Huawei Mate X3 review: Excellent hardware, wonky software

Huawei, one of the first manufacturers to come up with a foldable phone a few years ago with the very first Huawei Mate X, is back at it again with another exceptional foldable phone. The aptly named Huawei Mate X3 is a phone that solidifies Huawei as one of the big names on the foldable phone scene right now, right next to Samsung and Oppo.

The brand new Mate X3 foldable phone succeeds the Huawei Mate X2 released in early 2021, which was one of our favorite foldables at the time. Can its successor, the Mate X3, thrive in today's rapidly evolving and quite populous foldable niche?

Spoiler alert, yes. The Mate X3 is a spectacularly designed phone that puts the competition in the upper foldable segment in check with its extremely thin and lightweight body and creaseless display. It's also among the fastest charging foldables out there (on par with the Oppo Find N2), and also has a plethora of other hardware goodies that are nowhere to be found on most of its competitors. 

So far, so good, but what about the pricing of the new foldable juggernaut? Apparently, the phone starts at CNY 12,999 in China, or the local equivalent of roughly $1,877, while the international version of the phone is even more expensive. Starting at €2,200/£2,000, the Huawei Mate X3 is one very, very expensive phone. 

Surely a flagship foldable experience is well deserving of the premium price tag, but is the juice worth the squeeze? 

Inside the box, you will find the Huawei Mate X3 itself,  a 66W Huawei Supercharge wall adapter with a USB Type-C cable, a clear case that covers the main rear body of the foldable phone, a SIM ejector, as well as the usual information booklets. The box and the overall presentation are high quality, definitely helping the case of this super-premium foldable device. It's also worth noting that both the external and internal displays come with factory-applied screen protectors; while you can peel off the external one if you wish so, Huawei advises against messing with the protective film on the internal display. 

What makes the Huawei Mate X3 click and tick? Check out the Huawei Mate X3 specs summarized in the table below:

From a hardware and technological standpoint, Huawei has come up with one of the finest foldable phones I've used so far. 

The Mate X3 is an exceptionally slim foldable phone, measuring at just 11mm in its folded state, it's not that much thicker than a standard flagship phone. Fun fact, even with its slim case on, the Mate X3 is as thick as the encased iPhone 13 Pro Max that I'm using as my daily driver and just as heavy. And to think that one of these phones unfolds...

Indeed, once you unfold the Mate X3, you are in for a second gasp. It measures at just 5.3mm when used that way, which is truly bonkers and puts to shame almost any other foldable competitor. The sophisticated super-compact hinge minimizes the bulk and also ensures for a pretty much non-existent display crease, which is yet another win for Huawei. Finally, Huawei's newest darling doesn't carry a whiff of a display gap like the one on the Galaxy Z Fold 4: when you close it, the two sides of the phone remain flush. 

In terms of build materials, the phone surely dresses the part. The back of the device utilizes silky smooth frosted glass that feels exceptionally premium to the touch and doesn't hold any fingerprint smudges, while the rest of the frame is made of lightweight aluminum that only adds up to the glamour. In terms of colors, Huawei has a pretty decent selection of classy hues for the Mate X3: it comes in Black, Violet, Dark Green, Gold, and White.

Meanwhile, the front of the device features a quad-curved external display that gently slopes on all four edges, a first on a foldable phone. Huawei is especially proud of the so-called Kunlun protective front glass that's apparently 10x more shatter-resistant than its predecessor and is part of the reason why Huawei has obtained Switzerland's SGS dual five-star certifications.

Folding and unfolding the phone is a very pleasant experience. The hinge mechanism is rigid enough to hold the phone folded at a certain angle, but also easy to fold and unfold. Why would you want to keep the phone folded at a certain angle? Well, Huawei has thought of that and come up with a range of use cases, like the so-called Flex-Stop mode that allows you to prop it up raised and take photos, or use it as a smart desk screen that used its always-on display to show you the current time and weather. 

