A week after Apple kicked off its annual fall product launch, today Huawei Mate 30 Pro has been officially announced, and it’s arrived alongside the Huawei Mate 30 without pre-installed Google-licensed apps as the Chinese tech giant faces fallout from a U.S. blacklist earlier this year.
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It’s the Mate 30 Pro which is the more interesting of the duo, boasting a higher-resolution display, bigger battery and more advanced camera features.
In total Huawei announced four new smartphones at today’s launch event in Munich, with the Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro joined by the pricier Mate 30 5G and the exceedingly expensive Porsche Design Mate 30 RS.
Related story: Huawei’s next flagship smartphone will launch without Google Apps
Huawei Mate 30 Pro Release Date and Price
It’s not yet clear which regions the Mate 30 phones will be available in – we expect them to be available in some European countries, but we’d pretty much write off any hopes of a US release. We’re still waiting for Huawei to announce the Mate 30 Pro release date, but we’ll update this section as soon as we know more.
The Huawei Mate 30 price is €799 (around $880 / £700 / AU$1,300 – we’re still waiting for official pricing for the US, UK and Australia) which gets you 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.
If you fancy more storage space and slightly more premium features, the Huawei Mate 30 Pro price is €1,099 (around $1,200 / £970 / AU$1,700) which gets you 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
Both of those devices only have 4G connectivity, so if you want a handset that can connect to the new 5G networks you’ll need the Huawei Mate 30 Pro 5G, which costs €1,199 (around $1,300 / £1,060 / AU$1,900) and again gives you 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
For those of you with a little more money (than sense) you can treat yourself to the Porsche Design Mate 30 RS which will set you back the princely sum of €2,095 (around $2,300 / £1,850 / AU$3,400) – but you do at least get 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage for your significant outlay.
Huawei Mate 30 Pro Design and Display
The Huawei Mate 30 Pro has a large, 6.53-inch curved OLED display which Huawei calls its ‘Horizon Display’, offering an “ultimate viewing experience”. At its edges, the screen curves at an 88-degree angle.
It has a resolution of 2400 x 1176, an 18.4:9 aspect ratio and support for HDR. Inside the notch there’s a new gesture sensor, along with two 3D depth cameras and a selfie camera.
There’s no visible earpiece on the front of the Mate 30 Pro, with the speaker built into the display, and there isn’t a volume button on the side of the handset – instead the volume is controlled by tapping then sliding your finger along the curved side of the screen.
Round the back, Huawei has changed the shape of its camera setup, with a large circular bump housing four sensors.
The Huawei Mate 30 Pro has IP68 dust and water resistance, and will be available in four colors: Classic Black, Space Silver, Cosmic Purple and Emerald Green.
If those colors, or the glass finish they come in, don’t take your fancy the Mate 30 Pro also comes in a Vegan Leather Edition, with two color choices: Orange and Forest green.
The Huawei Mate 30 has a larger 6.62-inch display, but with a lower 2340 x 1080 resolution and a 19.5:9 aspect ratio, plus a smaller 26.2mm wide notch.
The Huawei Mate 30 will also be available in four colors, with a glass finish: Classic Black, Space Silver, Cosmic Purple and Emerald Green, and it will also be available in the two vegan leather options. It’s IP53 dust and water resistant.
Huawei went to great lengths on stage to explain just how compact its new flagships are, even though they have large screens, and it claims this makes the handsets easier to hold in one hand.
The new phones are effectively all-screen – there’s some bezel at the top and bottom, and on the sides of the Mate 30, but it’s minimized to the point of being non-existent.
Huawei Mate 30 Pro Specs
Huawei Mate 30 Pro cameras
The Huawei Mate 30 rear camera setup comprises a 16MP f/2.2 ultra-wide camera, 40MP f/1.8 super-sensing wide camera, 8MP f/2.4 telephoto, and focus-assist laser.
There’s OIS and AIS image stabilization and support for a 3x optical and 30x digital zoom.
The Huawei Mate 30 Pro has a more advanced system, with four rear cameras which have been engineered in partnership with camera brand Leica.
There’s a 40MP ultra-wide cine camera, 40MP super-sensing wide camera, 8MP telephoto lens and a 3D depth-sensing camera.
You also get dual OIS and AIS image stabilization, and support for a 3x optical and 30x digital zoom.
The Mate 30 Pro is a serious video recording machine too. There’s support for 4K HDR+ 60fps capture, 7680fps ultra slow motion, real-time Bokeh video, 4K timelapse and low-light capture.
Huawei Mate 30 Pro Performance and Features
Both the Huawei Mate 30 Pro and Mate 30 pack in the flagship Kirin 990 chipset, which in the 30 Pro 5G also features a 5G modem.
Huawei is promising that groundbreaking 5G speeds will be possible with the Mate 30 Pro 5G, although we’ll have to wait to get our hands-on review units to see if they can live up to those claims.
There’s dual-SIM support, with both SIM cards able to support a 5G connection at the same time.
The Kirin 990 chip provides improvements in CPU performance, latency and GPU performance over the previous model.
The Huawei Mate 30 Pro comes with a 4,500mAh battery, while the Huawei Mate 30 gets a 4,200mAh power pack.
Both phones support super-fast 40W wired charging and 27W fast wireless charging. Huawei has also doubled the speed of its reverse wireless charging, which allows you to use the Mate 30 as a wireless charging pad for other devices.
When it comes to the interface the Huawei Mate 30 and 30 Pro come with the firm’s EMUI 10 interface which features its own dark mode, new animations, and fresh color themes.
EMUI 10 supports an always-on display which can show you the time, date, battery and notifications – and it’s not just a black and white display, with a variety of color and design options on offer.
Porsche Design Huawei Mate 30 RS
Just like last year, Huawei partnered again with Porsche to a special edition of Mate 30. It has a handcrafted premium leather back with a long vertical glass stripe. It runs on the same Kirin 990 5G chipset.
On the rear, it features two 40-megapixel sensors, an 8MP telephoto lens, and a Time-of-Flight sensor and a 32MP selfie camera on the front is a 32MP selfie camera.
For those of you with a little more money (than sense) you can treat yourself to the Porsche Design Mate 30 RS which will set you back the princely sum of €2,095 (around $2,300 / £1,850 / AU$3,400) – but you do at least get 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage for your significant outlay.
