Chinese giant Huawei continues to flex its muscles and showcase state-of-the-art products across many tech categories. Most of these products have limited market appeal due to Huawei's ban on doing business with US companies, but regardless, we can appreciate these products for their technical achievements.
The latest example is the Huawei Mate X6 foldable phone, which is a very impressive device in many ways. It has record thinness for a foldable, is extremely exquisite, has some market-leading UX features like its implementation of multitasking, a pretty impressive battery, and is generally a hugely desirable product without any serious drawbacks. If we don't count the Google mobile services thing, which is admittedly a big if, but I'll talk more about this in the Software section of the review.
Huawei has never sold its premiums phones cheaply, and this doesn't change with the Mate X6. This new foldable is scheduled to be officially released in globally and in Europe on January 6 at a price of EUR 2000. This isn't chump change, but a comparable configuration of Samsung's Z Fold 6 sells for EUR 2200, so Huawei isn't really out of its mind to be asking as much as it does.
Huawei Mate X6
What we like
Exquisite design
Super-slim profile
Powerful multitasking features
What we don't like
Google apps require workarounds
Kirin chip not on par with latest Snapdragon
6.8
PhoneArena Rating
6.9
Price Class Average
Battery Life
6.4
6.2
Photo Quality
6.8
6.5
Video Quality
5.8
5.4
Charging
8.3
7.5
Performance Peak
4.8
6.2
Performance Daily
6.9
7.3
Display Quality
8
8
Design
9
8.3
Wireless Charging
8.1
7.5
Biometrics
8
7.7
Audio
6
7
Software
4
6.7
Why the score?
This device scores 1.4% worse than the average for this price class, which includes devices like the Honor Magic V3 and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6
The Huawei Mate X6 is an extremely exquisite device, no two ways about it. It's about as thin as the other thinnest foldable phone out there, the Honor Magic v3, at just 4.6mm when unfolded, or 9.85mm when folded. Coming from the OnePlus Open, which has flat sides and a boxier shape, I think the curved and elegant aesthetics of the Mate X6 work better for a foldable phone, because they create the feeling of a smaller product. It almost feels just like a regular phone when you hold it closed – a testament of how far folding phones have come.
Honestly, for all my years reviewing phones, I haven’t seen many models that are more elegant and exquisite than the Mate X6. It is an extremely beautiful piece of technology, not just against the foldable market, but against phones as a whole.
It has a super-premium build, which feels solid and high-quality. The faux leather back on the red variant that I'm testing is both beautiful and durable. Even the humongous camera bump comes off as easy to tolerate, because of its exquisite design with chamfered edges and complex shapes.
The volume rocker is on the smaller side, so it’s not the most convenient out there, but isn't difficult to get used to.
I didn’t have any issues with the fingerprint scanner built into the power button. It has a different method of setting up, where you slide your fingertip in a circle over the scanner, instead of continuously lifting and touching it, which was a bit confusing at first, but once set up, it worked like a charm.
The hinge feels very solid. It actually takes more force than usual to open and close the Huawei Mate X6, which makes it feel even more solid and sturdy. When you open it, it does so with a soft but reassuring snap and sits perfectly flat, which is great.
For some reason, the crease of the inner, 7.93” display is still there. It’s relatively shallow, but you definitely feel and see it more than on the OnePlus Open. Getting the crease flatter would be a great upgrade for the next Mate X. This is one area where OPPO is still king.
Both the outer 6.45” and inner 7.93” OLED displays are high-refresh rate and gorgeous. There are convenient options to set the right amount of color saturation and temperature that would appeal to you, but I’m missing an adaptive color temperature option that would automatically adjust the display’s warmth based on the surrounding conditions, like Apple’s True Tone, or OnePlus’ “Adaptive tone”.
In terms of maximum brightness, the Huawei Mate X6 isn’t a record-setter, as you can see in the display measurement chart, but it cranks things up to a rather comfortable level. You won’t have any issues viewing it outdoors in most conditions. Our color quality readings reveal a screen that is pretty much in line with the competition. At this point, there isn’t much more we can ask from these displays.
The CIE 1931 xy color gamut chart represents the set(area)of colors that a display can reproduce,with the sRGB colorspace(the highlighted triangle)serving as reference.The chart also provides a visual representation of a display's color accuracy. The small squares across the boundaries of the triangle are the reference points for the various colors, while the small dots are the actual measurements. Ideally, each dot should be positioned on top of its respective square. The 'x:CIE31' and 'y:CIE31' values in the table below the chart indicate the position of each measurement on the chart. 'Y' shows the luminance (in nits) of each measured color, while 'Target Y' is the desired luminance level for that color. Finally, 'ΔE 2000' is the Delta E value of the measured color. Delta E values of below 2 are ideal.
