Huawei’s latest flagship smartphone will be the Mate 20 Pro, and the first images of it have leaked. German site WinFuture has posted press images of the upcoming smartphone, which will be announced on October 16th.
The pictures show a mostly cookie-cutter smartphone design on the front. There’s a sizable notch on the top and a bit of a “chin” bezel at the bottom.
This is Huawei’s second triple-camera flagship after the introduction of the P20 Pro in March. There’s not a huge difference between the “Mate” and “P” lines from Huawei anymore. Like the Samsung Galaxy Note and Galaxy S, Huawei started with a big and small phone, but now every phone has a massive screen, so the differences between the two have mostly evaporated. Today you just end up with two flagship releases six months apart.
There’s no visible fingerprint reader in the pictures, but the device is expected to use an in-display sensor. Rumors pin the display as a 6.3-inch OLED panel with a 3120×1440 resolution. Like the P20 Pro, the device won’t have a headphone jack.
The big news for the Mate 20 Pro is the new HiSilicon Kirin 980 SoC. The chip is from Huawei’s own chip division and will be the first 7nm SoC in an Android Phone—and the second overall after the A12 Bionic in the iPhone XS. Huawei’s SoC is an eight-core chip with four Cortex-A76 cores and four Cortex-A55 cores. Huawei is gunning for Apple’s SoC crown and has reportedly expressed confidence that the Kirin 980 will be better than the A12 Bionic.
Earlier this year, Huawei overtook Apple to become the world’s second-largest smartphone manufacturer behind Samsung. The company does well in its home nation of China and other regions like Europe but has been unable to break into the US market. The US government has been going after Huawei lately due to spying concerns. It passed a law banning usage of Huawei phones by government agencies and pressured cell carriers to drop deals with Huawei. After the government stepped in, Verizon, AT&T, and Best Buy all cancelled distribution deals with Huawei, giving the company basically zero US market presence.
