Despite the fact that MWC 2020 was canceled, Huawei held its streamed press conference at the MWC 2020 show, announcing some stuff we saw earlier, but also some new stuff, including the updated Mate Xs smartphone.

New hinge, better screen protection, and better cooling

Huawei did not change many things, as the Mate Xs looks pretty much the same, mostly since it uses the same 8-inch foldable OLED screen with 2480x2200 resolution, which folds over to a 6.6-inch main screen (2480x1148 resolution) and 6.38-inch secondary screen (2480x892 resolution).

In order to make it a bit more durable, Huawei also included a new special 2-layer protective film to keep the OLED screen protected as it should make it harder and less prone to creasing, although hands-on still shows a visible crease where the phone folds.

Huawei also updated the cooling system for the Mate Xs, with flexible bionic graphite, allowing the heatsink to actually fold together with the phone and cool both sides.

The biggest update is the new Falcon Wing Design hinge, which should be more durable and provide better folding feedback.

The new Mate Xs is powered by Huawei's own Kirin 990 5G SoC, an octa-core SoC with two Cortex-A76 2.86GHz cores, two Cortex-A76 2.36GHz clocked cores, and four Cortex-A55 1.95GHz clocked cores. IT also has a 16-core Mali-G76 GPU, and a triple-core NPU (dual big core and one tiny core). The Kirin 990 5G is paired up with 8GB of RAM and 512GB of internal storage.

Same camera, same battery and still no Google Services

The rest of the specifications of the Mate Xs are the same as on the original Mate X, so you'll get a triple camera system with a 40-megapixel mains sensor with a wide-angle lens, 16-megapixel sensor with an ultra-wide lens, and an 8-megapixel sensor with a telephoto lens. there is also a TOF sensor as well. There is no front camera as you simply fold it over and use the rear camera to take selfies with the secondary screen.

The Mate Xs still comes with the same 4,500mAh battery, which supports Huawei's 55W SuperCharge.

The new Mate Xs runs on EMUI 10.0.1, based on Android 10 OS, but, unsurprisingly, still lack support for Google Services.

Connectivity-wise, you get 5G support, 802.11a/b/g/n/ac dual-band WiFi and Bluetooth 5.0, and USB 3.1 Type-C port.

Coming globally next month with a €2,499 price tag

According to Richard Yu, Huawei's CEO, the Mate Xs will start selling globally next month with a price set at €2,499. [2,500. Ed.]