The Mate X3 also comes with IPX8 splash resistance, allowing you to use it with wet hands or during a light drizzle, but anything more intense than that is a big no-no with the Huawei Mate X3. 

Display Measurements:

The Huawei Mate X3 has a fingerprint sensor embedded into the side-positioned power button. It unlocks the phone in an instant when you touch it, but finding it isn't quite intuitive as it's pretty slim and you might have trouble locating it. There's also face unlock with either the external or internal selfie cameras, which unlocks the phone very quickly, but most certainly isn't as secure as the fingerprint reader. 

The Mate X3 is a very compelling camera performer during the day. Photos taken with Huawei's newest foldable are usually first-class, boasting superb image dynamics and adequate dynamic range. On the other hand, colors are true to life, with a vivid vibe that brings out the best of the scene you're shooting. Sharpness feels just right to me, with a decent amount of details preserved with little to no oversharpening in store. 

It should be mentioned that Huawei allows you to choose between three different color styles––Original, Vivid, and Bright––which function a bit like the iPhone's Photographic Styles and greatly change the way colors appear. All photo samples in this review were taken with the default Original preset. 

When the lights go down, the Mate X3 is a great cameraphone to have by your side. Its main camera is naturally the most capable in such lighting conditions. Detail, dynamics, and color are all top-notch, and even neon lights are captured properly. 

While the main camera is your best bet when shooting in low light, the rest of the loadout is not half-bad either. While your mileage will vary, you can usually expect consistency out of the ultra-wide and periscope cameras that bring them in line with the wide-angle camera. 

You usually don't need to enable Night Mode manually. The phone intelligently prolongs the exposure time to capture a low-light image when you enable the Master AI feature, so there aren't very big differences between photos taken in Auto mode and the dedicated Night Mode. 

Thanks to the 5X periscope lens, the Huawei Mate X3 is very capable when it comes to capturing distant objects. In fact, the full range between ultra-wide and 5X is extremely usable, with 10X zoom probably being the furthest I'd recommend zooming. Anything past that would probably disappoint you. 

The Mate X3 delivers very consistent results with all of its cameras, which means that light dynamics, exposure, and most importantly, colors, are all consistent between photos taken with the different cameras. No two ways about it, that's great!

The Huawei Mate X3 is quite capable when it comes to shooting portraits. Like many contemporary flagships, it gives you the full slew of focal ranges: from the wide 1X, through the natural-looking 2X, culminating with the longer 3X. Subject separation, probably the most important aspect of any portrait taken with a smartphone, is superb on this Huawei. Bokeh also looks pretty natural, which can be attributed to the fact that Huawei is a bit more conservative with portrait post-processing. 

The ultra-wide angle camera of the Huawei Mate X3 is quite decent. While it's not the widest we've seen by no means, it still lets you capture quite a lot of whatever's in front of you. There's no distortion around the edges of the frame. Colors and dynamics are usually consistent with the rest of the cameras. 

The identical 8MP selfie cameras that Huawei has put on the internal and external screens generally do a good job. Selfies look very decent and adequately detailed without actually showing too many imperfections. At night, taking a selfie will almost always use the screen as a flash, but don't expect the resulting photo to wow you. 

The chip inside the Mate X3 is the ol' reliable, the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, the same silicon that powered the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Z Flip 4. However, it lacks a key feature: it doesn't come with 5G and only supports 4G LTE. More on that later. 

From a performance standpoint, the phone performs admirably. Even though the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 is not the newest and most advanced chip in Qualcomm's fold, it is still a performance powerhouse. The phone is pleasant to use, with no lag or hiccups throughout the interface. 

Huawei is a bit more liberal with the thermal throttling of the phone, ensuring that it never reaches extremely high temperatures, which could potentially hurt prolonged performance in tasking scenarios like heavy 3D gaming. The most probable reason for that could be the pretty limited internal space for large heat-dissipating components. 

