Huawei Mate X3 review

No bargain. With the Mate X3, Huawei offers its latest foldable. The concept has been completely revised and the foldable display has now been moved inside as well. In addition, there is a lot of storage, a fast SoC, and a convincing camera setup. However, it is only recommendable for very few due to the known limitations.

Daniel Schmidt, 👁 Daniel Schmidt, ✓ Anton Avdyushkin (translated by DeepL / Ninh Duy), Published 06/24/2023 🇩🇪

Note: The manufacturer may use components from different suppliers including display panels, drives or memory sticks with similar specifications.

      Vivo X Fold       Huawei Mate Xs 2       Xiaomi Mix Fold 2       Honor Magic Vs       Huawei Mate X3       Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 5G       DIN A6 162 mm / 6.38 inch 142 mm / 5.59 inch 14.6 mm / 0.575 inch 311 g0.686 lbs156.5 mm / 6.16 inch 139.9 mm / 5.51 inch 11.1 mm / 0.437 inch 255 g0.562 lbs161.6 mm / 6.36 inch 144.7 mm / 5.7 inch 5.4 mm / 0.2126 inch 262 g0.578 lbs160.3 mm / 6.31 inch 141.5 mm / 5.57 inch 6.1 mm / 0.2402 inch 261 g0.575 lbs156.9 mm / 6.18 inch 141.5 mm / 5.57 inch 5.3 mm / 0.2087 inch 239 g0.527 lbs155.1 mm / 6.11 inch 130.1 mm / 5.12 inch 6.3 mm / 0.248 inch 263 g0.58 lbs148 mm / 5.83 inch 105 mm / 4.13 inch 1 mm / 0.03937 inch 1.5 g0.00331 lbs

The Huawei Mate X3 ships with EMUI 13.1 in Europe, which is based on Android 12. Harmony OS 3.1 is used in the Asian markets, which does not differ in terms of looks and structure. Huawei does not provide detailed information about the update supply, but it has always been good in the past. The security patches were updated on April 1, 2023 at the time of the test and are thus no longer up-to-date.

As in the past years, the Mate X3 still has to do without Google services and the corresponding apps. Huawei’s own AppGallery contains many well-known apps, but major American providers like Meta, Netflix, and Disney are missing. Many of these apps can be downloaded and installed via other platforms using the Petal search, but this is anything but easy, especially for less tech-savvy users. A better alternative can be the GBox, which is easy to install and provides the Play Store and most Google services. However, this can lead to increased battery consumption, and it is not harmless in terms of data protection.

Like its predecessor, Huawei is not allowed to integrate 5G mobile in the Mate X3. Accordingly, LTE is available at best, but it has a broad frequency coverage.

Huawei’s smartphone achieves fast and stable transmission rates in combination with our reference router Asus ROG Rapture GT-AXE11000. However, it does not support Wi-Fi 6E or Wi-Fi 7 and thus no 6 GHz WLAN. Huawei promises the use of VHT160, which should allow data rates beyond 1 GBit/s in the 5 GHz network without problems. However, the Mate X3 did not achieve these in the test.

With broad GNSS support and an integrated barometer, the Huawei Mate X3 has the best prerequisites to guide its owner safely through unknown terrain. The Satfix is very fast and accurate even indoors.

During a short bike ride, the foldable has to face comparison with the Garmin Venu 2. The recorded route of around 10 kilometers is 90 meters shorter on the X3, but the altitude meters are almost identical. A look at the detailed route shows that Huawei’s smartphone records the route well, but it is sometimes a bit off track.

Huawei’s Mate X3 supports features like VoLTE and WLAN calls, but SIP account control is not implemented into the system. It can take up to two nano-SIM cards as long as one slot is not occupied by an optional memory card. The Foldable does not have an eSIM.

The voice quality is very good when held to the ear and even louder ambient noise is reliably filtered out. The speaker is also decent but reverberates a bit.

Each display of the Mate X3 has its own 8 MPix camera, both of which have an f/2.4 aperture and allow decent selfies. Videos can be recorded in Ultra HD at best, but the optics on the small display are limited to 30 FPS, while the one on the foldable panel is also capable of 60 FPS despite the identical resolution.

