Last month, Huawei released its new flagship model, the Mate 30 Pro, which is one of the most important smartphones of 2019, featuring a powerful hardware and camera setup. However, there’s a HUGE obstacle that this phone has to overcome to be successful in the international markets.

Huawei is essentially banned from using Google services on its new smartphones like the Mate 30 Pro. Despite Huawei’s promise of creating a vast app library with replacements for Google apps, it would still be hard for users to give up on essential services like YouTube. There are workarounds to add Google services on the device, but they are not straightforward.

However, unlike the global market, domestic users in China can use substitutes for most google apps. And it’s a 1.4 billion people’s market, which why Huawei is still confident they can make their new flagship without google services.

If you keep the Google issue aside, the Mate 30 Pro is an excellent 2019 smartphone. We would definitely recommend it to our readers, and here’s why!

Note that our review video is shot entirely by the Mate 30 Pro! It should give you a fair idea on how the phone performs in the video department.

Huawei Mate 30 Pro Design

Let’s start with the design of Huawei’s Mate 30 Pro, which comes standard with a 6.53-inch edge-less curved screen. Our source revealed that the leading suppliers for the display are BOE and Samsung. The instant visual experience of the fully-covered curved display is quite remarkable.

And although it looks pretty cool, some users still have concerns like accidental edge touching and color deviation around the edges. But you don’t have to worry about that much. 

After several weeks of use, I can say that the colors on the display are a bit dark around the curved edges, but it’s not distracting at all. Also, Huawei cuts almost all the touch functions on its edges. But the edge does reserve a few useful but limited features. For example, because they removed the physical volume button, you can adjust it just by double-clicking the edge. So, no matter how you hold it, there are no accidental touches. Plus, there’s also an option to adjust the display aspect ratio which won’t cover the edges, if that’s what you want. This can be handy during times like gameplay, as the buttons and the display won’t move over to the sides of the screen. 

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Editor’s Pick:  Huawei Mate 30 Pro update brings camera and video optimizations

Huawei Mate 30 Pro Camera Review

The circular cameras on the back resemble the Nokia Lumia 1020, which was one of the best camera smartphones of its time. And the round combination protrudes up a bit, so I worry whether it will get scratched soon and affect the image quality. But so far, the cameras have remained unscratched.

The Huawei Mate 30 Pro is equipped with a super-sensitive Leica quad-camera combination. There’s an 8-megapixel telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom (5x hybrid zoom and 30x digital zoom), a 40-megapixel super sensing camera with a larger standard sensor, a 40MP cine wide-angle camera dedicated for video use, and an additional 3D depth-sensing camera. 

Thanks to DAVINCI’s dual-core, independent NPU neurons, the image capture and review is indeed much faster than the previous Huawei phones. The Mate 30 Pro was able to reproduce the rich colors of an object in full daylight. Even in backlit scenes, it was able to suppress the brightness and preserve the details of the characters.

The super night scene further enhances the resolution of the photos in low light environments. The results are pretty close to the effect that you get with long exposure on professional cameras, but here you don’t need a tripod, just your bare hands!  Honestly, even in the standard photo mode, most night scenes came out well lit and detailed. So, the super night mode can be reserved for those extremely low-light conditions. But it does come in handy sometimes especially when regular mode mess up the exposure in some night scenes. 

One of my favorite things about the Mate 30 Pro’s camera is the color reproduction. You probably have your own opinion about how Huawei handles saturation, but it’s hard to deny that such color reproduction is unique among all smartphones. The uniqueness is probably because of Leica’s contribution to the phone’s camera.

The samples come out pretty emotional and dramatic. So I would definitely recommend it for those who are into travel photography and humanistic photography. It’s really hard to explain why I like the Mate 30 Pro’s camera, so it’s best that I allow the below samples to show you what I’m talking about. 

Huawei MAte 30 Pro Camera Samples

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Now let’s talk about the telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom. The equivalent focal length is around 81mm. This sensor is really convenient when you want to have to shoot portraits or focus on a distant object. I do have to add that Mate 30 Pro’s telephoto camera was not as good as we expected in backlit scenes. This is especially true when we compared it with the photo shot by 2x zoom telephoto camera on Samsung Galaxy Note 10.

