Rising star Huawei has just revealed what could be the most striking phone of 2018 – and it isn't content with just smoking rivals like Apple, Samsung and Sony.
The mammoth Mate 20 X boasts a 7.2-inch OLED display with HDR support and a pin-sharp 2,244 x 1,080 resolution. There's a notch, but it's a tiny teardrop-style example, not unlike the one that is believed to be present on the upcoming OnePlus 6T.
Not only does the Mate 20 X destroy the competition when it comes to screen size, it's also rocking the Kirin 980 chipset, which Huawei is marketing as the fastest mobile processor money can buy right now. It's backed up by 6GB of RAM to keep things smooth.
All of this raw power needs some serious juice, and the Mate 20 X has a whopping 5000mAh battery to keep things running throughout the day. That might sound impressive – especially when the iPhone XS Max can only muster 3,179mAh – but it's worth remembering that it's having to power a monster-sized 7.2-inch screen.
Under the hood, Huawei has gone to great lengths to ensure that despite all of this raw power on tap, the phone remains cool under pressure. The Mate 20 X features the company's new 'SuperCool' system, which uses a vapour chamber and graphene film cooling technology to offer up to 20 times better cooling versus a copper-based solution. Gone are the days when your phone gets really hot during use – if Huawei's approach works, that is.
Round the back, the Mate 20 X has the same triple camera setup as its stablemate (no pun intended) the Mate 20 Pro, with a 40, 20 and 8MP sensors working together to offer photography skills for any situation. That might seem like overkill when you consider that the Google Pixel 3 makes do with just one sensor and is still the best smartphone camera money can buy, but we're sure Huawei knows what it's doing.
Despite all of this, what has arguably stolen the column inches since the announcement went live is the fact that Huawei appears to be taking aim not just at Apple and Samsung, but also video game giant Nintendo. The company even compared the Mate 20 X to the Nintendo Switch during the presentation, highlighting the optional clip-on gaming controller's ability to transform the phone into a fully-fledged gaming platform.
With a price that's likely to hit the £1000 mark (assuming the phone even comes to the UK), the Mate 20 X is quite expensive for a Huawei device, and will be going up against the likes of the Note 9 and iPhone XS – phones which are seen as premium handsets and have considerable recognition in the west. Whether or not the bold gamble pays off remains to be seen, but it's hard to not be impressed by Huawei's chutzpah with this announcement.
