At an event in Munich, Germany today, Huawei formally announced the Mate 30 series after months of leaks. Most notably, the handsets have a circular camera module on the back, and that's probably the biggest design change. Huawei called the new design "iconic", something that the Shenzhen firm also said last year when it introduced the square camera design on the Mate 20.

On the front of the device, the Mate 30 Pro comes with a Horizon Display, curving the edges at 88 degrees. That screen is a 6.53-inch Flex OLED display, with a 2400x1176 resolution. The Mate 30 screen is flat, at 6.62 inches and 2340x1080.

Obviously, the bezels are shrunken down. With the Horizon display, it has 0mm side bezels, so none at all. The non-Pro has 2.8mm side bezels. On top, there's a 4.2mm bezel on the Pro and a 4mm bezel on the non-Pro model.

That also means that there are no buttons on the Mate 30 Pro. You'll be able to touch the sides of the screen to press buttons, and you'll even be able to move the camera shutter button around to wherever is most comfortable.

Huawei also says that the Mate 30 Pro has "the most advanced notch". It includes a gesture sensor, a selfie camera, an ambient light and proximity sensor, and a 3D depth camera.

Moving on, charging and battery life has been improved. The battery is bigger and the devices are lighter, coming in at 4,200mAh and 196g on the Mate 30 and 4,500mAh and 198g on the Mate 30 Pro. Naturally, they include support for the 40W SuperCharge technology that was introduced with the P30 Pro.

There's also faster wireless charging, coming in at 27W. Reverse wireless charging is now three times faster, presumably at 7.5W. Huawei is also introducing new car chargers, including a 40W wired charger and a dashboard mount that wirelessly charges your phone at 27W.The company also touted its 5G capabilities and the performance of its new Kirin 990 chipset. It now has 21 antennas, 15 of which are for 5G. And the handset supports eight 5G bands, compared to just three on Samsung's 5G phones. And of course, Huawei had to point out that Apple doesn't support any 5G bands.

And that leads into the camera, which gets some real improvements from the Kirin 990. The triple-lens array is a mix of sensors from the P30 and the P30 Pro. The 40MP main sensor is a 40-megapixel SuperSensing lens, which is Huawei's new RYYB technology. On the Mate 30 Pro, it's the same one as on the P30 Pro, and on the non-Pro, it's the same one as on the P30.

The same can be said for the 16MP ultra-wide; however, the eight-megapixel zoom lens is 3x on both models, which is the same sensor as the non-Pro P30. So, if you want that 5x Periscope lens, the P30 Pro is still your only option. The ISO sensitivity on the phones, from the main sensor, is 409,600 on the Pro and 204,800 on the non-Pro, so you get the same incredible low-light performance.

They support 4K 60fps video recording for the first time, but that's not all. You can shoot videos in portrait mode, 7,680fps slow motion, and it has the first studio light on a smartphone. ISO sensitivity for video is 51,200.

The Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro come in six different colors. Of course, there's Black and Space Silver, but Huawei also added Cosmic Purple and Emerald Green. Emerald Green is a gradient from matte to glossy from bottom to top, so it shouldn't catch fingerprints while you're using it.

And then there's Vegan Leather, which is another way of saying fake leather. Those come in Vegan Leather Orange, and Vegan Leather Forest Green. Huawei didn't provide a specific release date, but the new handsets will be available soon. Obviously, they won't be coming to the United States.

There's also the new Porsche Design Mate 30 RS, which is the fifth-generation Porsche Design model. It's made out of real leather, coming in red and black. It's meant to "embody the feeling of luxury", and Porsche Design says that it's designed to perform.

via : neowin

Huawei's placement on the U.S. Department of Commerce's (DOC) entity list in May banned it from purchasing any products from U.S. suppliers without approval from the United States' government. The trade sanctions were announced to be lifting in June, though it was later confirmed this applied only to widely available products. The situation hasn't looked to get any better in recent weeks, with the Commerce Department reportedly not granting any of the 130 trade license applications to trade goods with the Chinese firm it has received in the past few months.

Despite having to deal with all these issues, Huawei yesterday unveiled its flagship series of Mate 30 smartphones in Munich, Germany. As expected, the Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro won't be carrying any Google services upon launch. However, according to Android Authority, Huawei CEO Richard Yu is ready to have Google apps pushed out to the handsets "over one night" if the trade ban is lifted.

In a group interview following the Mate 30 series' unveiling, Yu clarified that aside from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) base, which serves as the foundation of EMUI, no other Google software will be included. It is no doubt quite a challenge for the Chinese firm to be launching its flagship devices in these circumstances. From Yu's aforementioned statement regarding a possible lifting of the ban scenario, however, it does look like that the company is well-prepared to equip users with Google apps as soon as possible through an over-the-air (OTA) update.

Yu also believes that Huawei is a "bargaining chip" in the U.S.' trade war with China, though he expects the situation to get resolved soon. Even executives of major U.S. tech companies, such as Microsoft, have started speaking out against their government's treatment of Huawei. Keeping all this in mind, it may be some consolation for potential Mate 30 buyers that at least the Chinese tech giant is ready to quickly bring Google apps back into the fold if and when the trade sanctions are lifted.

via :neowin