Huawei Mate XT Ultimate review

Design, build quality, handling

The Huawei Mate XT Ultimate is like no other smartphone on the market and it is so good to see real innovation for a change. We miss the golden days back when manufacturers weren't afraid of experimenting with phone designs, and we will always appreciate when brands that try something different.

But Huawei did not only try to make the first truly foldable tablet, it succeeded. The device has a proper tablet-level screen size of 10.2 inches but also a proper tablet-grade screen aspect of about 16:11. Those are very iPad-like numbers.

Having such a large screen, trifold at that, would usually mean a thick, bulky device. That's not the case with the Mate XT, though. On the contrary, Huawei has designed this foldable slate to be incredibly thin - just 3.6mm when opened, and 12.8mm when closed. That latter dimension matches the most popular foldable out there - the Galaxy Z Fold6!

Huawei Mate, Google Fold, and Galaxy Fold

The Huawei Mate XT Ultimate is made of premium materials all-around - there is a super thin rounded metal frame, stainless steel hinges, and a stainless steel camera housing enclosure. The back is covered with either red or black vegan leather, while the tri-fold screen has a layer of ultra-thin glass inside.

The camera housing has been crafted in a very special way, using 80 layers of stainless steel, twisting them, and polishing them. The result is a unique star-shaped piece, that has a different pattern on each phone!

When folded, the Mate XT looks like a thick smartphone with a regular 6.4-inch OLED screen. If you look closely, you can see the small perforation for the 8MP selfie camera, and even a thin earpiece. There is no proximity sensor on the Mate XT - it relies on a software implementation, and it works quite well, we'd say.

You can fold the Mate XT in a way that mimics a regular foldable screen with a 7.9-inch squarish display.

And then, in its fully opened state, Mate XT offers a 10.2-inch OLED screen with a 16:11 aspect ratio. You can notice the usual plastic enclosure around the screen, something that is obvious on any foldable phone. And you should not remove the sort of visible protective film, as this will damage the screen.

The Mate XT is incredibly thin when opened, though in this state, the relatively large camera housing makes it wobble a whole lot.

If you use this large screen estate in portrait mode, the Mate XT feels exactly like a regular-sized tablet, be it an iPad or something else.

The entire back is covered with fingerprint-resistant vegan leather in either black or red.

And then there is a Mate X6-reminiscent camera housing with the twisted pattern we mentioned above. This oversized setup includes a 50MP primary camera with variable aperture, a 12MP 5.5x telephoto, a 12MP ultrawide camera, a laser emitter/receiver combo, a dual-LED flash, and a color spectrum sensor. A microphone is also around.

The top side of the frame has one of the speakers, an IR blaster, and another microphone.

The primary mic, the USB-C port, the SIM bed, and the other speaker are at the bottom.

The Mate XT relies on a side-mounted fingerprint sensor for biometric security, which is not the most comfortable to use in the fully open state, but it is better than nothing.

The Mate XT is an exquisite device, premium and innovative, one that easily stands out no matter the crowd or the situation. And it offers exceptional flexibility and usability; there are no two ways about that.

Prop it up with the bundled case, and its kickstand transforms the Mate XT into a portable monitor or sorts - a great way to watch TV series or YouTube during your lunch break.

The Huawei Mate XT is comfortable to use and secure enough in your hands, no matter how many thirds of the screen you have in operation. We only wish it had some sort of water protection - even a basic IPX4-grade water resistance would have been better than nothing.