Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei has unveiled the latest range of its high-end smartphones, the Mate 30 Series at a launch event in Munich, Germany, this afternoon.
The Chinese smartphone maker announced the new smartphone range, as it faces a challenging time after being blacklisted by the US as a result of the trade war between the two nations.
The US, which put Huawei on an export blacklist citing national security issues, has been rallying its allies to cut Huawei out of planned 5G networks, citing “national security threats” due to the company’s close ties to the Chinese government.
The blacklist has seen companies, including Alphabet’s Google and British chip designer ARM, limit or cease their relationships with the Chinese company.
Acknowledging 2019 as being a tough year, Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group, said the company still managed to achieve strong growth in its PC, smartphone, smart audio and wearables business.
According to him, during the period from January to August 2019, the company saw smartphone shipments increase by 26% year-on-year.
At today’s launch event, Huawei unveiled the Mate 30, Mate 30 Pro, the Porsche Design Huawei Mate 30 RS, a smartwatch, as well as the “world’s first second generation 5G smartphone”, the Mate 30 Pro (5G).
“The Huawei Mate 30 Series unleashes the full potential of the smartphone. Designed to stand out, it challenges convention while delivering an unrivalled user experience. The era of 5G is an opportunity to rethink smartphone technology and the Huawei Mate 30 series is the ultimate expression of what’s possible,” says Yu.
The Huawei Mate 30 Series is powered by the Kirin 990 series chipset, with the Mate 30 sporting 4200mAh battery, while Mate 30 Pro’s battery is even bigger at 4500mAh.
With a 6.53-inch, the Mate Pro features the Huawei Horizon Display, which curves at an angle of 88 degrees for a maximum display area to provide edge-to-edge immersive viewing experience. It also introduces the intuitive side-touch interaction feature to replace the side volume buttons with invisible virtual keys.
In terms of camera, the Mate 30 is equipped with a SuperSensing Triple Camera, comprising a 40MP SuperSensing camera, 16MP ultra wide-angle camera and an 8MP telephoto camera. On the other hand, the Mate 30 Pro sports a revolutionary quad camera system with the 40MP Cine Camera, 40MP SuperSensing camera, an 8MP telephoto camera and a 3D depth sensing camera.
The Mate 30 Pro and Mate 30 come in various colours, namely emerald green, space silver, cosmic purple and black, while forest green and orange are available in vegan leather for the Mate 30 Pro (5G).
Huawei also revealed the second instalment of the Watch GT. The Watch GT 2 is equipped with the self-developed Kirin artificial intelligence chip, providing new wellness features that allow for hassle-free monitoring of a user’s heart rate, daily sleep and other attributes.
Local pricing of the devices and smartwatch has not yet been revealed.
The recommended retail price globally of the Mate 30 is EUR799 (around R12 974) for 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, EUR1 099 (around R17 845) for the Mate 30 Pro with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage and the Mate 30 Pro (5G) will sell for EUR1 199 (around R19 469) for 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
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