If we have to pick up one highlight of this camera setup, it should be the 40MP cine camera, which is the first step for Huawei to target the video market. It has a wide-ratio sensor with an 18mm equivalent focal length. The high resolution makes it one of the best wide-angle cameras in the market right now. It won’t disappoint you at all. I used it more frequently than the primary camera as it reserved the same-level detail and captured more objects in landscape photography. 

The 3D depth-sensing camera measures the depth-of-field as an additional piece of information for the three other cameras. So, when you shoot it in portrait mode, the sensor helps in simulating the blurring effect. The additional information from this sensor helps to make the subject stand out of the background and get an excellent blurred effect.

But the Huawei Mate 30 Pro’s camera isn’t without flaws. For example, the white balance detection is pretty weak and unstable, even under the same lighting conditions. The white balance shifts between the three cameras under the same lighting. And when using the 40MP high-resolution camera, the zoom option is no longer be available in its wide-angle mode. 

Huawei Mate 30 Pro Videography Review

Traditionally, we have focused on the photography skills of a smartphone camera but not much on their videography skills, mainly because smartphones were not great in shooting videos. But things have changed in 2019.

Huawei and Apple flagships have excellent filming capabilities. We’re working on a comparison of their videography skills in an upcoming video, so please stay tuned. But in this video, we want to focus on the Huawei Mate 30 Pro, which can shoot up to 4k 60fps video. 

First of all, I have to say the color reproduction is improved quite a lot thanks to the wide-ratio sensor. But it’s unstable at times as you might experience some flicker when it shoots the same scene. And such color flickers often exist when switching between different zoom cameras. Mate 30 Pro’s inconsistent video color solution makes it quite hard to edit a video in a unified color style that combines multiple shots with different zoom options. The main culprit could be Huawei’s auto AI detection.

Meanwhile, the white balance can also be an issue in videos. Sometimes it’s not easy to have the correct white balance under some complicated lighting conditions. Please check out review video above for video samples. 

Remember how terrible the stabilization was on the P30 Pro? But this time, the Huawei Mate 30 Pro has fixed it well through image cutting and OIS. We found both the moving shots and the stabilized shots were smooth with excellent stabilization. It even remained quite stable when we were holding the phone for 3x zoom filming. 

From the video samples shot by the wide-angle cine camera, we did see the ambition of Huawei in the video department. The dynamic range was improved significantly. Again, thanks to the RYYB pixel arrangement, it reserved an excellent brightness under most lighting conditions. But under strong contrast, the images were not sharp enough with the loss of darkness detail. As we used the telephone camera for a closer shot, the detail loss problem is much more apparent due to its 8MP resolution.

Overall, right now, the Mate 30 Pro is not able to challenge those professional filming machines. If you want great video quality, you probably need some accessories or equipment for extreme conditions.

Professional filming would include some smooth zoom-in or zoom-out shots. Unfortunately, the Mate 30 Pro is still not able to simulate it smoothly. There were visible image stutters and color changes.  

The official camera app features a dual-view mode for filming, but it is limited among the rear cameras. Unfortunately, we cannot use the front and back cameras at the same time. This could have been a fabulous feature for vloggers, but note that Huawei can still add it via a future update. So, we’re looking forward to seeing more features in the camera app. 

I would also like to add Huawei has killed a few bugs in the Mate 30 Pro’s camera in the recent update. So, if you have any issues with zoom or wide-angle modes, please update your phone. 

The 256x/7860fps Slo-motion video of Huawei Mate 30 Pro. Not a bright outdoor condition.#HuaweiMate30Pro #7680fps pic.twitter.com/MbHfqFJ9DZ

— GIZMOCHINA (@gizmochina) September 29, 2019

The Mate30pro also supports 7,680 frames of ultra-high-speed photography in slow motion, making it the most powerful Huawei smartphone for video recording. And we will have a special video to introduce it to you soon.

So that’s all the essential details that you need to know about the Mate 30 Pro.

