The China-based phone giant just one-upped Apple and Samsung with some seriously impressive new tech.
Huawei on Tuesday announced a raft of new products at an event in London. You can watch the event as it happened in the video above.
Here’s what’s new:
Huawei Mate 20 Pro: The company’s newest flagship phone is an Android handset with a 6.39-inch, 3,120×1,440-pixel AMOLED screen. But it has a host of unique features that sets it apart from the pack, including an in-screen fingerprint reader and 3D face scanning, three rear cameras and ultrafast charging (topping off to 70 percent in 30 minutes). And it can even share its battery, wirelessly charging other devices and phones. It also offers expandable storage in the form of a new «namomemory card,» a flash memory format that’s the size of a nano-SIM.
Read: Huawei’s Mate 20 Pro is a wild bag of phone tricks
Read: Huawei Mate 20 Pro’s three cameras put to the test in London
Huawei Mate 20: Why announce one phone when you can announce two? In addition to the high-end Mate 20 Pro, Huawei has a step-down device, too. The standard Mate 20 has a tiny teardrop notch, a less muscular camera array (albeit still three rear lenses) and the fingerprint reader moves from inside the screen to the back of the phone. It has a slightly smaller battery, too — «only» 4,000 mAh, versus the Pro’s 4,200. But the screen on the standard Mate is a bit larger: 6.53 inches diagonal.
Huawei Mate 20 RS: Following in the footsteps of the earlier Mate, Huawei will also offer a luxury Porsche Design version with leather accents.
Huawei Mate 20 X: If that 6.53-inch screen of the Huawei Mate 20 isn’t big enough for you, you’re in luck. The company will also offer the jumbo-sized Mate 20 X, with a whopping 7.2-inch screen and 5,000-mAh battery. There’s even a gamepad attachment — sold separately, of course — that adds a thumb stick and d-pad, too.
3D Live Emoji: Huawei unveiled a new feature it calls 3D Live Emoji, which — in the demo, at least — seemed to one-up the AR offerings from Apple. Using Google’s AR Core technology, it allows real-world objects to be scanned in and then placed and animated in a mixed reality environment. On stage, a Huawei executive scanned in a stuffed panda, then showed it interacting and dancing with another person. The resulting mixed reality scene could be captured on photo and video and saved or shared on social media, too.
Huawei Watch GT: Also unveiled today was a new smartwatch. The Watch GT ditches Google’s Wear OS and instead opts for Huawei’s own Light OS. It’s a round watch that promises up to 22 hours of battery life with GPS and heart-rate tracking engaged, and up to 2 weeks of battery life when those features aren’t used.
Read: Huawei Watch GT ditches Wear OS for longer battery life
Suffice it to say, Huawei continues to push the envelope in terms of features and performance on phones. But for American consumers, Huawei announcements continue to be exercises in FOMO. Following open Congressional testimony in February in which the heads of the CIA, FBI and NSA bluntly advised all Americans not to purchase or use Huawei products and services out of concerns that they’re used to spy on Americans, the company’s products have effectively been unavailable from US wireless carriers and most retailers.
Originally published Oct. 15. Update, Oct. 16: This story was originally published as a preview of the event and has been updated with everything Huawei announced.
