new Mate 70, Mate 70 Pro and Mate X6 Fold

This is the moment of truth for Huawei, where it must demonstrate that it is capable of becoming independent from the rest of the Android mobile sector and charting its own path. So far, it is doing better than expected, regaining first place in sales in China and benefiting from the great success of the first triple foldable mobile phone, the Mate XT.

But now three launches are coming that may reveal Huawei's strategy, for better and for worse. They are the first phones designed for HarmonyOS Next; Huawei's new operating system and the first developed from scratch and without depending on the Android kernel, with its own kernel and native applications. Therefore, the success of this platform will largely depend on the success of these mobile phones, and this will be the litmus test in its local market.

For these important launches, Huawei has played it safe, with devices focused on what the company does best: they are high-end mobile phones that place a high importance on photography and premium experience. On the one hand, we have the new Mate 70 and Mate 70 Prosuccessors to some of the brand's most popular mobile phones to date.

We envision mobile phones that are large and very comprehensive in terms of “hardware” and features. Even the smallest model, the Mate 70, has a 6.7-inch screen based on LTPO OLED technology with FHD+ resolution and a variable refresh rate between 1 and 120 Hz, with a maximum brightness of 2,500 nits . The Pro model is expanded to 6.9 inchesmaintaining the same technical characteristics, as well as second generation Kunlun Glass protection with greater resistance to falls.

He also highlights that these phones join the recent trend of IP69 certification, which adds protection against pressurized water and which came out with the realme GT7 Pro launched today in Europe. A curious detail is that the screens do not have fingerprint sensors, which have been moved to the power button, just like premium phones before and today's foldables.

Photography is the strong point Huawei mobile phones, and this continues in this Mate generation. The main camera features an f/1.4 – f/4.0 variable aperture lens with 50MP resolution and OIS stabilization, and is accompanied by a 40MP wide-angle lens. In the base model of the Mate 70, the third camera has a 5.5x optical zoom and a resolution of 12 Mpx, while in the Pro model it reaches 4x magnification but a resolution of 48 Mpx.

But the most interesting camera of all is undoubtedly the new multispectral sensor which is located in the center of all the chambers (curiously, not in the fourth hole, which remains closed). This camera module has a resolution of only 1.5 Mpx, but is capable of obtaining more information related to color, beyond the classic RGB (red, green, blue); Concretely, it can cover 1.5 million multispectral channels. The result, Huawei says, is more true-to-life color capture, even in complex scenes, resulting in more natural skin tones, better shadows, and images more similar to what we see with our eyes. .

The Huawei Mate 70 has a starting price in China of 5,499 yuan (722 dollars), while the Huawei Mate 70 Pro starts at 6,499 yuan (854 dollars), and all models have 12 GB of RAM. The launch in Europe has not yet been confirmed.

Huawei Mate X6

The third model Huawei announced today is a foldable, the Mate

The Mate has maximum brightness and the same refresh rate.

The Mate X6's chassis has been redesigned compared to the last generation and is now made of a basalt material to make it more resistant to damage. 65% improvement in stiffness to combat the big problem of the fragility of foldable cell phones. As for cameras, it has the same 50MP main sensor with an f/1.4-f/4.0 variable aperture lens as the Mate 70, as well as a 40MP wide-angle and 48MP telephoto lens with 4x zoom .

The price of the Huawei Mate

Although all the mobile phones presented today by Huawei are very interesting, there is one question that the company could not or did not want to answer: the chip used by these new models. It is simply unclear whether Huawei has managed to develop a suitable new chip, like the Kirin 9100, or whether it is still using the old Kirin 9000S from the last generation. Huawei cannot use the new Snapdragon 8 Elite that competitors such as the Xiaomi 15 have, due to US government sanctions, and this is the great unknown of these new devices.