Richard Yu, Chief Executive Officer of Huawei’s consumer electronics unit, surprisingly confirmed that the Chinese firm will be launching its first lineup of 2019 Android flagships with the “P30” moniker. While the name in question has already been the subject of several rumors, Mr. Yu’s decision to confirm it in a casual manner breaks industry precedent, especially given the context of his statement on the matter; while the company has yet to even announce the Mate 20 line that’s scheduled to be unveiled in mid-October, its top executive already promised that the P30 series will exceed it in terms of performance and other aspects while speaking to journalists at IFA 2018 in Berlin, Germany.
The jump in raw processing power between the P30 and Mate 20 still isn’t likely to be as significant as the one expected between the P20 and Mate 20 given the fact that Huawei’s next two Android flagship families are likely to be powered by the same processor – the Kirin 980 manufactured by its semiconductor subsidiary HiSilicon. The chip that boasts of no fewer than eight industry-first technologies was officially announced last week, underlining Huawei’s engineering efforts that now allowed it to deliver the world’s first mobile silicon produced on a 7nm process node.
As HiSilicon presented the Kirin 980 in great detail at last week’s IFA, the core capabilities of the Mate 20 and — by extension — P30 lines can already be gleaned from its spec sheet. Both product families are hence likely to continue improving the intelligent scene recognition of Huawei’s Kirin 970-equipped devices and integrate AI technologies into a wide variety of other product aspects, including battery management. If Huawei decides to follow its new product release schedule established this year, the P30 series is likely to debut near the end of the first quarter of 2019, after Mobile World Congress takes place, presumably so as to avoid a direct clash with Samsung’s Galaxy S10 devices.