Is the Huawei Mate 30 Pro leading the camera competition in the smartphone market? Yes, at least for now. 

For general users or most vloggers, the overall quality of the quad-camera combination is very powerful. However, if compared with professional filming machines, the drawbacks would impact your outcomes quite significantly. 

To conclude, the Mate 30 Pro is one of the best camera flagships in the smartphone market right now, especially for photography!

For our detailed review of the Mate 30 Pro including its battery and performance, please check this article.

UP NEXT: The upcoming Huawei P40 could dual boot HarmonyOS and Android & that’s probably the Right Way Forward

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Although Huawei’s P10 series is the latest flagship smartphone lineup from the company, the Huawei Mate 9 is actually not too old and still stands as a powerful flagship device. With Kirin 960 inside and 4GB of RAM, the phone is as powerful as most flagships in the market today. But given that it’s been a few months since the phone went on sale, the pricing of the device has gone down, bringing it near to the $500 mark.

Considering its beautiful 5.9-inch 1080p display with 2.5D arc screen, powerful 20MP + 12MP dual cameras as well as a large 4000mAh battery, the Mate 9 is a pretty good deal at $550. Huawei is one of the top rated smartphone manufacturers in the market today and the quality of its products have been stellar so far. At $550, the Huawei Mate 9 looks like a good deal, but you can get the phone for an even lower price. We managed to get a special $40 coupon: HMATE9 for the Huawei Mate 9 which drops the price of the flagship right down to $499.99!

Overall, at this price, the phone is a great deal. Just use the coupon: HMATE9 to bring down the price to $499.99. Check out the link below for details.

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After the grand release of the Mate 9 and the Mate 9 Porsche Design back in Europe a few days back, now it was time for Huawei to release its new models in its home country, China. However apart from releasing the above-mentioned devices, the tech giant also unveiled a China-exclusive model, the Huawei Mate 9 Pro at the event today.

Since two of the models were already released internationally, you must already be familiar with their design and specs. As for the Mate 9 Pro, take it as a Mate 9 Porsche Design variant, without the Porsche branding to inflate the price.

Here are the key differences between the three models.

The Huawei Mate 9 comes with a 5.9-inch Super AMOLED display with 1080p resolution and a rear placed fingerprint sensor. There are six color options for this standard model including mocha gold, champagne gold, silver moonlight, ceramic white, gray sky and bright black.

The Huawei Mate 9 Pro on the other hand, comes with a 5.5-inch curved flexible display with the resolution bumped up to 2K and the fingerprint placed on the front. There are four color options for the Pro variant namely amber gold, rose gold, silver and gray.

Finally, the Mate 9 Porsche design version comes with a unique look, as explained in our international launch coverage, featuring a 5.5-inch flexible 2K display, 7.5mm thin body, and front facing fingerprint sensor. This particular limited edition is only available in black color.

RELATED: Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design Camera Samples

While there were some differences, the basic hardware seems to be the same on all the three devices. They are powered by Huawei’s latest chip, the Kirin 960 octa-core processor with Mali-G71 GPU with support for Vulkan graphics standards. These phones support Huawei Pay and also come with chip level built-in security features. There’s a large 4000mAh battery common to the three models with SuperCharge fast charging that promises quick charging times thanks to 3.5-5V / 5A charging standards. They also support Cat. 12 LTE speeds.

The camera is definitely the highlight of the Mate series, and all three have a 20MP monochrome + 12MP color sensor dual camera module at the back. Other camera features include 2x zoom, Laser Focus, OIS, and dual LED flash. Up front, there’s an 8MP f/1.9 aperture shooter. Coming to the software, the three models will run on Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box based on EMUI 5.0 interface.

As for the pricing, the Huawei Mate 9 4GB + 32GB version is priced at 3399 Yuan ($497), 4GB + 64GB version is priced at 3899 Yuan ($570), and 6GB + 128GB version is priced at 4499 Yuan ($658).

The Mate 9 Pro starts at 4699 Yuan ($687) for the 4GB + 64GB and goes up to 5299 Yuan ($775) for the 6GB + 128GB version.

