The Challenges and Opportunities of Shooting with a Folding Phone

As I stood outside, waiting to review the Huawei Mate Xs folding phone, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and trepidation. The standard 1x lens on my camera just wouldn't cut it for capturing the full scope of this device's capabilities, so I decided to head inside and see how it would perform in different lighting conditions.

As I entered the office building, I was greeted by the sight of a large screen unfolding from the phone's body. It was like magic, and I couldn't wait to see what other tricks this device had up its sleeve. The rain outside seemed to be stopping play on my general photoshoot, but I was determined to make the most of the situation. I set up my camera and began snapping away, using the phone's secondary mode as a makeshift tablet to get a better angle on the scene.

Despite the initial disappointment of the rain, I soon found myself getting into a rhythm with the Mate Xs. The camera performed well, capturing sharp images even in low light conditions. However, I couldn't help but feel that this was just a preview of what the full potential of this device could be. As I spent more time with the phone, I began to think about its form factor and how it compared to other recent foldable smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3.

One thing became clear: Huawei's Mate Xs folding design is the most sensible way to produce a folding device. Not only do you get a full-sized phone that can be used as usual, but you also get a secondary mode that allows you to use the larger screen for tasks like reading or browsing the web. In contrast, Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 3 is more of a phone in disguise, with no additional functionality beyond being a slightly smaller version of its regular smartphone.

Of course, this means that if you want a compact folding device, Samsung's option may be more appealing. However, at £1,300 (approximately $1,700 USD), it comes with a hefty price tag. The Mate Xs, on the other hand, is expected to launch in the UK for around £2,200, which may seem steep, but it also includes a range of advanced features like 5G connectivity and an impressive array of cameras.

As I continued to explore the Mate Xs, I couldn't help but feel that this was still the form factor that I wanted most. The ability to use the phone as usual in daily life, with the option to fold it up when needed, seemed like a no-brainer. It's how I imagine myself using my phone on a daily basis – whether I'm commuting or just relaxing at home.

Despite its many advantages, there are still some areas where the Mate Xs falls short. For example, Motorola recently launched its own folding smartphone, which may be seen as a more direct competitor to Huawei's device. However, this has actually created an opportunity for innovation and experimentation in the field of foldable smartphones.