The Color accuracy chart gives an idea of how close a display's measured colors are to their referential values. The first line holds the measured (actual) colors, while the second line holds the reference (target) colors. The closer the actual colors are to the target ones, the better.
The Grayscale accuracy chart shows whether a display has a correct white balance(balance between red,green and blue)across different levels of grey(from dark to bright).The closer the Actual colors are to the Target ones,the better.
With few exceptions, foldables generally aren’t known for having best-in-class cameras. Even Samsung’s Fold 6 doesn’t set any records in this respect.
The Mate X6 has quite the complete camera package. It has three shooters on the back: a 50 MP f/1.4 to f/4.0 main camera, a 48 MP f/3.0 4x telephoto, and a 40 MP f/2.2 ultrawide.
This versatile setup handles most situations comfortably – it has a PhoneArena Camera Score of 137. This means it’s about as capable as the Pixel 9 Pro Fold (PA Camera Score of 139), and a just tad behind the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 (PA Camera Score of 141).
I tend to find its default setting a bit aggressive when it comes to processing – images often come out very bright, colorful, and sharp. And while this sort of style makes for a striking first impression, I think the industry has slowly started to transition towards a slightly more natural, softer look. There is a bit of that ‘overprocessed’ effect going on with the Mate X6, especially when viewing images from the main camera.
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What might help here is if Huawei adds some additional photographic styles – an easy way for users to tone things down a bit, but right now, the only options available next to the Default style are called “Vivid” and “Bright”, so they obviously can’t solve this particular issue.
Regardless, the Mate X6 is a pretty capable camera, especially for a foldable. Its pictures are in every sense Instagram-ready. It also produces a very pleasing, stable 4K video recording, especially in daylight. It’s not the king of nighttime video recording—for example, recording passing cars at night often ends up with overblown headlights—but should suffice in most cases that don’t involve tricky lighting conditions.
While going out and about to take test photos, I did have the camera app crash on me a couple of times. While I don’t think this issue will show up very often in everyday life, there is the odd chance it might occur randomly from time to time, unless fixed with a future software update.
Huawei Mate X6 Camera Samples:
Main
The main camera of the Mate X6 is the one that exhibits this vibrant, ‘overprossed’ style the most. It can take the most drab-looking scene and make it colorful, shiny and full of joy. Which can be a good or a bad thing, depending on what you prioritize.
Again, the pictures are by no means bad, it’s just that they exhibit a bit of oversharpening, overexposure and oversaturation, making them appear somewhat over the top. It’s evident in our camera measurements that pretty much across most of its shooting modes, the Mate X6 would overexpose scenes by about 10-20%, compared to our reference results.
Telephoto / Zoom
Zooming is something the Mate X6 is pretty great at. Thanks to a capable 2x sensor cropping, a well-balanced 4x periscope camera and fine long-range zoom algorithms, you can be confident that you’ll end up with clean, detailed images across the full zooming spectrum. Zoom camera shots follow the main camera stylistically, but oversharpening tends to be kept at bay here.
Ultra-wide
The Mate X6’s ultra-wide camera generally doesn’t impress. It once again tends to oversharpen things, while details around the edges of the shot may end up not very clean at places.
Selfie
The selfie camera has gone to the same school as the other cameras on the Huawei Mate X6. Everything that comes out of it is too bright and joyful, but I have to note this is a problem only if you want a more natural tone for your images. If you enjoy the bright and sharp aesthetic, you’ll be pleased with the X6’s production.
Video
Video recording with the Mate X6 is generally very good. It’s not quite as oversharpened as the photos, so things are well balanced here. For some reason, it can’t quite capture the same levels of detail across the zoom range in video mode, but aside from that one kink, I don’t see much of a problem with its 4K video recording. Stabilization is at about the same level as that of other flagship cameras.
Huawei Mate X6 Performance & Benchmarks
Mystery silicon inside
Ah, chipsets, chipsets, Google services and US bans. I’m sure it’s not easy to develop world-class phones if you’re essentially banned from doing business with US companies, but here’s Huawei still managing to stay relevant.
The Mate X6 is, of course, equipped with an in-house Kirin chipset. Huawei doesn’t want to reveal the exact Kirin models within its devices, but most speculate it is the Kirin 9020 in the X6.
This chip isn’t as advanced as the latest Snapdragon or Apple-made silicon. Its CPU performance would be roughly similar to a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, but in terms of graphics, it’s not as impressive.
I did test the Mate X6 quite extensively with various workloads, and I’m pretty much convinced that it won’t give you any trouble in day to day operation. It feels very fast and smooth. Graphically, it’s definitely not as powerful as the latest Snapdragon or Apple chips, but it seems to be good enough to handle most games out there without much issue.
