Huawei Mate X3 Review Philippines

John Nieves

Huawei Mate X3 Review Philippines verdict: The Huawei Mate X3 is nothing short of an engineering marvel, with the company solving many of the technical challenges that its competitors faced with their products. And while the Mate X3 isn’t perfect, keep in mind that its biggest flaws are a result of politics and not shoddy engineering.

Pros:

Thinnest foldable available in the Philippines
Gapless hinge
Large inner display
Feels like a regular phone with the display folded
Fantastic cameras for a foldable

Cons:

No 5G
“Only” uses a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor
No IP rating
Some software annoyances

Huawei Mate X3 Review Philippines: Design

The Huawei Mate X3 is thin, for a foldable. Until very recently it held the title of the world’s thinnest foldable, and it’s still the thinnest phone of its kind locally.

The Huawei Mate X3 measures just 11.8mm when fully closed, which isn’t that much more than your typical smartphone. For reference, the gaming-oriented, ASUS ROG Phone 7 Ultimate is around 10.3mm thick.

The Huawei Mate X3 achieves this by being able to completely fold flat on itself, without leaving any gaps in between the two displays.

It sounds like a minor thing, but that level of gapless foldability has long been a problem of manufacturers, and it’s only recently that Samsung managed to achieve it with their latest Galaxy Fold, which coincidentally is a couple of millimeters thicker than the Mate X3.
Viewed from the side away from the hinge, the Mate X3 looks like two very thin phones stacked on top of each other. Only the camera module breaks the illusion.

The hinge of the phone opens and lies almost perfectly flat, allowing the phone to further reduce its thickness to just 5.3mm. That’s not much thicker than the Type-C port on the Mate X3.

The only thing breaking up the flat aesthetic of the phone is the camera module, which dominates the back. It’s quite large, though there’s a good reason for it – it houses the flagship cameras that Huawei used on the Mate X3, including a similar periscope module (if not identical) to the one on the P60 Pro.

While the camera module is pretty big, it’s not an eyesore thanks to its oval shape and generous use of chamfers. Unfortunately, it protrudes quite a bit from the body, which makes for a wobbly phone when it’s placed with the camera down on a flat surface.

Build quality is one thing that you usually have to look out for in foldable, and the hinge is the biggest part of what makes or breaks devices like the Mate X3. The one on the phone feels incredibly solid, with 0 unwanted movements whatsoever. Opening and closing the display feels smooth – Huawei has done a great job with the hinge on this thing.

Thanks to the thin overall profile of the phone, the controls are easy to grab and access. The volume rocker and power button (that also doubles as a fingerprint scanner) are easily accessible. Despite the limited space on the phone, Huawei has found a way to include stereo speakers on it which deliver good sound considering the space they had to work with.

Huawei Mate X3 Review Philippines: Display

Huawei uses the same layout for its foldable as its closest rival, i.e. the phone has a display on the outside, and opening the hinge reveals an even bigger display on the inside. Let’s talk about the cover display first – it’s a 6.4-inch OLED panel with a 120Hz refresh rate and Kunlun Glass protection, which gives the external screen the same toughness as the Mate 50 Pro.

Because of the size and aspect ratio of the external screen and the relatively thin profile of the Mate X3, it never really felt awkward to use with the main display folded – it acts and feels like a normal, 6.4-inch smartphone this way.

Of course, you’re paying top dollar for the ability to open the Mate X3 up and use a bigger display when you wish, and that’s exactly what you’re getting with the 7.85-inch, foldable OLED panel inside. You’re getting the same 120Hz refresh rate as the external screen, and 426 pixel density per inch thanks to its 2224 x 2496 resolution.

Both panels are easily usable outdoors, thanks to their high average brightness. Huawei also tuned the color profiles of both screens to match each other, which means there’s not a drastic color difference when you switch from the cover screen to the foldable screen when watching videos or browsing websites, for example.

There is a crease in the display, but it’s barely noticeable. There are also two selfie cameras on the phone – one for each display, with both being of the 8-megapixel variety. They both work great and deliver the same performance.

Huawei Mate X3 Review Philippines: Cameras

One thing that sets the Mate X3 apart from other foldables is the camera experience. You’re essentially getting a flagship camera experience as part of the package, thanks to the 50-megapixel RYYB main sensor that’s paired with an f/1.8 lens along with OIS, PDAF, and laser AF.