As I prepare to get my hands on the updated Mate Xs, I'm excited to see how it performs in real-world use cases. With its advanced features and improved design, this phone is shaping up to be one of the most compelling options in the market.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enI'm in the back of a London taxi taking look at Huawei's new foldable makes X s let's see what makes this phone particularly cool so you're joining me as I'm on my way to Ho Bern in the centre of London now I wanted to take this phone out and it out onto the streets of London spend a little bit of time using it see what it's actually like to use now physically this looks basically the same as the mates ends now we saw that a few months ago out in Paris and it was a really nice phone I really like the way that they're the screen folds back on itself as opposed to other folder walls like Samsung's Galaxy fold where the screen falls closed in on itself so what's different with the mate X s why does it earn that extra s moniker well it's difficult to save there's not actually a whole lot that's been updated here over its predecessor as you can see it's basically the same looking phone it's got its 8 inch tablet size screen when it's in its unfolded mode and it folds back around on itself into its six point seven inch phone size when it's closed up now that's one of the things that I like most about this phone is that when you're actually out and about you've got a full sized phone still and you can use it one-handed so what actually is different here then well it's a small list but quawi says it's quite an important list so let's go through it in terms of a design no not a lot has changed it looks very much identical we've still got this grippy bit here which I like but the hinge has had some updates if we look closely at this top edge before you could see a lot of the inner workings of that hinge I quite liked it it had a bit of an industrial look but this new version is sort of capped on both ends now that should help keep the the internal cogs and whatnot much safer from any kind of dust or dirt or general debris that might get in and over time that could degrade your folding system obviously this is very early days I've had this in my hands for all of half-an-hour so difficult to say if this is a better solution but good to know that they're least thinking about the longevity of a phone inside it's got huawei's latest processor is the Kirin 990 chip now obviously we expect performance upgrade maybe even a little bit of a battery life boost but one of the big things that this offers is 5g functionality now of course it does depend on where you are but 5g is of course something that we're seeing on a lot of high-end flagship phones so it's probably good that this has got it now while we did make a point about saying that it's 5g chip is not a separate unit to the processor it's all built in to the keyring 990 chip now why is that important you might ask well one big reason and that's a battery life if you are not running two separate things that processor and the 5g chip then you are not using as much power so the idea is that it can do everything in one much more efficiently and hopefully get a lot more battery life I'll use the mate XR quite a while in Paris and I really did like the way it folds and I expect to feel pretty much the same about this one because it is basically the same device with just a few little tweaks under the hood we're currently somewhere around Barbican in East London so we've got a little way to get to Hobart but when we do get there we're gonna have a little wonder around get some food maybe take some photos and actually see what this thing is like to use outside in the real world right cheers mate this is a special Tom carriage pie it's pop good up good part finish my pie but it's in a cool area so I want to try and use those cameras do better photography around here maybe some of the interesting buildings maybe even some like street scenes that would look cool have a look around and see what I can get so we do have the same camera setup from the may texts and that's got a standard zoom lens it's got super wide and it's got a telephoto so you've got some options in how you want to compose a shot when you're walking around for example I want to get this nice Sicilian arch up here the standard one times lens only just about gets it in so if we go wide and suddenly we get a lot more of that we get the building coming in here it just looks a lot better okay now I feel this starting to rain bad news was this one like the maytag for it no waterproofing at all so I am gonna put it away and see how much it keeps on raining well the rain might be stopping play on my general photoshoot but I can at least snap a selfie of me looking miserable sheltering from the rain and with the mate excess just like with the mate ex before you use the main camera as your selfie camera in fact you just flip it over and you get your selfie camera with a little view here means you can go big sad face as I try and stay dry but that might just be everything that we can do while it continues to chuck it down with rain so the rain outside was a bit disappointing but I have come back to see net towers to shelter and I did spend some time getting a few more shots around the office just to see what this camera can do but it also gave me some more time to think about the form factor this folding phone and what it's really like to use and more importantly how it compares to another recent foldable samsung's galaxy zed flip that I have here now obviously when close it's evident that these are two very very different devices one of them is a small little square the other one remains a full-sized phone and that's exactly why I still think that Huawei's mate excess form factor is the most sensible way of producing a folding device not only do you get a full big phone to use when you're out and about but you then get the secondary mode of it being a tablet now Samsung's ed flip yes it's a much neater little device but it's just a phone it's the only one device there's no secondary functionality doesn't fold into a larger screen to let you do other tasks when you're out and about it's just a phone which might be a little bit more easy to put into your jeans now that might be absolutely fine if that's what you want basically a big phone which is easier to store but at 1,300 pounds you're paying a lot of extra money just to have a slightly more compact phone which of course does bring me on to the actual price of this thing and that's where things get a little bit more interesting because unlike the mate the mate excess is going to go on sale outside of China including here in the UK means it's actually going to be one of the phones that you can go and buy now why why hasn't said exactly how much this is going to be yet but it did say to me that it's going to be roughly what they expected the previous May text to be so in the UK it's going to be somewhere around 2200 pounds which yes that is an absolutely astonishingly huge amount of money to pay for a phone but tech that's new like this always comes with quite the premium price tag and almost certainly with future revisions that price will start to come down but even so 2200 pounds it's quite a lot of money particularly as you don't have the full suite of Google Play Store services here but with that money you do also get the latest technology this 5g onboard an amazing array of cameras and it's really really powerful as well whereas I have found with the zed flip that it's got a very pared down camera and it doesn't really impress so much so you're getting at least a full fat super phone experience for your money on the other hand i suppose it is a little disappointing that so little has changed in the year since they first launched some 8 X maybe Huawei could have experimented with a slightly different design as well but when we first saw this phone when it launched last year it was the only foldable around and now we've got Motorola doing one something has got to and things are getting a lot more interesting so I was thinking is this still the form factor that I want the most and I have to say it definitely is it's the one I can imagine myself using the most on a daily basis still being able to use it as my main phone and then when I'm traveling on the berth on the tube or just sitting in bed reading a book like this is how I would want to use that larger screen it just makes the most sense to me but this has been a very very early look at the updated mate XS and I'm looking forward to getting one in my hands hopefully permanently so I can spend some real time with it and see how this actually puts up