There's 12GB of RAM onboard, coupled with 512GB of storage, which is in line with other modern flagship foldables out there.
Huawei Mate X6 Software
The Huawei Mate X6 comes with EMUI 15, which appears to be closely following Android 15. It has all sorts of modern features, it looks fresh and modern. I don’t think anyone would have much of an issue with it.
In terms of customization, Huawei has a really great feature which allows you to change the style of the icons – not the icons themselves, but their visual style, which makes it very easy to tweak the UI’s look exactly to your liking. On the flip side, it doesn’t seem to force a consistent icon shape onto every app, so your homescreen may end up looking a bit undisciplined compared to most other mainstream Android flavors out there.
Yes, there are still no Google services on the Huawei Mate X6. This is a major hurdle for anyone looking to import the Mate X6 and use it outside of China. The good thing here for savvier users is that there are very easy workarounds which will let you quickly have most everything running. For example, you can install most Google apps via Huawei’s App Gallery, courtesy of the open-source microG services and GBox. microG is open-source and has been proven to be very reliable.
I didn’t have any issues setting up my personal Google account and using it with YouTube, the Play Store and so on. Where I did run into problems was trying to set up my work account which runs on the Google Workspace infrastructure. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get that account to sync properly with the Mate X6. I've reached out to Huawei for a potential solution and will update the review accordingly.
For most users, this shouldn’t be a problem, as normal Google accounts sync and work via microG without any hassle.
The Huawei Mate X6 has brutally powerful and satisfying multitasking features. In my opinion, it has the best implementation of split-screen multitasking and floating app windows. I find the process of opening two apps side by side cumbersome on pretty much any other device. However, on the Mate X6, it really is so easy that it makes me want to use it more often.
When you have an app open, you can swipe up from the bottom of the screen. If you keep swiping up towards the upper-right corner, it lets you turn the app into a resizable floating window. We’ve seen this in other systems. However, if you swipe up towards the upper-left corner, this immediately engages side-by-side mode, and all you have to do is to select the second app to appear on the screen. I really wish other phone makers would follow suit and make it as fun and easy to engage side-by-side multitasking.
And speaking of the floating app windows, managing those on the Mate X6 is extremely easy and efficient. Minimizing a floating app to the screen edge or calling it back to the foreground happens with a single tap - better than on most other UIs. Well played, Huawei!
The silicon-carbon tech is slowly becoming mainstream, and the Mate X6 is the latest phone to use this new technology. It's a hybrid tech, not radically different from the old lithium-ion battery design. What's new is the silicon molecules imbued in the graphite anode of the battery, resulting in more capacity per volume.
This technology has allowed Huawei to pack a 5,200 mAh battery inside the thin and lightweight body of the Mate X6. Our battery tests are pending, but first impressions are good; you can comfortably use the phone for a full day and maybe stretch that even longer.
As far as charging goes, the Mate X6 supports 66W of wired charging power and 50W wireless. It's nothing crazy but still way faster than other more popular flagship foldables such as the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold. Of course, stay tuned for our tests and battery rating.
Should you buy it?
The Huawei Mate X6 is not just a great foldable phone but a great phone, full stop. The elephant in the room has to do with GMS, or Google Mobile Services, which are still not permitted on Huawei phones. At this point in time, this isn't such a tremendous hurdle, because the workaround that allows you to set up your Google accounts is mostly simple and reliable (though setting up Google Workspace accounts can be admittedly more complicated). In the mainstream case, even casual users without much technical knowledge shouldn't have much trouble getting Google apps up and running on the Mate X6.
In terms of design, the Huawei Mate X6 is the best foldable phone at this time. Its sleekness, elegance and robustness make it the technological marvel to beat on the foldable market. It doesn't have the most powerful camera or chipset, but it also performs very competently in those areas. Meanwhile, it manages to make a huge splash by showing everyone how multitasking should be done on a phone – a huge thing for a foldable.
The price? Sure, EUR 2000 is a considerable amount to shell out, but you can't have it much cheaper if you're looking for a premium foldable phone these days, unless you manage to score a deal on some of the competitors which have been on the market for a while, such as the Galaxy Z Fold 6. If there are no deal-breakers for your use cases, though, there is nothing wrong with going with the Mate X6 – in fact, you'll be enjoying an extremely elegant and competent device along the way – a true celebration for every foldable fan.
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Rad Slavov is the Editor-in-Chief at PhoneArena. He joined the media in 2008, right on the cusp of the modern smartphone revolution. Through time and perseverance, he amassed a great deal of knowledge and industry know-how, allowing him to guide and organize the company's growing line-up of talented content creators and ever-expanding content portfolio.
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