Huawei Mate XT Ultimate hands-on roundup

It wasn’t that long ago that foldables were just concept devices, but now they are relatively common. And some manufacturers are already looking at the next stage of their evolution – more folds! The Huawei Mate XT Ultimate tri-foldable was introduced yesterday and it is practically a 10” tablet that fits in your pocket.

Is it too big? Well, early hands-on reports from China are in and the answer is that it’s big, but not unmanageably big. The XT is made up of three segments that can be folded out in stages.

The Huawei Mate XT Ultimate measures 12.8mm thick

The first stage is fully folded, which gives you a 6.4” display in a device that measures 12.8mm thick. One poster reports that the bottom segment is slightly wider than the top two, meaning that when you hold the Mate XT Ultimate in this configuration, you are mostly holding the bottom segment.

Another poster reports that the device is tricky to use with one hand even when it’s folded. The issue is not just the weight – the XT tips the scales at 298g, which is a lot for a phone, but fairly light for a 10.2” tablet – the problem is with weight distribution.

Above we have listed the dimensions in all three configurations. Note that the bottom segment is also a bit thicker than the other two (4.75mm vs. 3.6mm) and also holds the fairly chunky camera island. To be fair, that island is home to a capable triple camera with a 50MP main (f/1.4-f/4.0 aperture, OIS), 12MP ultra wide (f/2.2) and a 5.5x 12MP periscope (f/3.4, OIS). There is also an 8MP selfie camera that lives on the “top” segment, so it’s usable when fully folded and fully unfolded, but goes on the back in the dual screen configuration.

Huawei Mate XT Ultimate

If you’re brave enough, you can fold one of the segments and place it face down to hold up the rest of the phone as a sort of kickstand. You are probably better off using the official protective case, though.

It has a built-in kickstand – using it doesn’t risk scratching the precious screen. Interestingly, it can be rotated 270°, so that it can be used in several orientations. If you think about it, there are 6 possible ways to use the kickstand: three ways to fold the XT Ultimate times two for horizontal or vertical orientation.

The Huawei Mate XT Ultimate’s protective case has a kickstand

If you haven’t seen the price of the XT Ultimate yet, let’s just say that it is a premium device. And it’s packaged as such, the hands-on video below starts off with an unboxing section. Besides the phone itself, there is a home and car chargers, not one but two USB cables, Huawei FreeBuds 5 and a protective case. The video also shows just how capable HarmonyOS is adapting its UI to fit the ever-changing screen size and orientation.

Here's another hands-on video, this one is in English:

The XT Ultimate manages to fit a 5,600mAh battery, which is quite impressive, considering how thin those segments are. It’s fast to charge too, going up to 66W over USB-C and up to 50W wirelessly. The phone is powered by the Kirin 9010, we have more details on that aspect in a separate post.

The Huawei Mate XT Ultimate starts at CNY 20,000 ($2,800/€2,550) and will be available only in China starting on September 19. We don’t think there’s much hope of seeing this globally, though, so the rest of the world is stuck with dual-foldables.

Source 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 (in Chinese) | 5