After a week that sawrenders,photographs, and even a couple of hands-on video reveals much about Huawei’s latest flagship phones ahead of their announcement, the Mate 30 series is now official, starting with the Mate 30 Pro and the Mate 30.
Both phones have a Leica-branded rear camera array contained within a circular camera cutout that Huawei is calling a “Halo ring design.” However, the Mate 30 Pro has a 6. 53 – inch screen which curves around the edges of the device , while the regular Mate 30 has a more traditional flat display that’s slightly bigger at 6. 62 – inches in size. Battery sizes also differ between the two phones; the Mate 30 Pro has a larger 4, 500 mAh battery, compared to 4, 200 mAh in the Mate 30. Both phones support fast-charging up to 40 W wired, or 27 W when wirelessly charging.
Since the Mate 30 Pro’s display curves around the edges of the device, Huawei has ditched the physical volume buttons on the side of the device, in favor of a new touch-sensitive solution. It’s a similar technology to what we’ve seen onVivo’s Nex 3.
The Mate 30 Pro is available in six colors in total, including two vegan leather options; green and orange. Other colors include silver, green, purple, and black. There’s also a new Porsche Design edition of the Mate 30, which uses a genuine leather finish on the rear of the device. The Porsche Design Huawei Mate 30 RS is available in red and black, and eschews the circular camera bump in favor of a more integrated quad-sensor array.
Internally, the Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro phones useHuawei’s Kirin 990 chip, which the company announced at IFA back at the beginning of the month. The chip is the first from Huawei to include a built-in 5G modem. Along withe the 5G modem, Huawei also says that the phone includes 14 antennas for 5G, and 21 antennas in total.
The rear camera array is probably the most distinctive part of the design of the phones, with a circular camera array that contains the phone’s four sensors. In the Mate 30 you’re getting a main 40 – megapixel camera with af / 1.8 aperture, an ultra wide-angle 16 – megapixel f / 2.2 camera, an 8-megapixel f / 2.4 telephoto camera, and a “laser focus” sensor. Meanwhile, the Mate 30 Pro bumps the resolution of the ultra wide-angle camera to 40 – megapixels, with an aperture of f / 1.8, and swaps the laser focus sensor for a 3D depth sensor.
In terms of video, Huawei claims that the phone can record in up to 4K 60 fps, or else record in slow-motion at speeds of up to 7680 fps when filming in 720 p. Huawei showed off this ultra slow-motion camera in action with footage of a hummingbird in flight, where its wings were still visible despite the speed at which they were moving.
The Mate (series runs on EMUI) , which Huawei’s consumer CEO Richard Yu says is based off Android 10. Features of the software include a dark mode and gesture control via the sensor in the phone’s notch. Huawei also advertises that the Mate 30 will support both face unlock, as well as featuring an in-display fingerprint sensor.
The announcement of Mate 30 series comes at a difficult time for Huawei, whose presence on the USA’s entity list prevents US companies from doing business with the Chinese firm. Google said last month that these phones won’t ship with Google’s apps and services, nor will they come with the Play Store pre-installed, which is how most Android users outside of China download their apps. We’re still waiting for Huawei to tell us how it’ll address this for Mate 30 buyers outside of China. Stay Tuned.
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