Huawei was among the first smartphone manufacturers to launch a folding smartphone with a flexible display, and did so by bending a tablet sized screen around a hinge. Since then, things have changed quite a lot, but with the Mate XS 2 it's refining that original flexible phone idea. 

With most of the foldables market shifting towards inward folding screens, Huawei is bucking the trend and continuing to develop its line of phones with a flexible screen that runs around the outside of the phone hinge. 

Having previously announced the phone in an event in China, the company unveiled its latest model to a European market at its late May event. The phone is - unsurprisingly - the successor to the Huawei Mate Xs which launched a couple of years ago. 

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Huawei

That means it has one, huge 7.8-inch folding display that wraps around the outside of the phone when shut, giving you that large, classic smartphone experience when shut, but opening up to the size of a small tablet. 

It's a 2480 x 2200 resolution OLED panel, which - when folded - turns into a 6.5-inch rectangular panel. 

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Huawei

Huawei's latest foldable has an updated hinge and a more durable display which combine to offer a folding phone that leaves very little visble crease or stretch marks. Or - at least - that's the claim. 

What's more, this time the display has support for Huawei's M-Pen 2s stylus, which means you can use the pen to mark up, doodle, draw and sign documents. 

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Huawei

The phone is considerably lighter than the Mate Xs as well, weighing in at just 255 grams, vs 300 grams of the Mate Xs, and the rear is covered in a vegan leather material. 

As for other hardware specs, we're looking at the Snapdragon 888 running the show alongside either 8GB or 12GB RAM and up to 512GB storage. The battery is a 4880mAh cell with 66W fast charging. 

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Huawei

Huawei's new Mate Xs 2 features a triple camera system comprising of a 50-megapixel primary, 13-megapixel ultrawide and an 8-megapixel telephoto zoom with 3x "optical zoom". 

The Mate X2 will be available to buy in Europe in June with the price set at €1999 in Europe. We've not heard what the UK pricing is yet, but once we do, we'll update this post with that information.