If you like, you can also use the main camera setup as the front camera. All you have to do is press a button in the app and the additional display then serves as a viewfinder. But especially for conventional photography, the Huawei Mate X3 can fully show its strengths and takes good pictures in daylight. Low-light pictures also turn out well, but they are a bit too reddish. The ultra wide-angle lens could have emphasized contours a bit more and the lens curvature becomes quite visible towards the edge, but it does a good job otherwise and is also responsible for macro subjects. The periscope optics allow a five-fold optical magnification, including optical image stabilization (OIS), which no other foldable smartphone offers. Digitally, even a 50x magnification is possible.

Videos can be recorded in Ultra HD with 30 or 60 FPS.

Image Comparison

Choose a scene and navigate within the first image. One click changes the position on touchscreens. One click on the zoomed-in image opens the original in a new window. The first image shows the scaled photograph of the test device.

Main cameraMain cameraUltra wide-angle5x ZoomLow-Light

The Huawei Mate X3 has a 24-month warranty in Germany. It comes with a clear protective case that clips onto the back with the camera. A modular 66-Watt power supply is also included, as well as a matching USB cable (Type-A to Type-C), an additional protective film for the cover display, and a SIM tool.

Both capacitive touchscreens of the Huawei Mate X3 work very reliably in the test. However, the surface of the cover display is noticeably more slippery and offers less resistance to the fingers. Like the Galaxy Z Fold4, Huawei’s foldable also supports active pen input for the main display, but the necessary Huawei M-Pen 2s is currently only available in Asia. However, it can be imported via AliExpress (148 euro).

A fingerprint sensor in the power button is available for biometric security. It has very good recognition rates and unlocks the X3 quickly. Face recognition can be used additionally or alternatively, but it is less secure.

The X3 is again capable of finger-touch input, supports numerous gestures and even has a senior mode on board, which can be used to adjust the display size and control the touchscreen’s typing time, among other things.

The main display of the Huawei Mate X3 is now on the inside and grows minimally to 7.85 inches. It supports the HDR standards HLG, HDR10, and HDR10+. The refresh rate of the LTPO OLED panel reaches up to 120 Hz, the system dynamically adjusts this between 1 and 120 Hz, alternatively, it is possible to fix the refresh rate to 60 or 120 Hz.

The brightness has been improved compared to the Mate Xs 2 and now reaches an average of 969 cd/m² when the ambient light sensor is active. This value remains on the same level even with an even distribution of bright and dark areas (APL18), and the brightness is not increased further even in HDR rendering. Those who prefer to adjust the brightness manually have 476 cd/m² at their disposal.

The smaller cover display on the outside also relies on OLED technology, but it can get even brighter. While the brightness is almost identical in manual mode (max. 479 cd/m²), the smaller panel can increase a bit in the APL18 test and reaches up to 1,239 cd/m².

OLED flickering is very similar in both displays. We measured a fairly constant 90 Hz depending on the zoom level, which could be a burn-in protection or black frame insertion. Zooming in closer, we can measure a frequency between 425 and 549 Hz at minimum display brightness. The Mate X3 uses PWM dimming with 1,440 Hz for both displays, which is considered comparatively easy on the eyes.

* … smaller is better

Screen Flickering / PWM (Pulse-Width Modulation)

The analysis with Calman shows that the two displays of the Huawei Mate X3 are both well-calibrated and matched.

Display Response Times

Outdoors, the Mate X3 remains easy to read even in sunlight and the ambient light sensors always adjust the brightness quickly.

The viewing angle stability of the foldable display remains a bit better in terms of color representation because the cover display shows a slightly warmer picture at flat viewing angles. However, this does not bother in everyday use.

The Huawei Mate X3 is powered by a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 in the 4G version and has access to a generous 12 GB of LPDDR5 working memory. Thus, the SoC is not cutting-edge, but it is still very fast and also used by many rivals.

The benchmarks are within the expected range and certify the Huawei smartphone’s high performance. Even though a performance mode is available again, we did not use it. The differences are not too big, but the option is particularly noticeable in terms of heat development.

The graphics calculations are handled by the integrated Adreno 730 which was the fastest GPU for Android smartphones in 2022. The Mate X3 delivers a convincing performance in the benchmarks and can often place itself at the top of the comparison field. Thus, there is more than enough performance for games and other graphics-intensive apps.

* … smaller is better