The Huawei Mate 9 Porsche Design version is priced at 8999 Yuan ($1316) with 6GB + 128GB.

The Mate 9 and Mate 9 Pro will go on sale via major retailers in China from today i.e. November 14. The Mate 9 Porsche Design limited edition model will go on sale on December 15.

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After a long set of rumors that emerged in the past few weeks, Huawei has officially announced the Huawei Mate 9 flagship. This is the next generation version of the Mate 8, coming with improved specs and high-end features to take on the likes of iPhone 7 Plus, Google Pixel XL, and even the Galaxy S7 Edge. And yes, there is a dual curved edge version, as expected, however, more on that later. First, let’s take a look at what the regular Mate 9 flagship offers.

Design wise, Huawei has retained the same polished metal body as the previous generation Mate 8, which is actually a pretty good decision. The metal body looks premium and it comes in multiple colors like Space Gray, Moonlight Silver, Champagne Gold, Mocha Brown and Ceramic White making sure that you have plenty of options to choose from.

While looks may not have received a lot of upgrades, there are a lot of changes in the hardware department. The Mate 9 is powered by the recently released and much more powerful Huawei’s Kirin 960 chipset. To remind you, this chip has 4 x Cortex A73 cores @ 2.5GHz and 4 x Cortex A53 @1.8GHz. For storage, you get 64GB of expandable ROM and 4GB of RAM.

This year, the camera has been the real highlight of Huawei smartphones and the same goes with the Mate 9 as well. The flagship comes with a new 20MP + 12MP dual camera setup at the back, certified by Leica. This is similar to the setup on its other phones, with the 20MP being the monochrome sensor and the 12MP being the color sensor. Other features include laser autofocus, f/2.0 aperture, dual LED flash and OIS. While there is no optical zoom as previously rumored, the phone features what Huawei calls Hybrid zoom.

The Huawei Mate 9 also retains the large 4000mAh battery as its predecessor and the company claims that its ‘SuperCharger’ can charge the phone to 58 percent in just half an hour. As for software, the phone comes with the new Android Nougat 7.0 with an overhauled EMUI version. The new UI seems to be cleaner and faster than before, which is definitely a good sign.

There are a few smart features as well, for example, Huawei claims that the Mate 9 will get faster with time, as opposed to current Android phones which often lags after a few months of usage. The software will observe the way you use the phone and in time, it will smartly allocate the processing power for your essential needs. The company said that the performance could improve as much as 8 percent in over 10,000 hours of simulated usage. That’s a pretty good claim, but we will have to see whether it’s the case in real life.

The Mate 9 seems like a really great phablet, coming with powerful internals, good camera, a large battery that lasts more than a day easily and the latest software. All this for a price tag of 699 Euros or $775.

There’s a Mate 9 Porsche Design Version as well, which is the most premium flagship ever made by Huawei, but it does come at a humongous price! More on that in the next article which is coming your way very soon.

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Huawei P9 turned out to be a surprisingly good camera smartphone. Till now, Samsung and iPhone were considered to manufacture the best camera phones in the market, but that changed this year with the introduction of the Huawei P9 with its Lecia certified dual cameras at the back. Now, it’s been almost six months since the phone was released and we are expecting to see the Huawei Mate 9, which is the company’s top-end flagship of 2016 pretty soon.

Now, IHS Analyst Kevin Wang has said that the Huawei Mate 9 flagship should be released in the fourth quarter of this year. This is in line with the expected release schedule as we saw the Mate 8 release in November last year. This year, we can expect the Mate 9 to release sometime in December.

RELATED: Huawei Mate 9 Poster Leak: Kirin 960 & 20MP Dual Cameras

Since this is going to be the company’s best flagship of 2016, we expect the camera on the back of the device to be even better than the Huawei P9. According to the recent rumors, we should see a 20MP dual camera setup at the back, better than the 12MP dual cameras found on the back of the P9.

As for the other specs, the Huawei Mate 9 is said to come with the new Kirin 960 flagship chipset featuring Cortex A73 Artemis cores manufactured on 16nm process. Rest of the details about the upcoming flagship are scarce at the moment, but we can expect more details in the weeks to come. There’s still a few weeks left for December and more details should emerge by then.

