Huawei Mate 20 X is Huawei’s biggest phone yet

Huawei, it seems, is carving out a brand-new smartphone niche. Richard Yu, the company’s founder, is taking a leaf out of Dom Joly’s rulebook and releasing an absolute monster of a smartphone that’s primed to fill your pockets, and then some.

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This is Huawei’s Mate 20 X, a massive flagship phone that sits side-by-side with its smaller Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro siblings. It’s equally as fancy, but it’s quite a bit bigger than the rest of the family, and that’s well worth writing about.

Huawei Mate 20 X UK release date: When’s it coming out?

When, exactly, will Huawei’s Mate 20 X show up in shops? Well, Huawei’s monster of a smartphone, according to the company’s website, is available to preorder right now. The only issue is, we don’t know when (or if) it will actually arrive on UK shores. I’ll update this review if we hear any further details.

Huawei Mate 20 X UK price: How much will it cost?

Alas, we don’t have a UK price, either. Fellow phone aficionados across the channel can expect to pay €899 for one, which is roughly £788 according to a quick currency conversion.

That’s remarkably well-priced, considering its internal specifications and, of course, when you bring that monstrous display into the mix. Apple’s iPhone Xs Max, which is quite a bit smaller in comparison, starts at £1,099.

Huawei Mate 20 X specs: What’s inside?

• 7.2in 2,244 x 1,080 OLED DCI-P3 HDR display
• 2.6GHz octa-core, 7nm Kirin 980 processor
• 6GB RAM
• 128GB storage
• Dual NPU (neural processing unit)
• Triple rear camera: 40MP, f/1.8 primary; 20MP, f/2.2 ultra wide-angle (16mm equivalent); 8MP telephoto, f/2.4
• In-screen fingerprint reader
• Front facing, infrared 3D depth sensing camera
• Price: SIM-free €899 (£788)
• UK release date: TBC

Despite being cheaper, the Mate 20 X is powered by exactly the same internals as its four-figured sibling, the Mate 20 Pro. Inside, you’ll find Huawei’s own 7nm Kirin 980 CPU, which is clocked at 2.6GHz and works in tandem with 6GB of RAM. A healthy 128GB of on-board storage is more than enough for your library of Instagram-ready snaps, too.

That CPU is new with the Mate 20 family, and it’s particularly special. It’s the smallest chip we’ve seen in an Android device so far, and this smaller manufacturing process brings with it a handful of benefits. Its smaller size brings with it greater power efficiency, which means that, paired with that massive 5,000mAh battery, you shouldn’t be topping up the Mate 20 X too often, despite that power-hungry screen.

Yes, let’s talk about the Mate 20 X’s raison d’être – its gigantic display. Technically speaking, it’s as good as every other smartphone display on the market – it’s an OLED, HDR panel that targets the DCI-P3 colour space. That’s certainly nothing new, of course, and it looks nice and bright on first impressions.

What’s primed to get futurists hot under the collar, though, is the size of that display. Measuring 7.2in from slightly rounded corner to slightly rounded corner, the Mate 20 X’s screen is a massive 12% larger than the Mate 20 Pro’s and, err, almost twice the size of the iPhone SE’s display, with four times the area.

Even with those, frankly rather shocking, figures it’s difficult to convey just how massive this phone is. It’s certainly a good deal larger than any other phone I’ve picked up recently, and I expect you’ll have to wear custom-made jeans with deep pockets to carry one around with you when it launches. Just look at my comparison images with the iPhone Xs Max – it’s absurd.

Back to the rest of the phone, though, and the Mate 20 X is fitted with the same triple-camera arrangement as the Mate 20 Pro. The primary camera unit is a high-resolution, 40-megapixel lens with a bright aperture of f/1.8. That sits next to the 8-megapixel, f/2.2 aperture 3x telephoto lens, which is flanked by a wide-angle, 20-megapixel f/2.2 camera.

That all sounds rather fancy, doesn’t it? And, should the Mate 20 Pro offer any indication of performance (we’ve been testing Huawei’s flagship over the last two days), I expect the Mate 20 X will serve as a rather good photographer’s companion, even if its size might make it a touch unwieldy.

Huawei Mate 20 X design: What does it look like?

In short, Huawei’s Mate 20 X looks identical to the Mate 20 Pro, aside from one crucial difference: it’s huge.

How much larger, though? Well, the screen itself is 12% bigger – which necessitates a considerable size increase, despite the bezel-less screen. Notch haters rejoice: there’s no chunky horizontal bezel eating its way into the top of the screen, rather there’s a dinky little drop notch, which contains the front-facing camera.

The rear of the Mate 20 X is particularly special, too. Again, like the Pro, this phone is coated in a glass panel, with vinyl-like ridges. Not only does it look good, but it serves a practical purpose, too: it’s nice and grippy and doesn’t pick up fingerprints as often as its similarly glass-coated rivals. This fancy finish is available with both midnight blue and phantom silver colour schemes.

Huawei Mate 20 X UK price: Early verdict

It won’t be to everybody’s taste, but the Mate 20 X is looking very promising indeed for those who don’t want to compromise on screen space. Whether you need this much is another matter entirely, but with the same specifications as the Mate 20 Pro, it looks like you’ll be getting something very special either way – especially if you’re a keen photographer.