Overnight, Huawei launched the new Mate 30 Pro in Germany, and while we couldn’t be there in person (having just flown back from Berlin last week), the good news is that the world is a very small place, and a good friend of ours Matteo Doni from TechTravelGeeks was over in Munich as a guest of Huawei UK to attend the launch.
Not only has Matteo shared some great photos of a real device with us – our photos published in the announcement story were with pre-production models for those with a keen eye – but he’s also shot a brief hands-on video which you can watch above.
One thing that wasn’t quite as clear in our pre-production models, but the retail models make much clearer, is the laser-etched rear surface which give the glass back a tactile grip on the lower half, with a smooth transition to smooth glass (smooth) around the camera array and top of the phone:
Of course, it wouldn’t be a TechTravelGeeks hands on without a banana for scale, and quite helpfully, this gives you a good idea of the size and shape of the Mate 30 Pro. Note, though, that this is a rather decently sized banana.
As Matteo notes, not once during the whole event did Huawei Consumer CEO Richard Yu (or anyone else afterward) mention the word Android. Only EMUI 10, the user experience which has been polished and which runs on what we now know to be AOSP. The Huawei App Gallery was highlighted and Huwaei’s HMS (or Huawei Mobile Services) core, which Huawei claims will make apps work better on their devices.
Speaking of apps, Huawei is spending over a billion US dollars on facilitating developers to deploy to the Huawei App Gallery using HMS. It will be interesting to see who jumps for the opportunity, given the fairly narrow band of devices that will use HMS over the widely more available (and dare I say useful) Google Mobile Services (GMS) core.
Needless to say, the implication is clear: the Mate 30 series ships without Google Services initially, but may be added through an OTA at some point in the future. We have heard from a number of sources that, should the trade ban against Huawei come to a close, Huawei may be able to add Google’s GMS core to the Mate 30 Pro within days using an OTA upgrade.
Matteo only had a short time for some hands on with a Mate 30 Pro and tells us he was impressed by the overall feel in the hand and capabilities. As with our experience here in Sydney, Huawei kept a watchful eye meaning there were limited opportunities to really try out the Mate 30 Pro and see what it could do in the hands-on environment.
Once we get review units, we’ll give it a proper going through.
I’m all for progress but no volume buttons seems like a step backwards to me.
I would agree mate ,” progress ” is not always a good thing ,
Other things like stupidly paper thin , tall , and narrow form factor , delicate glass with no bezels on the sides ,
removal of useful features like headphone jack and proper buttons and rockers .
It just seems dumb to me , maybe I’m just old fashioned .