So the Huawei event finishe a few hours ago in Munich, IMO when it comes to innovation there is nobody better. Some of the tech they showed was amazing, the software is ingenious and something genuinely different from what others have.
Some highlights i can remember about the Mate 30 Pro:
- The screen goes all the way down the sides, further than any other phone, they called it something like the Horizon display. Because the screen goes down the side it means there are no buttons on either side, so there are pads behind the sides that are pressure sensitive (i think) which when you double tap on an area act as volume buttons. Not sure how it will work exactly, but its different to anything anyone has ever done.
- They said something about dark mode which isn't new, its just been introduced onto my Pixel 3XL and its brilliant. But they said because it's an OLED screen and the blacks are true, it doesn't take as much battery.
- talking about batteries, the battery on this fucker is huge. They claim it can last two days of normal use and it charges faster than any other phone. I can back this up as i had a Mate 20 Pro and a OnePlus 3T and the Mate 20 was faster (although OnePlus have upgraded from Dash Charge to Hyper Charge, or something). Anyway it will be rapid charging with a battery that will easily last you all day.
- It's obviously got their latest Kirin processor in it which doesn't mean much, until it's benchmarked. But the key thing was he mentioned about the 5G support, it will support all types of 5G thats coming up as well as what's available and has something like 14 antennas in it. They showed a 5G speed test in China between the new Samsung Note and this, the Note got just under 1gb and the Mate 30 pro got abotu 1.5gb. If we ever get proper 5G, that download speed will be insane.
- the camera is amazing, they showed some pictures and some videos they had taken without filters or extra equipment and they were amazing. On top of it all was something no other phone has, video at 7680fps (YES you read that right). They showed a slow-mo video they had taken and it was like something on the Atternborough documentaries.
- there is a notch, its smaller than the iPhone and smaller than the previous Mate they had. They showed the reason for it and the various sensors they had in use. One was for 3D face scanning for face unlock but the biggest thing was gestures. I think Google has this inline for the Pixel 4, but Huawei have burst their bubble a bit and already implemented it. Seems a bit pointless to me (you move your hand in front of the screen instead of touching it) but its still a new feature nobody else has (yet).
- There is something on the notifications thats been built in to the always on mode. Basically if you get a notification, the phone has a look around to see if anyone is looking at your screen, if they are then it closes the notification so they can't see it, protecting your privacy. Bit OTT but again its something brand new.
- Something that impressed me was the auto rotate feature they have. Instead of having to rotate your phone manually OR having a normal auto rotate mode that rotates the screen when you dont want it to, this one works on the position of your eyes and rotates the screen accordingly. Its pretty fucking brilliant.
- The thing that impressed me the most, and this might not be for everyone but it looked amazing when they showed it, was the screen share mode. They had a name for it which i cant remember right now, but they were able to share the screen of the phone into a laptop, but not a full screen just a small phone screen in the corner. It allowed you to type whatsapp messages for example, drag and drop images direct from the phone photo album to your desktop and some other things. Something completely new and not seen anywhere else, although it feels a bit iOS-y to me and assume it only works with the Huawei MateBook.
There were some other things but i can't remember now, the presenters English was really bad so it was difficult to pick everything up.
BUT, the elephant in the room eventually came out, the phone will ship with NO GOOGLE apps, no Google services and no access to the App Store. Before i watched the event i wasn't worried about this as i figured anyone can sideload Google, as has been done on other phones from China. No Bueno with this phone, Huawei confirmed it won't be possible to sideload it and this was confirmed by some people who had a go at the tester phones at the event (although someone got WhatsApp on there apparently). Now i'm sure someone will figure out a way to do it and Huawei have said they will have there own app store on there and have put $1b dollars aside to pay developers as incentives to port their apps to Huawei's store, but its not enough. On top of this all, the phone is fucking expensive, i mean we're talking iPhone expensive here (£1,000 plus) and they even have a Porsche one which is closer to £2000! IMHO this will kill them, they've not truly committed to a UK release anyway but it will fall on its arse at this price anyway.
So basically, tremendous phone with amazing tech, but this US trade war has royally fucked them and they might not recover in the markets out of China.
