While 5G has been available in countries like the US and South Korea for a while now, the UK is still decidedly 'low-tech' in comparison. That's going to change when 5G launches in the UK on June 3, and Huawei has just announced its first 5G phones in the UK – a 5G version of the massive phablet Huawei Mate 20 X first released in late 2018, and the yet-unreleased foldable Huawei Mate X.
At a London event on May 16, Huawei officially launched the two products, and gave a presentation on its 5G hardware position. The launch event is ongoing, and we'll update this article if Huawei drops any additional news.
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The Huawei Mate 20 X 5G is a 5G version of the Huawei Mate 20 X, the big battery gaming model in Huawei's Mate 20 series released late in 2018. It's different in two major ways – it supports up to 40W supercharge, instead of 22.5W, and you'll be able to buy an M-Pen stylus to work with it, similar to the S-Pen in the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 and other similar devices.
The Huawei Mate X is a foldable phone that we first saw at MWC 2019 in February, which we're hoping to see released in the second half of 2019. We were expecting it to be Huawei's response to the Samsung Galaxy Fold, but with that phone delayed indefinitely, it's currently unclear which handset will launch in the UK first.
There are a few confirmed 5G phones that'll launch alongside the first UK 5G networks, such as the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, which Samsung has confirmed will launch on June 7. As of writing both EE and Three have announced they'll stock the Huawei Mate 20 X, although we expect we'll hear about the Huawei Mate X's suppliers once we find out its release date.
TechRadar will be reporting on the UK 5G networks live when they launch, and hopefully we'll be able to test the Huawei 5G phones at the same time, so check back then for our analysis on the future of 5G.
