The Huawei Mate 30 Pro is Huawei’s upcoming flagship, seeing that the “Mate” series showcases the latest and greatest of the Chinese OEM each year. The specifications of the upcoming device have allegedly been leaked by way of IT Home, with the surprise being that the Mate 30 will copy the OnePlus 7 Pro’s 90Hz display.
From the leaked specifications, the Huawei Mate 30 pro flagship will feature an AMOLED panel with a 90Hz refresh rate (essentially, a 90Hz display, as it is called), Huawei’s proprietary Kirin 985 SoC, the Balong 5000 5G modem for yes, 5G connectivity. This isn’t the first 5G phone, however: that crown belongs to the Huawei Mate 20 x 5G, certified in China recently.
The Mate 30 Pro will feature a dual-camera setup on the front with a quad-camera setup on the device’s back cover, supporting 50x digital zoom and 5x optical zoom. No word yet on the aperture of the cameras on the device. Keeping the lights on will be a 4,200mAh battery with Huawei’s 55W SuperCharge technology, which will charge the device back up to 100 % in no time at all. The AMOLED panel will come in at 6.71 inches, so buyers of the Mate 30 are looking at a wide screen on which to view content and play games.
The Mate 30 will also see a hole punch display, no doubt in part thanks to the inspiration of Samsung with regard to its Infinity-O and Infinity-U displays. The hole punch display refers to the camera, that the camera will be placed under the display and a hole punched out on the display where the camera sits.
The biggest surprise here in the upcoming Mate 30 Pro is that it will break with current Huawei smartphones and embrace the 90Hz display. Former smartphones for Huawei have topped off at 60Hz, which is the minimum refresh rate for viewing content.
The 90Hz refresh rate is a rarity for most consumer smartphones nowadays, as OnePlus is one of the only OEMs to embrace it on the company’s “pro” device. Huawei’s embracing of the 90Hz refresh rate is for good, as greater refresh rates lead to smoother gaming experiences on consumer devices.
Of course, the OnePlus 7 Pro and the upcoming Huawei Mate 30 will offer improved gaming graphics and play but they won’t match the sheer, raw power of gaming smartphones such as the Razer phones that have embraced, and the upcoming ASUS ROG 2 Phone that will embrace the 120Hz refresh rate. But then and again, consumer devices are made for a variety of needs while gaming smartphones cater to a subset of the population (hardcore gamers).
The Mate 30 will come in Classic Blue color with a Gradient Rear (the gradient look being one of Huawei’s trademarks) and a Red color with a semi-frosted rear.
There is a glaring omission in the specifications for the device: that is, no OS system update is mentioned. The Huawei Mate series has always launched with Google’s Android aboard, but the Chinese OEM’s current political situation could complicate matters.
As of August 19, Huawei will no longer be able to update its Android software with Google because of the Android license revocation Google issued as a result of the Trump Ban. Huawei’s name was added to the Entity List in the US, with the President reminding American companies that they must consult the US Government before doing business with the Shenzhen-based company.
With Huawei’s Android pursuits running out on August 19, the Huawei Mate 30, if it will feature Android 9.0 Pie with EMUI 9.0 or 9.1 (and that’s a pretty big “if” at this point), must be released before the next two months expire. That means that, with the leaked specifications, interested buyers could see this smartphone released before the end of this summer.
Huawei does have its own OS called “Hongmeng” that it has trademarked in China, but the upcoming proprietary OS is for entry-level and mid-range devices, not the high-end Mate series. Huawei has said that it won’t bring Hongmeng to the Mate series until further testing has been done in the entry-level and mid-range lineups.
The September-October release timeframe of Hongmeng means that the Huawei Mate 30 (with perhaps an earlier release) is ruled out for Huawei’s proprietary OS. Of course, Huawei has been trying to attract Google Play developers to its AppGallery app store, so perhaps Hongmeng could become Huawei’s Android substitute (it would likely be called “ARK OS” elsewhere).
Whether the Mate series is released with Google’s Android is up in the air at this point, so the question of the phone’s release is still undecided. Huawei could choose not to release the phone this year, as it is considering pulling the Honor 20 from European shelves if it does not sell. Huawei stands to experience 40-60% decline in the international market this year and could see some 40-60 million fewer smartphone sales than in years past.