Living up to its flagship nature, the Mate X3 comes with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of internal storage, which are enough for heavier multitasking and storing all of your data. If the storage is somehow not enough, the Mate X3 supports microSD cards of up to 256GB in size. 

With the Mate X3, you can enjoy the fast bandwidth speeds of Wi-Fi 6, theoretically up to 3.6Gbps provided that you use a compatible router. The Mate X3 is also a dual-SIM device, allowing you to use two cards at the same time. 

Remember how Huawei was pretty much cut off from the GMS (Google Mobile Services) family a few years back, preventing you from using native Android apps like Gmail and YouTube? Yeah, that's hardly the case anymore. 

Let me explain. Huawei is technically still suffering from the sanctions that prevent it from officially supporting Google's services on its phones, a pretty nifty workaround now allows you to circumvent this limitation. 

So, put yourself in my shoes, with a freshly set-up Huawei Mate X3 just toying around within the interface and downloading some popular apps from Huawei's native App Gallery (which is the official app store on the phone). Imagine my surprise as I see YouTube and Google, as well as multiple other GMS-reliant Android apps, being present on Huawei's storefront. Attempting to install one of those prompts you to first install a mysterious GBox app, which I promptly agreed to, and voila, after less than a minute, I was exploring my own YouTube recommendations on a Huawei device in 2023. Had hell frozen over?

Turns out that GBox is essentially a sandboxed Google service environment that allows apps requiring underlying GMS support to run natively on Huawei's devices. You can even access, search, and use the Google Play Store mostly natively thanks to this workaround that Huawei throws at you. Oh, and you have to sign in with an existing Google account in order to access the Play Store. Much to my surprise, I managed to download and use YouTube, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Drive, and other essential apps without too much hassle; while you need to launch GBox first, you can also create nifty shortcuts on your desktop, emulating the regular Android experience we've become used to over the years. 

A wonky workaround, but a workaround no less. 

When it comes to the software experience itself, the Huawei Mate X3 comes with EMUI 13.1 on board, running on top of Android 13. Its aesthetics are hardly any different from previous EMUO iterations that I've used. I have no problem with that, but seeing how much have other Android interfaces evolved, EMUI in its current iteration is starting to look a bit long in the tooth. 

From a functional perspective, it works fine though. Huawei has employed lots of multitasking features and functionalities, allowing you to easily get into split-screen mode and use two or more apps side-by-side on the internal screen. Multitasking is indeed very decent on the Mate X3; you can play games while watching YouTube videos, for example, but have in mind that some apps might not work well in split-screen mode. 

Huawei has somehow managed to cram a 4,800mAh battery into the razor-thin 5.3mm body of the Mate X3. That's par for the course as far as foldables go.

In terms of battery life, the phone will last you a full day, but don't expect anything spectacular. In fact, tone down your expectations, especially if you use the internal display a lot. If you're a heavy user, you might even need to top up your device mid-day. 

What do our dedicated battery tests tell us? In the PhoneArena web browsing battery life test, which emulates an everyday browsing experience by scrolling through various webpages on a loop with the screen set at 200 nits of brightness, the Mate X3 does a decent job. It reaches 7 hours and 47 minutes, which isn't bad, but is trailing behind the Galaxy Z Fold 4, for example. In our video playback test, which repeats a playlist of videos with the screen set at 200 nits of brightness, the Mate X3 fares a bit better, reaching 7 hours and 46 minutes, which is closer to the Galaxy Z Fold 4's result. 

So, while the battery life of the Mate X3 isn't record-setting, at least it's consistent.  

Yes, the software experience lacks polish. The interface hasn't seen any major changes in a while and things are starting to look slightly outdated. Albeit things have improved, Huawei is still struggling to cope with the US-imposed sanctions that prevent it from officially embracing Google's service framework. While most of your apps will work as intended, you will be wise to expect hurdles here or there.