Huawei Mate 30 Pro Smartphone Launched With Impressive Specs
Huawei launched its new flagship smartphone, the Huawei Mate 30 Pro, this week in Germany. The launch is a little different as the U.S. Government placed restrictions on how companies can do business with Huawei. Google was one of those companies and this smartphone runs Android 10, so as you can imagine it gets a little complicated. The Huawei Mate 30 series ships with EMUI 10, based on Android 10, but will not be including Google Apps and services. We aren’t sure how this will impact the user experience just yet as we haven’t received a review unit yet, but we can talk a bit about the hardware and specs.
The Huawei Mate 30 Pro features a 6.53-inch display (2400 x 1176 pixels) with 88 degree curved edges. On the back you’ll find a four camera ‘block’ that gives it a familiar Huawei look. The rear camera block includes:
- 18mm ultrawide, 40MP, f/1.8
- 27mm primary, 40MP, f/1.6 with OIS, ISO 409,600
- 80mm zoom, 8MP f/2.4 with OIS
- Depth sensor
The Huawei P30 Pro used a 130mm periscope zoom camera that was capable of 50x zoom capabilities, so the change to an 80mm telephoto camera was unexpected. The 18mm ultrawide camera is a big upgrade as the larger sensor will really help Huawei compete with the flagship Samsung models (Galaxy S10 and Note 10) that are known to have great ultrawide shots.
When it comes to video performance the Huawei Mate 30 Pro really delivers. There is a new slow motion video recording mode that captures 720P video at an insane 7680 FPS. Huawei showed some demos of the video performance of the Mate 30 Pro that you can watch below. The demo of the hummingbird is really beautiful. Most other brands flagship phones offer under 1000 FPS slow motion, so this is very impressive.
Night mode on the Huawei Mate 30 Pro looks amazing. The image below of Shanghai was taken on the Mate 30 Pro. The notch on the front of the phone houses sensors for facial recofnition and a 32MB selfie camera.
When it comes to processing power the Mate 30 Pro also doesn’t disappoint as it uses the new Kirin 990 SoC with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of Flash storage on the base model. The Kirin 990 is a 7nm chip using the ARM Cortex A76 architecture. A 4500 mAh battery with fast-charging technology (40W wired, 27W wireless) keeps the Mate 30 Pro running with over 20 hours of battery life.
The Mate 30 Pro are offered in both 4G and 5G versions, with integrated 5G support in the Kirin 990 SoC. Huawei 5G on this phone is “Sub-6GHz 5G.” meaning it is different from the “mmWave 5G” being touted by Qualcomm on the 24GHz-90GHz spectrum. Both mmWave and sub-6GHz networks are only starting to rollout worldwide, so we will have to see how that plays out in the years to come.
Like the Huawei P30 Pro, there is no headphone jack. We’ve yet to get our hands on a Huawei “Nano memory” card, but this model supports that format in one of the dual-SIM slots.
The Huawei Mate 30 Pro comes in space silver, emerald green, cosmic purple, or black on the base colors and then there is an option for vegan leather wrapped models in forest green and orange. Pricing starts at 1099 or around ~$1,200 USD for the Mate 30 Pro and goes up to 1199 or around ~$1,300 USD if you want 5G capabilities. No U.S. carriers will be offering this phone, but we are sure that some folks will be bringing them into the coutry.