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Now, an insider seems to have revealed some details about the upcoming Mate 9 handset on Weibo. He states that the Huawei Mate 9 should be using the Kirin 970 chipset. What’s more, he adds that the chip will be built on the highly efficient TSMC’s 10nm FinFET process. The source further states that Helio X30 is another chip that is going to use this ultra-efficient manufacturing node from this Taiwanese semiconductor foundry.

Now, we have been hearing rumors that the upcoming flagship was going to feature Kirin 960. In fact, we even have the possible specs of the 960 chip, unlike the Kirin 970 (about which we have hardly any info) mentioned by this insider. According to the previous information, the Kirin 960 chip is supposed to come with ARM Cortex A73 Artemis cores and Cortex A53 cores in big.LITTLE architecture with an upgraded GPU (possibly octa-core) and new LTE baseband including CDMA and Cat. 12 support. Moreover, this chip is said to be manufactured on TSMC’s 16nm process.

RELATED: Mate 9 Rumored to come with 20MP dual cameras at the back

Considering the new information (rumor) we have at hand, it’s possible that Huawei decides to use the Kirin 960 for some of its upper mid-range smartphones like the upcoming Mate S2 and Kirin 970 for Mate 9 and next year’s top-end flagships.

The Mate S2 is almost confirmed to meet us on September first week, while expect the Mate 9 to be released around November-December period this year.

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We all expected Huawei to release the Mate 8 flagship at IFA Berlin. However, later the company released a new teaser which showed the letter ‘S’. Given that the recent leaked images of the flagship was almost similar to the Mate 7, we believed that the next Huawei flagship was going to be called as the Mate 7S. However, earlier today, we spotted the Huawei Mate S on a certification website, which means the name is almost official.

GCF (Global Certification Forum) recently certified a device with the marketing name as the Huawei Mate S. This kind of fixes the confusion that was associated with this device. So, we will most likely see the new Mate S handset at IFA Berlin this year.

We have already seen that the phone will look almost the same as last year’s Huawei Mate 7. The all metal body, camera and fingerprint sensor placement are all in line with the previous generation model. However, when it comes to specs, the Huawei Mate S is expected to feature the Kirin 935 chipset that powers the Huawei P8 flagship. Further, the phone is rumored to come with 3GB RAM, 5.7-inch full HD 1080p display,20MP rear camera sensor, and Android 5.0.

One of the highlights of the device is going to be the touchscreen. Richard Yu, the CEO of Huawei had earlier said that the new flagship Mate S was going to come with a unique touchscreen. Later we saw a couple of posters highlighting the words, “The power of touch”. From all these hints, it looks like the Mate S will feature a Force Touch display. We already know that the Axon Mini will come with this screen, but it look like the Mate S will probably release first in the market.

Anyways, stay tuned for more information.

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Huawei has confirmed that it will be announcing a flagship on September 2 just before IFA Berlin. We have already seen a video which shows us a Mate device (we are not yet sure its the Mate 8) with subtle design changes as compared to the Mate 7. Now, we have come across another video showing off a new Mate flagship in an all black body.

The video shows that the body will be extremely thin. It looks like the thickness is under 7mm. The back will be slightly rounded with a curved design, that should provide a comfortable grip. The camera placement is traditional, on the top at the back, along with the fingerprint sensor just below it.

What’s interesting is the port at the bottom. It doesn’t look like any of the USB ports that we have seen lately, not even the reversible USB Type-C. Could it be a new magnetic port? Possible, but we cannot be sure of that at the moment. Huawei had said that the new Mate flagship will bring an advanced technology that will surprise the world. Could it be this tech?

Another interesting part of the device is the unique white button at the side. It stands out from the body and looks like a special function key. Also, it doesn’t look like this device is made out of metal. Instead, Huawei seems to have used plastic or polycarbonate body on the device.

Anyways, now we have two different devices that claim to debut at IFA Berlin this year. Let’s see which one of them is finally launched by the company in September.

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