Huawei Mate X6 Review: Impressive Hardware, Questionable Future

Any smartphone brand that treads on the foldable segment is always a bold move, as it is still a less popular form factor which you need to deal with a high price tag and potential maintenance, that’s even more so when Huawei, a company that has been sanctioned by the US from using the latest processor and 5G on its smartphones, releases its sixth generation book-style foldable phone to the Malaysian market, it retails more expensive than a Samsung Z Fold6 and resembles the Honor Magic V3, which isn’t too surprising, but what is it that makes the Huawei Mate X6 such a compelling foldable to own that one is willing to give up full Google services and 5G? Let’s talk about it after using it for a week.

Let’s forget about the Huawei Mate X6’s known limitations for a bit and appreciate how beautiful and solid this foldable is. For starters, the Huawei Mate X6 is almost as slim as an iPhone 16 Pro and measures 4.6mm when unfolded, which is a slight difference from the Honor Magic V3 that measures at 4.4mm, the foldable is also rather lightweight at just 239g, considering that it houses a 6.45-inch external and 7.93-inch internal LTPO displays, with both of them boasting 2.4K resolution at 1-120Hz adaptively.

On the back, the Huawei Mate X6 has a nice vegan leather back that’s nice to run your fingers on, while the big camera island that Huawei claims that it is inspired from the space orbit, makes it look really chunky if you don’t put the foldable in a case, but it is ultimately a really nice premium design that I appreciate.

Like its competition, the Huawei Mate X6 doesn’t compromise on durability as it has IPX8 certification against water submersion, while the front glass is the 2nd Generation Kunlun Glass that rivals Gorilla Glass Victus 2, the internal screen uses a carbon fibre plate that resists pressure with an improved stiffness of 65% over the previous model, and finally, the middle frame uses aviation-grade aluminum that sees a 37% improvement in strength, while I don’t really know how these numbers reflect in actual real world usage, I’m glad to report that the Huawei Mate X6 has survived a really hard fall from my 4 feet table on one busy day.

Huawei has definitely got a rough time over the past few years without having access to the latest smartphone chipset, but this ultimately pushes it forward in desperate need of independence and innovation, thus we are getting the Kirin 9020 chip to power the Huawei Mate X6, which is still a 7nm chip that’s manufactured by SMIC in China, but it boasts improved performance and power efficiency over the Kirin 9000.

Performance improvement is definitely perceivable based on my past experience with the Pura 70 Pro, as the Huawei Mate X6 has no stutters and lags in app launch and switches, while I also have to commend Huawei’s software engineers for making EMUI 15 such an efficient skin based on an ageing…ahem…Android 12, there are still some annoying bits despite that, such as a whole list of pointless app recommendations from Huawei AppGallery, not to mention that you will be spammed by countless ads, but the good news is that you will still be able to download many essential apps without using a 3rd party app store, such as local banking apps and some Google apps, it does certainly require some effort to set up the Huawei Mate X6 for the first time, but once you get everything sorted, it is very usable as a regular Android smartphone.

Like every modern smartphone, the Huawei Mate X6 certainly comes with some software tricks of its own, although it is missing all the AI gimmicks you are seeing on phones these days, features like its multitask app switch is useful when you want to have three active apps opened and switch between them, an interesting dynamic system theme called Swish! detects your hands when the screen is on and lets you dunk a basketball virtually, a customizable double tap on the fingerprint reader allows you to show your payment QR code in the Touch ‘n Go eWallet app or launch your favorite app.

Overall, EMUI 15 is more refined than I thought and after doing some housekeeping on some preinstalled apps and decluttering my home screen, the Huawei Mate X6 became a really nice device to use.

Probably the most impressive thing about the Huawei Mate X6 is its cameras, which most foldables tend not to pay attention to, as Huawei has fitted a 50MP wide camera with a variable aperture range of f/1.4-f/4.0, complementing it is a 48MP telephoto camera that does up to 4x optical zoom, a 40MP ultrawide camera and an Ultra Chroma Camera, which I assume the latter is like an assistive camera that helps with better color processing.

What’s unique about this camera system is that it takes photos in the RYYB color space, which unlike other smartphone cameras that takes RGB color space, Huawei believes that it delivers superior low light photos, there’s a pretty detailed article about it which you can read it here, so let’s talk about photos now.

Huawei Mate X6 Camera Samples It was a gloomy rainy day in Kuala Lumpur when I took the Huawei Mate X6’s camera for a spin around Bukit Bintang, which to be honest I though I’m not going to take any good looking photos with it, but such situation really does put the Huawei Mate X6 to the real test and it fortunately delivers superb photos.

Huawei Mate X6 Ultrawide Camera All thanks to the variable aperture on the main camera, the Mate X6 was able to take clear shots despite in a dark rainy day, I love the amazing contrast on the wet roads and details of the asphalt, there’s a sort of cinematic feel on the photos taken on the Huawei Mate X6 that’s rather similar to LEICA’s processing on modern Xiaomi phones, not too surprising since Huawei and LEICA used to be partners and they have certainly learned a lot in camera development during that time.

What’s even more impressive is the telephoto camera’s zoom range, which although it comes with 4x optical zoom natively, getting closer to objects with a 10x zoom range is still possible where it is still able to capture very clear photos not unless you start pixel peeping, this is very respectable for foldable phone standards.

The front facing camera of both the internal and external screens take 8MP stills, which might sound underwhelming on paper specs, but it takes really good quality selfies and even shames some 32MP front cameras, and more impressively, the front cameras can take 4K 30 fps videos despite its low native resolution.

The Huawei Mate X6 is powered by a large 5110mAh battery with support for 66W wired charging and 50W wireless charging, which is an impressive technical feat considering how slim the foldable is and during my brief moment with it, I was able to get at least 1.5 days of heavy usage on a single charge with 6 hours of screen on time.

Ultimately, the Huawei Mate X6 is an excellent piece of hardware that’s greatly held back by its software, which like every Huawei smartphones after the US sanctions, it remains questionable on how committed Huawei is to the phone’s future software development, even if you don’t care about 5G, paying RM8,688 for this foldable just doesn’t make sense even for the filthy rich, the only reason that you probably want to get the Huawei Mate X6 is its cameras which you can’t get on other foldable phones.

One thing for sure, Huawei isn’t giving up on smartphones despite its disadvantage and that’s very commendable.

The Huawei Mate X6 can be purchased from Huawei Online Store, Lazada and Shopee.

Warren The geeky dictator of KLGG.