Adding to the main camera is the 13-megapixel ultrawide sensor, that has an f/2.2 aperture and AF. The final camera here is the 13-megapixel telephoto lens, which takes photos in 12-megapixels, has a f/3.4 lens, and a 5x optical zoom. Naturally, there’s PDAF and OIS in this thing as well.

Photos from the primary cam take really good photos with a lot of detail and very pleasant and natural-looking colors. Probably the only thing for improvement here is the dynamic range which is sometimes off, but that’s a relatively minor gripe.

The telephoto camera is one of the best we’ve seen. For one thing, it has a higher optical zoom capability than typical telephotos at 5.5x and can do hybrid zoom up to 10x.

Images taken with the telephoto look phenomenal, with the Mate X3 producing fantastic shots during the ACER Day concert the other day. While I was at the VIP section of SM Arena, I was a good 30 to 40 feet away from the stage. Regardless I still managed to get good-looking photos, which shows off just how well the telephoto lens of the phone worked.

Wide-angle shots look fantastic too, and Huawei hasn’t sacrificed camera quality in the pursuit of making a good foldable.

Huawei Mate X3 Review Philippines: Performance and battery life

If there’s one thing you can criticize the Huawei Mate X3 for, it’s the chipset in the phone. By itself, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1’s performance isn’t anything to scoff at, though for the price that you’re paying, not having the Gen 2 chip and having the phone locked in just 4G is disappointing.

None of that is Huawei’s fault of course, as the company is still barred by US law from acquiring Qualcomm’s latest chipset, though day-to-day performance wasn’t affected. As someone who has used phones that have both and used them interchangeably with each other, I can tell you that unless you have both of them side by side you really can’t tell the difference in performance between the two of them.

That being said, it sucks not having 5G, though I never really felt I was outclassed in terms of download speeds with the Mate X4 VS the other, 5G-capable phones I was carrying at the same time. There will be specific times/locations that 5G would come in handy of course, but my experience on the Smart network using the phone showed that you can still survive day-to-day life with just 4G.

Like all Huawei phones nowadays, the Mate X3 does not have Google Services baked into it. It is running the Android OS, which has the company’s EMUI 13 layered on top of it.

Huawei has done a good job of adapting EMUI to work off of a larger display, though it’s not perfect. When watching YouTube, for instance, the video doesn’t move to either side of the inner display when you partially fold it, unlike other foldable. It’s weird because the phone does it when you’re watching Netflix. It’s those inconsistencies that interrupt an otherwise seamless experience on the phone.

Since the phone doesn’t have Google Services, you’ll have to deal with Huawei Mobile Services (HMS), and specifically, App Gallery. You can get Google-specific apps to work, and work seamlessly using Petal Search and GBOX, which is now integrated in such a way that apps like YouTube installs easily without having to use any workarounds. There are still some annoyances here and there though, especially with apps that rely on Google – Chrome for instance won’t let me log into my account to bring all my preferences and passwords with me on the device, though YouTube allowed me to log into my account and manage our YouTube presence.

One thing that surprised me was the battery capacity of the Mate X3. While its 4800mAh cell isn’t going to blow people away on paper, stuffing that much juice into a phone that’s as thin as the Mate X3 is an engineering feat of its own.

The batteries are split into two (one on each side), and Huawei provides fast charging capabilities with the Mate X3. Despite the two displays, the Mate X3 managed to last for around 10 hours and 7 minutes on our PCMark battery benchmark. That’s a little lower than what we expect from an SD 8+ Gen 1 processor, but the phone IS powering two displays, so that’s a little forgivable. There’s 66W SuperCharge for quick top-ups as well.

Huawei Mate X3 Review Philippines: verdict and wrap-up

People unjustly dismiss the Huawei Mate X3 as hobbled foldable, citing the use of last year’s processor and no 5G connectivity. While both issues mar the experience of using the phone, they’re not as big of a dealbreaker as most people think they are.

The Huawei Mate X3 is one of the best foldable that we’ve ever tested to date, clearing many of the technical hurdles that its competitors face with their products.

So who is this foldable for? If you’ve already invested in Huawei’s ecosystem and have gotten around to navigating the quirks of using the company’s products and want the very best foldable available as of press time, then the Huawei Mate X3 is for you, at least according to our extended testing of it in the Philippines. Yes, it’s expensive, but isn’t every other foldable of its class available locally?