Huawei finally launched its Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro duo at an event in Munich, putting a pause to all the suspense and mystery around its latest flagships. These are certainly difficult times for Huawei amid US-China scuffle preventing it from integrating Google's apps and services in the most premium Android phones in the market right now.
But Huawei isn't let down by what could be a major deal-breaker for Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro outside China, and it looks like there's a contingency plan in the works to counter that. For now, Huawei has revealed all the specifications of the Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro, giving even the best of 2019 flagships a run for their money. By packing top-notch features, ranging from cameras to display and battery and more, Huawei still wants to rule the flagship spectrum.
"The HUAWEI Mate 30 Series unleashes the full potential of the smartphone. Designed to stand out, it challenges convention while delivering the 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," Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group, said in a statement.
Huawei unveiled three variants in its Mate-series, the Mate 30, Mate 30 Pro and Mate 30 Pro 5G, packed with quad cameras, latest Kirin 990 chipset, Android 10-based EMUI 10, SuperCharge battery charging solution and more. Let's take a look at everything these new phones have to offer.
Huawei Mate 30 Pro [5G]
Huawei Mate 30 Pro has a sophisticated design, complete with minimal bezels, a new Horizon Display, which covers the sides of the phone with display instead of bezels for a truly edge-to-edge viewing experience. Huawei replaced the physical volume buttons with Intuitive Side-touch Interaction feature, which allows users to place the volume controls on either side of the phone.
The Mate 30 Pro features a 6.53-inch OLED display with 1,176 x 2,400p resolution, HDR, and M-Pen stylus support. There's a wide notch on the top of the display, which houses the front camera and facial recognition 3D sensors for advanced face unlock along with AI gesture control for touchless interaction, which is going to be seen in the upcoming Pixel 4 series. There's also an in-display fingerprint scanner for added security.
On the back, there's a circular camera ring that houses four sensors combining 40MP primary lens with f/1.8 aperture, another 40MP ultra-wide-angle lens with f/1.8 aperture, an 8MP telephoto lens with f/2.4 aperture and a 3D depth sensor. With this sophisticated camera hardware setup, the results are bound to set a new benchmark.
In terms of camera capabilities, the Mate 30 Pro can record in 4K 60fps and 7680fps slow-motion in 720p, which is simply brilliant. The SuperSensing Camera is a low-light camera king and has light sensitivity of ISO409600, letting users shoot great ultra-wide shots in low light. There's no 50X zoom, but the Mate 30 Pro gets up to 30x digital zoom, 5x hybrid zoom and 3x optical zoom. Selfies are taken care of by 3D Depth-Sensing Cameras to deliver pro-bokeh effects, which we are sure to test during our review.
Huawei Mate 30 Pro also has the best performance setup, powered by the latest Kirin 990 chipset, which we spoke about in detail in a previous post. With three-level power efficiency architecture to the Da Vinci NPU process, the 7nm+ EUV chipset guarantees optimum performance of the device and while using 5G. There are 14 antennas just for 5G making sure users get the best coverage of signals from various angles. The handset comes with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage configuration. With the integration of Android 10-based EMUI 10, the handset gets Dark Mode, but no word on Google apps like Play Store and others.
Moving on, Huawei Mate 30 Pro gets a massive 4,500mAh battery, which supports up to 40W fast charging and 27W wireless fast charging. But Huawei conveniently avoided the Google ban topic, leaving a major mystery for the rest of the world to guess. Surely, the Mate 30 Pro will be a major hit in China and throws a strong punch to its rivals there, but what about the rest of the world? It's a question Huawei chose to answer another day.
As for pricing, Huawei Mate 30 Pro costs EUR 1,099 and the 5G variant of the flagship is priced at EUR 1,119. The handset comes in Cosmic Purple, Emerald Green, Black and Space Silver colours with two unique additions of Vegan Leather Forest Green and Orange, both of which are touted "skin-friendly and durable."
Huawei Mate 30
Huawei Mate 30 is not a lot different from its Pro sibling. The display is shrunken to 6.62 inches in the Mate 30 and it also doesn't have that fully curved display. The battery is also smaller, weighing in at 4,200mAh, but it supports both 40W wired and 27W wireless fast charging. There's a slight change in the camera setup, which replaces the 40MP ultra-wide-angle lens to a 16MP sensor with f/2.2 aperture and the 3D depth sensor is replaced with a "laser focus" sensor. The rest of the features are same as the Mate 30 Pro.
With that, the Mate 30 is priced at EUR 799, which is quite a deal for those who cannot afford the Mate 30 Pro and yet seek the best of tech in an Android flagship.
