Huawei will launch the Mate 30 series on September 19th

We get the official word now. Huawei's next flagship series is going to launch on September 19th. And the biggest question hanging over it is what operating system the Mate 30 series will run. The company teased the upcoming event with a short video on Twitter. It'll be launched in Munich, Germany, with the tagline "Rethink Possibilities." The company certainly has to rethink possibilities because it's still banned from doing businesses with US companies—including its software provider Google. We wait to see how Huawei will respond to this considerable limitation.

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Patent applications show dual-tone design for the Huawei P30

The European patent office just published a few days ago a new patent application that shows two new colour options for the Huawei P30. One is a gradient variation of the P30's Breathing Crystal model. You can see that the top third of the phone is a separate panel, but it has a more subtle effect. The latter is a dual-tone paint job in a darker grey with off white, which is reminiscent of the "panda" version of the Pixel 2 XL. The applications suggest that Huawei might launch these models at IFA alongside the Mate 30 announcement. We don't know if the P30 Pro will get the colour options as well.

Source: GSMArena

Leaked Huawei Mate 30 Pro promo image surfaces online with quad-camera setup

A leaked promo image of the upcoming Huawei Mate 30 Pro has surfaced online, suggesting that the latest iteration of the Mate series is coming soon. While this series is usually unveiled around October, GSMArena claims that the Mate 30 line will be unveiled next month on September 6th. The image also gives us a glimpse of a quad-camera setup at the back of the phone. Previous leaks claim the Mate 30 Pro has two large sensors: 1/1.55-inch for the main camera and 1/1.7-inch for the ultra-wide camera. And a third camera that's said to offer a 5x periscope zoom. So, this could suggest that the fourth sensor might be a ToF 3D sensor.

The leaked photo mentions Kirin 990, which Huawei has confirmed, and Leica hardware being used. Huawei has had a long-standing relationship with the camera maker. We could probably expect the Mate 30 Pro to have better enhancements than the Mate 30.

Teardown shows that the Huawei 5G modem is less efficient than Qualcomm's version

A new IHS Markit teardown pitted early 5G smartphones against each other. And one of the revelations of the report is the weaknesses of Huawei's 5G chip. It's been found to be larger, less efficient, and more expensive than its counterpart from Qualcomm and even Samsung. The Kirin 980 chip already has a 4G/3G/2G modem, but the addition of the Balong 5000 5G modem renders the former redundant. Huawei says the Balong 5000 5G is the first commercial multimode 5G/4G/3G/2G chip. This additional chip takes up more space, which made the Mate 20X larger than it should be. Aside from being less efficient, having two modem chips in one phone is also more expensive. And at this moment, it still doesn't support millimeter 5G. It seems Huawei still has a lot of work to do to make a better 5G modem for its smartphones.

Source: GSMArena