- We are at Mobile World Congress 2019 in Barcelona.
It's the biggest global conference for mobile in the world,
and it's pretty exciting because Huawei has now launched
its own foldable phone, the Mate X,
and that's a few days after Samsung also launched
a foldable phone called the Galaxy Fold.
We're gonna put the two phones head-to-head,
talk about the specs, the price, availability,
and give you an early verdict about which phone
might be better.
So the Samsung Galaxy Fold is the smaller
of the two devices.
If folded in and being used as a smartphone,
the screen measures 4.6 inches.
It's good for people who maybe like those smaller screens.
A slightly different story when you unfold the Galaxy Fold,
and then that's a 7.3-inch screen,
and that's like a small tablet or an e-reader,
again quite a nice size for traveling
and for people who don't really like those jumbo screens.
As always with Samsung phones, the display is quite sharp.
It's pretty good, comparable to another Galaxy phone.
We had a bit more of a chance to see the Huawei Mate X
close up, and we could see the screen was pretty impressive
from what little time we had with it.
It's a much bigger proposition as a device.
So folded up as a smartphone, the Mate X is 6.6 inches,
which is huge, that's actually a jumbo phone, really.
Unfolded it becomes quite a nice-size tablet,
which is 8 inches.
Huawei device from what we've seen
looks a little bit smoother.
Samsung interestingly isn't showing anyone
what the Galaxy Fold looks like up close,
so as far as I know no reporters, no analysts
have had a chance to play with the Galaxy Fold.
Now, obviously Samsung says that the phone
is super durable, it can withstand kind of falls,
and that it's quite tough,
but you know we'd need some real-world proof
that that's actually the case.
So in terms of a real-world, you know,
how the phones perform in the real world,
I think Huawei's a little bit ahead of Samsung
on this one.
And what's a little bit troubling is the
Samsung phone is due to come out in a couple of months,
but no one's really seen properly how the device works.
Another key difference with the Mate X is that
there's no notch on the screen
when the Mate X has folded out.
The way Huawei has got around the camera problem
is that it's posted its camera sensors
on the side of the device
on a sort of dedicated sidebar.
Now, that adds a tiny bit of bulk to the device
when it's folded out.
It otherwise looks very slim.
But the advantage is that you can hold that kind of
sidebar where the cameras are as a sort of grip while
you're holding the tablet. That works quite nicely,
and then, you know, when the tablet folds back in,
you know the camera array is still visible on the side,
and you can still use it like any normal smartphone.
The Galaxy Fold has a lot of cameras.
There are six cameras on the device in total,
which is a lot of cameras.
The reason is because you're obviously going to be
taking photos when you use the device
in different configurations.
We don't know too much about the Huawei Mate X's
camera setup. We know that there are three
or possibly four cameras on the back.
The suspicion is that there is in fact a fourth
camera lens in the back of the device
that Huawei's gonna reveal at some later date
when it reveals its next batch of phones.
Both phones have quite powerful batteries.
The Mate X has a 4,500-milliampere battery,
while the Samsung Galaxy Fold
has a 4,380-milliampere battery.
What we don't know just yet is exactly what that
translates to in the real world with real use,
you know, whether they'll have a day's full charge
or possibly more.
So for me, one major point to think about
is how thick these devices are going to be
because obviously when folded up,
both the Huawei Mate X and the Samsung Galaxy Fold
are gonna be thicker than your average smartphone.
We don't know how thick the Samsung Galaxy Fold
is going to be. Samsung hasn't really talked about
the weight or the thickness.
When you've folded the device back up into
smartphone mode,
it doesn't quite fold flat.
It's not completely flat when you fold it up,
so that's likely to create some extra bulk.
To me, it sounds like the Huawei Mate X is probably
thinner than the Galaxy Fold because the Mate X
folds in a really flush way.
It's something Huawei were really keen to emphasize.
That is that the tablet is completely flat,
and then when folded, it folds in a really nice, neat way,
and there's no gap between the screens when it's folded up.
One major drawback of the new Galaxy Fold and the Mate X
is that they are extremely expensive.
So everyone was outraged when Apple introduced
the thousand-dollar iPhone.
Now, the game has changed considerably
with the arrival of folding smartphones,
which cost about double that price.
An early verdict that I would give is that
the Huawei Mate X is probably the superior device.
It just looks much more finessed.
It just looks like Huawei has spent a little bit
more time working on that hinge mechanism
to make the folding and unfolding really, really smooth.
The display looks absolutely phenomenal.
The Galaxy Fold looks really impressive too.
It sounds like the cameras are highly impressive.
For me, the much bigger question is whether anyone
actually wants a folding phone.
There hasn't been a huge amount of consumer demand
for flexible displays. It's something that's
really been driven by the industry, it feels like,
and, you know, sort of, it's arrived
for the mainstream audience,
but whether the mainstream audience takes it up,
I'm not so sure.
Each phone costs a lot of money,
so you really wanna think about whether you truly
wanna drop a couple of thousand pounds, euros, dollars,
on a device like that before you go out and buy one
for sure.