Huawei’s Galaxy Z Fold 7 Rival Has A Bigger Battery And Variable Aperture Lens

Huawei has announced its new book-style foldable, the Mate X7. While it isn’t lighter or thinner than the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, it packs a bigger battery, improved cameras, and retains a comfortable-to-hold design with curved sides. Huawei has refined its new folding phone to provide a good combination of slim design and imaging hardware.
The Huawei Mate X7 features a 6.49-inch LTPO cover screen (2444 x 1080) with a peak brightness of 3,000 nits. It is protected by the company’s proprietary Crystal Armour Kunlun Glass. On the inside, you get an 8-inch folding screen (2416 x 2210) that peaks at 2,500 nits. Both displays support a 120Hz adaptive refresh rate and 1440Hz PWM dimming for eye comfort,. They are comfortably legible in direct sunlight.
Huawei’s new foldable is slightly thicker and heavier than its Samsung rival; however, it is still very thin at 9.5mm folded and 4.5mm unfolded. At 235 grams, it weighs around 20 grams more than the Galaxy Z Fold 7, yet remains comfortable to hold thanks to its premium finish and curved edges.
Huawei says the inner folding screen uses a "3-layer Composite Ultra-Tough Structure.” It includes a non-Newtonian fluid layer, a material that’s flexible during normal movement but hardens upon impact. This is paired with ultra-thin glass (UTG) and carbon fiber to offer a claimed 20% increase in impact resistance. While the crease is slightly deeper than what you’d find on its Samsung counterpart, it doesn’t get in the way of daily use.
The Mate X7 is rated IP58 and IP59 for dust and water resistance. This means it offers better dust protection than the Galaxy Z Fold 7 (IP48) but lacks full-proof dust resistance IP68 rating found on the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold.
The Huawe Mate X7 is powered by the Kirin 9030 Pro chipset, which reportedly features a 9-core CPU architecture with 14 threads. The prime cores are clocked at 2.75GHz, with performance cores at 2.27GHz and efficiency cores at 1.72GHz.
It runs EMUI and operates smoothly in day-to-day usage. While you don’t get pre-installed Google apps, you can sideload them through various methods.
The Mate X7 sports a triple rear camera setup led by a 50MP sensor (1/1.28-inch) with a 10-stop variable aperture ranging from f/1.5 to f/4.0. The company says that the adjustable physical aperture technology allows its sensor to take in 86% more light than before. It also delivers pleasing, natural-looking bokeh.
This main shooter is accompanied by a 50MP periscope telephoto camera with 3.5x optical zoom and optical image stabilization, as well as a 40MP ultrawide camera with a 120-degree field of view.
Huawei has improved its color science, resulting in portraits with consistent processing and good edge detection. The system performs well up to 10x digital zoom, though results can get noisy at that level.
The Mate X7 has also features upgraded low-light imaging capabilities. It does well with neon lights at night, though it still tends to smooth out skin textures. That being said, this has a more capable camera system than the Galaxy Z Fold 7.
Huawei has added a big 5,600mAh silicon-carbon anode battery in its new folding phone. The use of silicon-carbon allows for higher energy density in a smaller footprint, which allows it to pack 1,200mAh more capacity than the Galaxy Z Fold 7 into a 9.5mm chassis.
It should easily last a day for most users, and if it doesn’t, you can fast charge it with supported 66W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
The Huawei Mate X7 is priced at 2,099 euros outside of China.