The Huawei Mate Xs outward appearance looks very much like last years Mate X, though it will receive an international launch to compete with other foldable devices like the Motorola Razr and Samsung Galaxy Fold and Z Flip.
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The Mate Xs sports a 6.6-inch 2480 x 1148 main OLED display and a secondary 6.4-inch 2480 x 892 display when folded outwards, and an 8-inch 2480 x 2200 display when unfolded to 180 degrees. Powering the Mate Xs is the Kirin 990 5G system-on-chip, with an Octa-core processor and an integrated 5G modem that supports 2G, 3G, 4G and full 5G spectrum.
"The Huawei Mate X was our first foray into the foldable category and it set the standard for the industry," Huawei's Richard Yu said. "The Huawei Xs is raising the bar further with even more powerful connectivity and integrated user experience. It's the fastest 5G smartphone of its class. Prepare to meet the unprecedented - again."
In the camera department, there's a Leica quad vertical camera setup along the phone's side: the main camera is 40MP with a wide-angle lens and f/1.8 aperture, a 16MP ultra-wide angle with f/2.2 aperture, an 8MP telephoto camera with optical image stabilization and f/2.4 aperture, and a 3D depth sensing camera. The light sensitivity is up to ISO204,800.
Since the cameras are arraigned vertically along the phone's side, the cameras can be used for taking selfies.
Huawei's Mate Xs device will be running on Huawei EMUI10.0.1 that's based on Android Open Source Project platform and not the regular Android. That means the Mate Xs won't have access to Google Play Services such as Play Store, Gmail, YouTube, etc., due to the US ban placed on Huawei.
In place of the Play Store, Huawei has its own app distribution platform AppGallery which it dubs as the worlds third most popular app distribution platform, after Google's Play Store and Apple's App Store.
There's a 4,500mAh battery on board, 802.11ac dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, USB-C cabled connectivity, no 3.5 mm headphone jack, 512GB of internal storage, 8GB of RAM of which bigger than those found on Samsung Galaxy Fold from last year and this year's Galaxy Z Flip.
Huawei assures users of top-notch onscreen image quality, colour saturation and brightness thanks to the use of optically clear adhesive between two layers of aerospace-grade polymide which as well offers a high degree of durability too. There's also a flexible graphene at the heart of the Flying Fish Fin Cooing to keep the device from running hot.
The Mate Xs will go on sale globally starting next month for €2,499 (about $2,700), against the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip which sales for $1,380 and Motorola Razr foldable phone which sales for $1,500.