During an event today, Huawei officially unveiled the Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro. Onstage, the company shared next to nothing that we didn’t already know about both phones, thanks to the devices leaking out into absolute oblivion over the past few months. the past few days have brought in nothing but floods of leaks, and now, they’ll all come to an end because everything has been made official.
Design
Huawei has this certain design language with its phones where it tries to achieve this sort of “ambitious” or “futuristic” philosophy. The Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro are prime examples of this. Both phones get huge camera housings on their backsides, while the Pro’s screen floods over the left and right sides of the devices. Huawei has a buzz word for this type of screen: “Horizon.” That basically means you can see the phone’s screen when looking at it sideways while it sits on your desk.
So in other words, it’s an alternative to Samsung’s “Edge” buzzword.
Interestingly, Huawei’s screen goes so far off the edge of the phone that it had to get rid of the physical side buttons. Now, there are touch-sensitive sections on the sides of the Mate 30 Pro that let you control the volume. I guess the power button didn’t get in the way since it’s still there.
Specs (processor, batteries, screens, etc.)
As far as specs go, there’s a lot. That’s because when Huawei does a flagship phone, they throw everything they can at it. So instead of rambling on about the specs, here’s a breakdown of them all for you to consume at your own rate. Enjoy!
- Mate 30: 6.62-inch 2340×1080 OLED display
- Mate 30 Pro: 6.53-inch 2400×1176 Horizon OLED display
- Kirin 990 processor
- 8GB RAM
- Up to 256GB storage
- Mate 30: 4,200mAh battery
- Mate 30 Pro: 4,500mAh battery
- 40W fast charging
- 27W fast wireless charging
- Reverse wireless charging
- No headphone jack (boo!)
Cameras
As far as the cameras go, this is where Huawei places a lot of its focus. On the back, you’ll find a main 40MP f/1.8 camera, an ultra-wide 16MP f/2.2 camera, and an 8MP f/2.4 telephoto camera on both the Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro. The former ships with a laser sensor on the back as well, while the latter swaps it out for a 3D camera which should help with capturing depth information.
Ultimate portrait mode, folks. It’s here.
With the cameras, Huawei includes a really cool slow-motion video recording mode that lets you capture slo-mo shots at up to 7,680 frames per second. That’s seriously impressive. You also get 4K 60fps super smooth footage, allowing for much more stable videos at a higher resolution.
And much like many other Huawei phones, the Mate 30 series includes a selfie camera with many megapixels, this time 32. Thanks to the sensor, Huawei includes (wait for it) air gestures that let you do things like scroll through menus without having to touch your screen.
The LG G8 did air gestures first this year, and the Google Pixel 4 will be doing it next. I personally don’t find any use in them, but if you owant to wave your hand around like a magician and make things happen on your phone at the same time, buy the Mate 30.
The Software Situation
The Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro sound like pretty intriguing phones so far, but it’s when you start talking about the software situation, you realize you probably shouldn’t buy either phone.
Both Mate 30 devices come with Android 10 out of the box, so it isn’t the version of Android you need to worry about. It’s the fact that Huawei is still on the United State’s entity list, and because of that, Google can’t work with them. And until something changes, Huawei can’t ship ew phones with google apps installed out of the box.
This means that not only does the Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro ship without Gmail, Google Chrome, the Google Assistant, and Google Photos, but it also means you don’t get google services, including the Play Store. The worst part? There’s no word yet on whether you can sideload the apps, which would be an absolute crime if you couldn’t.
Granted, Huawei’s biggest user base is in China, and customers in China don’t typically use Google apps to operate. Because of this, the Mate 30 series might actually perform pretty well when it launches. But if you buy it anywhere outside of china, you’re treading in dangerous waters since you won’t be able to access a vast majority of the services Android users depend on.
Pricing & Availability
If you want to actually buy a Mate 30 phone, you’ll be able to for a starting price of €799. Meanwhile, the Mate 30 Pro will start at €1099. A 5G version of the Mate 30 Pro will start at €1199, and a special Porsche Design model will start at €2095. We don’t have launch dates yet, but we should soon so stay tuned.
