Huawei has taken the wraps off the Mate XS, a minor update to its existing Mate X that I spent time with in Paris late last year.

Huawei Mate X hands on: I love this folding phone.

The Huawei Mate XI've finally been able to spend some real time with the foldable Huawei Mate X, the Chinese company's folding phone rival to Samsung's Galaxy Fold and Motorola's folding Razr.

The Mate X's flexible OLED screen folds backward on itself, in contrast to Samsung's Galaxy Fold, which closes in on itself like a book, or the Razr, which folds shut like an old clamshell phone.

That means you can use the entire 8-inch display even when the phone is closed.

Unlike the Galaxy Fold, there is no internal Mate X display. ?

Months later, and even having used the Galaxy Fold since its launch, I'm no less excited about the way the Huawei Mate X bends. .

Trust me when I say that from the moment you get it out of the box, you'll want to fold and unfold the Mate X time and time again.

By folding backward as it does, that big screen is essentially split in half, giving you a 6.6-inch display in its regular, "closed" phone format, outsizing all but the biggest phablet giants.

(You get full use of the screen only when you unfold the phone.) As a result, videos and photos look great, particularly because there's no notch interrupting the view -- something I'll come back to later.

Having a big outer screen in "phone mode" makes it much more usable than the closed Galaxy Fold.

The Mate X's design is comfortable to use and while it's wider than the Fold, it's much thinner in its closed form, so it sits in my jeans pocket more easily and didn't feel at all awkward to keep there as I paced the busy Parisian streets. .

Watching videos in phone mode is great, but it's when you fold it out into its full 8 inches that those videos become significantly more immersive!

To allow it to bend, the display is covered in plastic, not glass (as are all of today's foldable phones) and, like we've seen on the Galaxy Fold, there are some noticeable ripples on the screen's surface when it lays flat.

I do like that a physical clasp holds it securely in its phone form and there's an easy-to-reach button that you'll press to release it and fold back out

The cameras are housed in a vertical side-bar, which I found to be a handy gripping point when unfolded in tablet mode (when closed, the phone folds back, sitting flush against this sidebar)

The Huawei Mate X is all about that bend and having spent all day with the phone I'm confident in saying that this is my favorite foldable phone I've used so far

Huawei Mate X: Our best look yet at the foldable phone