Huawei has officially announced its newest foldable smartphone Mate X2 in China. It is the company's third attempt in the foldable market after the release of Mate X and Mate Xs and 2019 and 2020 respectively. The latest offering comes with a number of improvements including drastic changes to the folding mechanism. And as you might have guessed, the phone does not run Google apps and services out of the box.

The Mate X2 is the first Huawei foldable smartphone with an inward folding design as both of its previous launches come with an outward folding approach. In other words, the newest launch folds the same as the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 where the main display is on the inside when folded. It sports an 8-inch OLED internal display with 2480 x 2200 pixels resolution, 90Hz refresh rate, and 180Hz touch sampling rate. The external display is a 6.45-inches OLED panel with 2700 x 1160 pixels resolution, 90Hz refresh rate, and 240Hz touch sampling rate.

Under the hood, the foldable features the new HiSilicon Kirin 9000 processor with a 24-core Mali-G78 GPU. It is a 5G capable processor that debuted with the Mate 40 Pro last year. There are two configuration options: 8GB of RAM with 256GB onboard storage and 8GB of RAM with 512GB onboard storage.

There is a quad-camera setup headlined by a 50-megapixel Ultra Vision wide-angle sensor with f/1.9 aperture. The other three cameras include a 16-megapixel Cine ultra-wide-angle sensor with f/2.2 aperture, a 12-megapixel telephoto sensor with 3X optical zoom and f/2.4 aperture, and an 8-megapixel Super Zoom sensor with 10X optical zoom and f/4.4 aperture. Each of these cameras supports optical image stabilization (OIS) except for the Cine sensor. The front camera on the foldable is a 16-megapixel sensor with f/2.2 aperture.

The whole package is powered by a 4,500mAh battery with support for up to 55W fast charging. It will boot EMUI 11.0 based on Android 10 but as mentioned in the beginning, there wil be no Google apps and services. Other noteworthy features include a USB Type-C port, Bluetooth 5.2, NFC, and dual-band WiFi support.

• 8GB/256GB for CNY 17,999 (about $2,785)
• 8GB/512GB for CNY 18,999 (about $2,940)

The Huawei Mate X2 is available in Crystal Blue, Crystal Pink, Black, and White color options. It will go on sale in China starting February 25th with no words on global availability yet.