with day to day use do of course keep your eye ton seen it for a lot more around this phone and all the other foldables that we've got at the momentI'm in the back of a London taxi taking look at Huawei's new foldable makes X s let's see what makes this phone particularly cool so you're joining me as I'm on my way to Ho Bern in the centre of London now I wanted to take this phone out and it out onto the streets of London spend a little bit of time using it see what it's actually like to use now physically this looks basically the same as the mates ends now we saw that a few months ago out in Paris and it was a really nice phone I really like the way that they're the screen folds back on itself as opposed to other folder walls like Samsung's Galaxy fold where the screen falls closed in on itself so what's different with the mate X s why does it earn that extra s moniker well it's difficult to save there's not actually a whole lot that's been updated here over its predecessor as you can see it's basically the same looking phone it's got its 8 inch tablet size screen when it's in its unfolded mode and it folds back around on itself into its six point seven inch phone size when it's closed up now that's one of the things that I like most about this phone is that when you're actually out and about you've got a full sized phone still and you can use it one-handed so what actually is different here then well it's a small list but quawi says it's quite an important list so let's go through it in terms of a design no not a lot has changed it looks very much identical we've still got this grippy bit here which I like but the hinge has had some updates if we look closely at this top edge before you could see a lot of the inner workings of that hinge I quite liked it it had a bit of an industrial look but this new version is sort of capped on both ends now that should help keep the the internal cogs and whatnot much safer from any kind of dust or dirt or general debris that might get in and over time that could degrade your folding system obviously this is very early days I've had this in my hands for all of half-an-hour so difficult to say if this is a better solution but good to know that they're least thinking about the longevity of a phone inside it's got huawei's latest processor is the Kirin 990 chip now obviously we expect performance upgrade maybe even a little bit of a battery life boost but one of the big things that this offers is 5g functionality now of course it does depend on where you are but 5g is of course something that we're seeing on a lot of high-end flagship phones so it's probably good that this has got it now while we did make a point about saying that it's 5g chip is not a separate unit to the processor it's all built in to the keyring 990 chip now why is that important you might ask well one big reason and that's a battery life if you are not running two separate things that processor and the 5g chip then you are not using as much power so the idea is that it can do everything in one much more efficiently and hopefully get a lot more battery life I'll use the mate XR quite a while in Paris and I really did like the way it folds and I expect to feel pretty much the same about this one because it is basically the same device with just a few little tweaks under the hood we're currently somewhere around Barbican in East London so we've got a little way to get to Hobart but when we do get there we're gonna have a little wonder around get some food maybe take some photos and actually see what this thing is like to use outside in the real world right cheers mate this is a special Tom carriage pie it's pop good up good part finish my pie but it's in a cool area so I want to try and use those cameras do better photography around here maybe some of the interesting buildings maybe even some like street scenes that would look cool have a look around and see what I can get so we do have the same camera setup from the may texts and that's got a standard zoom lens it's got super wide and it's got a telephoto so you've got some options in how you want to compose a shot when you're walking around for example I want to get this nice Sicilian arch up here the standard one times lens only just about gets it in so if we go wide and suddenly we get a lot more of that we get the building coming in here it just looks a lot better okay now I feel this starting to rain bad news was this one like the maytag for it no waterproofing at all so I am gonna put it away and see how much it keeps on raining well the rain might be stopping play on my general photoshoot but I can at least snap a selfie of me looking miserable sheltering from the rain and with the mate excess just like with the mate ex before you use the main camera as your selfie camera in fact you just flip it over and you get your selfie camera with a little view here means you can go big sad face as I try and stay dry but that might just be everything that we can do while it continues to chuck it down with rain so the rain outside was a bit disappointing but I have come back to see net towers to shelter and I did spend some time getting a few more shots around the office just to see what this camera can do but it also gave me some more time to think about the form factor this folding phone and what it's really like to use and more importantly how it compares to another recent foldable samsung's galaxy zed flip that I have here now obviously when close it's evident that these are two very very different devices one of them is a small little square the other one remains a full-sized phone and that's exactly why I still think that Huawei's mate excess form factor is the most sensible way of producing a folding device not only do you get a full big phone to use when you're out and about but you then get the secondary mode of it being a tablet now Samsung's ed flip yes it's a much neater little device but it's just a phone it's the only one device there's no secondary functionality doesn't fold into a larger screen to let you do other tasks when you're out and about it's just a phone which might be a little bit more easy to put into your jeans now that might be absolutely fine if that's what you want basically a big phone which is easier to store but at 1,300 pounds you're paying a lot of extra money just to have a slightly more compact phone which of course does bring me on to the actual price of this thing and that's where things get a little bit more interesting because unlike the mate the mate excess is going to go on sale outside of China including here in the UK means it's actually going to be one of the phones that you can go and buy now why why hasn't said exactly how much this is going to be yet but it did say to me that it's going to be roughly what they expected the previous May text to be so in the UK it's going to be somewhere around 2200 pounds which yes that is an absolutely astonishingly huge amount of money to pay for a phone but tech that's new like this always comes with quite the premium price tag and almost certainly with future revisions that price will start to come down but even so 2200 pounds it's quite a lot of money particularly as you don't have the full suite of Google Play Store services here but with that money you do also get the latest technology this 5g onboard an amazing array of cameras and it's really really powerful as well whereas I have found with the zed flip that it's got a very pared down camera and it doesn't really impress so much so you're getting at least a full fat super phone experience for your money on the other hand i suppose it is a little disappointing that so little has changed in the year since they first launched some 8 X maybe Huawei could have experimented with a slightly different design as well but when we first saw this phone when it launched last year it was the only foldable around and now we've got Motorola doing one something has got to and things are getting a lot more interesting so I was thinking is this still the form factor that I want the most and I have to say it definitely is it's the one I can imagine myself using the most on a daily basis still being able to use it as my main phone and then when I'm traveling on the berth on the tube or just sitting in bed reading a book like this is how I would want to use that larger screen it just makes the most sense to me but this has been a very very early look at the updated mate XS and I'm looking forward to getting one in my hands hopefully permanently so I can spend some real time with it and see how this actually puts up with day to day use do of course keep your eye ton seen it for a lot more around this phone and all the other foldables that we've got at the moment\n"