phone brand to a Chinese government-backed consortium for an undisclosed amount. The pressure is mounting on Huawei to exit the handset business altogether, but Huawei recently said it’d never “sell” its Smartphone business.
The future of Harmony OS
Huawei has been barred from using Google’s Android mobile OS in its phones. It’s getting to not be a huge deal for consumers in China as Google services are already banned. Instead of accepting the defeat, Huawei said its future smartphones would run on its own OS called HarmonyOS. During the launch event for the Mate X2, Huawei said the second-generation foldable phone is becoming to be one of the primary Huawei smartphones, ready to run the HarmonyOS mobile OS. Huawei said consumers are becoming ready to upgrade their phones to HarmonyOS starting April this year.
