Huawei’s partnership with Porsche Design has yielded some interesting results. The latest smartphone carries a rather long name – Porsche Design Huawei
Huawei’s partnership with Porsche Design has yielded some interesting results. The latest smartphone carries a rather long name – Porsche Design Huawei Mate RS – to make sure that all the branding gets in there.
The Mate RS is a luxury phone, that much is clear from the €1695 asking price and the iconic Porsche Design branding, but it’s also huge nod to the future, bringing with it a fingerprint scanner that sits under the display on the front, something that’s not in Huawei’s new flagship devices .
It’s perhaps a strange arrangement, because there’s a second fingerprint scanner on the back too. Some might call this convenience, others might call it redundancy. Until we review this phone fully, we won’t know how well it works, but it’s certainly new.
If the phone looks familiar, that’s because it looks a lot like the Samsung Galaxy S9+. That was also true of a previous Porsche Design handset – the Porsche Design Mate 9 – and in many ways that’s dictated by the curves of the glass to the front and back.
We’re not sure how Apple will take this: while Huawei’s new P20 flagship looks like the iPhone X, Huawei chose to model the super-luxury model after a Samsung phone. Samsung should be quite pleased about that.
There are two colours available for the Mate RS – black and red – although early information suggests that red will only be available in China, so tuck your credit card away a while longer. There’s also IP67 waterproofing so if you drop it off the side of your yacht than all will be ok.
At its heart, the Mate RS has similar innards to the new Huawei P20 Pro; that’s a Kirin 970 platform with 6GB of RAM, but it gets 256GB of storage at a base level. You can opt for 512GB of storage, but that puts the price up to €2095. Choices, choices.
What you don’t get is microSD however. That’s one thing that missing from this latest round of devices, as is the 3.5mm headphone socket. That means you need to use the Type-C USB for audio as well as charging, although the onboard speakers and connected headphones also support Dolby Atmos for a more immersive audio experience.
Where the Mate RS knocks it out of the park is with a 4000mAh battery. This is the same capacity as the Huawei P20 Pro and we can’t wait to see how long this lasts – we’d expect to be able to get 2 days from it. It’s supported by fast wired charging, and fast wireless charging, with Huawei boasting that the Mate RS will charge faster than the iPhone X wirelessly.
It’s really throwing down the gauntlet.
That also applies to fingerprint scanners. The placement on the rear is pretty conventional for Huawei, but the under-display scanner is something new. This could change how scanners are implemented in the future and if it works technically for Porsche Design, this may well be a precursor to similar inclusion in a future Huawei handset – perhaps the Mate 20?
Where the Mate RS again sits a little closer to Samsung and other top-drawer flagships is in the display. With a 6-inch 18:9 AMOLED display, it’s only a touch off the resolution of the Samsung Galaxy S9+, with 2880 x 1440 pixels, Quad HD+.
This is another area where the specs of the Mate RS step-up from the Huawei P20 models it was launched alongside. For both P20 models, Huawei chose to stick to 2244 x 1080 pixels, or Full HD+. The Mate RS technically should be more capable of producing sharper images.
First impressions of this display are pretty good, although our immediate feeling is that it isn’t as bright as the best displays out there and under the glass roof of the Grand Palais, Paris, where this device was shown, the reflections certainly showed. That’s a problem that Samsung doesn’t have – its displays can be retina-searingly bright when needed.
Still, it looks like a good display, the curves add a lovely aesthetic to this FullView display, with the colours offering plenty of pop. It’s perhaps a little strange that the colour themes on the Porsche Design handset don’t go for vibrancy, but for metallics instead, perhaps not showcasing the display to its best.
If you’re a Huawei fan, you’ll have no doubt gasped at the news of the Huawei P20 Pro’s camera configuration. Let’s just say Huawei is really going for it in the camera department.
Developed with Leica, there are two sides to the camera. The first is a dual camera that offers a 40-megapixel RGB f/1.8 camera and 20-megapixel f/1.6 monochrome camera. Together, they gather more data to give you better quality images.
The second element is an 8-megapixel f/2.4 camera offering 3x optical zoom, which is also optically stabilised. This zoom lens can also combine with the 40MP sensor to create a 5x Hybrid zoom.
That’s a whole lot of camera action, but there’s a lot more going on. Claiming the low-light crown, the 40MP sensor can use Pixel Fusion to create larger images with 2.0µm sizes, as well as sitting on a 1/1.7in type sensor, which is massive for a smartphone. That, and an ISO that runs all the way up to 102,400, means the PD Mate RS will basically be able to see in the dark.
There’s also lots of clever AI implementation, such as AI stabilisation that will let you handhold long exposures, as well as auto-recognition of different scenes to ensure that you get the best type of shot. As we said, the camera is the same as the Huawei P20 Pro, so it looks really promising.
