Huawei Mate XS 2: review in Pakistan

Huawei Mate XS 2: Review

Huawei is back with another foldable phone. And this time I think they did a better job. There's a lot to cover here since we're talking about a relatively rare type of smartphone. Huawei has also done a number of iterations for a hold able phone. And I think they got it right this time, at least in terms of design and engineering.

Huawei Mate XS 2: review

Camera

Let's go ahead and start with the camera. Everybody knows, and I think you guys will also agree with me when I say that Huawei makes the best, if not the bestest, camera phone these days. So I have high expectations with the camera on the XS 2.

Photo

 This phone features a triple rear camera setup, a 50MP main camera, a 13MP wide angle camera, and 8MP telephoto camera. On paper, that does not sound a lot, and it's pretty close to the setup of the P40, so I am hoping the optics would turn out better.

Video

It can shoot 4K videos at 30 FPS and slow motion clips of up to 960 FPS at 1080p resolution. The front facing camera is a 10.7MP with a slight wide angle lens.

Battery

Second, we looked at the battery. For a phone this large, one would think it will have good battery life at 4600mAh, it doesn't sound like enough. So we tested using our standard battery benchmark. With the phone folded in, we got 10 hours and 70 minutes on PC Mark battery 30. That goes down significantly once we did the second test with the display fully folded out just 7 hours and 18 minutes. That's probably the lowest rating of a battery life for a flagship quality phone we've reviewed in a very long while.

Fast Charging

Good thing there's fast charging at 66 watts, so you should be able to fully charge it back to 100% in less than an hour. Well, we sort of expected this considering the size of the display. Ultimately, the real world battery life is highly dependent on how you use the phone. More specifically, how often you use the entire display.

Performance

In terms of performance. The Mate XS 2 is powered by a snapdragon 888 with adreno 660 GPU. It's not the latest chip from Qualcomm, and I wonder why they did not use the Snapdragon 8 Gen-1 here. In any case, it still performed well. Phone is fast and responsive, and every thing loads up snappy and worked well.

Antutu Banchmark Score

Our synthetic benchmark shows a score of a little over 610,785 points in Antutu. Not really stellar, but still good.

Having a large foldable phone does not mean you have toun fold the entire screen every time you use the phone. Main foldable display is more than enough for your typical needs in terms of screen real estate. That includes checking your emails, reading documents, watching movies or playing games.

However, when you want a bigger screen, simply fold out the entire display and you will get almost double the screen real estate. The aspect ratio is different, so there will be blank portions at the top and the bottom ends of the screen, but some games will be able to maximize the entire display.

You get a better advantage in Mobile Legends because you can see more of the entire map. Since the display folds outwards rather than inwards, the part that curves doesn't show any noticeable creases. You can feel it when you touch that part of the screen, but you can barely feel it at reading distance. Of course, this also means that the display is always prone to potential scratches as it's exposed.

Unless of course you use the rubber case that came with it. But when you do, it also becomes cumbersome to remove the case each time you fold out the display. I wish there was a better way to address this. Perhaps a third party case maker can do something about it.

Display

When folded you get a 6.5 inch front display which is already big, but when unfolded you get a huge and immersive 7.8 inch OLED display with a 2480x2200 pixel screen resolution at 120Hz refresh rate. And this grass is thick and tough, not the older thin and flimsy feels like plastic foldable type of screen. It looks and feels like your typical glass display used in any other flagship phone.

I also used the phone in writing half of this review, and I found it pleasing typing away with both hands at ease. Love the keyboard layout as well, especially the additional column of repeated letters in the middle.

RAM & Storage

With 8GB of Ram and 512GB of internal storage, you can save more files, photos and videos in your phone. You can still upgrade that to 256GB with an MMSD card for security.

Other Features

There's the side mounted fingerprint sensor and facial recognition that actually works even if you have your face mask on. Wait, let me correct that it will work if your eyes and nose are visible or your mask covers your mouth. One thing that got me a bit confused here is that there's no 5G support. The dual SIM card only runs on 4G. It is a bit of disappointment since all the rest are present Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC and GPS.

The biggest question a lot of you have been wondering is how about the apps? Well, how should I put this if you are heavily dependent on GMs, you will certainly look for the familiar apps like Gmail and YouTube. The Mate XS 2 runs on Harmony, OS 2 and HM.

Huawei tried its darkest to give you the alternatives like App Gallery, Petal Search and Petal Maps to lessen the Blue, but if you really want Google, you can install G space from the Apps Gallery and get to use all the usual Google Apps. It works like the old second space feature on Huawei phones. The only drawback here is that notifications are, well, a bit delayed.

Design

The main XS 2 is a beautiful phone. The foldable mode is nicely executed, with both the folded and unfolded modes being equally usable and practical. To its defense, though, I found other uses for the case that made some sense, like using it as a support stand for the phone when you want to place it on a table or a flat surface. As much as I tried to skip the obvious, I might just go straight ahead and dive right in.

Why you would buy this Phone?

The only reason you would buy this particular phone is because of the foldable display period. If you want better performance and camera quality, there's the Huawei P50 Pro for that. If you want longer battery life, 5G connectivity, or Google Services, look somewhere else. The Mate XS 2 is a really niche phone huge display, excellent build quality, and an eye candy.

Would I use it?

Yes.

Is it worth it after all the shortcomings?

No, not really. Never the less, props to Huawei for building a beautifully designed and solidly engineered foldable phone.

 What do you guys think?

Do you like the mate XS 2 as well? Do let us know in the comments section down below.