Huawei have signalled their intention to focus on the mid-range and high end devices in the future. For them, nothing is more high end than the Mate series. It is their business oriented flagship where they put all their eggs into the specs basket — the series where they do all their innovation. For this reason it comes as no surprise that the Mate 10 will be powered by their new HiSilicon Kirin 970 processor but the surprise is the lack of a visible fingerprint sensor in images leaked today.
Over the last few days we have seen details of the new Kirin 970 CPU leak not just by leakers on social media but also from Vice President of Handset Business at Huawei Consumer Business Group, Bruce Lee. First was the leak that the Kirin 970 had entered mass production and that it would keep Huawei’s silicon on a par with the best from Samsung and Qualcomm, also using the 10nm manufacturing process.
An under-display fingerprint sensor?
In the interview with Hardware Zone Mr Bruce Lee revealed that the Kirin 970 would be powering the Mate 10. Without specifically mentioning any specs of the Mate 10 he did say that it will offer exceptional performance and battery life with a large display but a compact body. This fits with the expected 18:9 display ratio that have been bandied about.
He also mentioned that Huawei would also be presenting an innovative 6.1 inch display. What innovation could this be? How about an under-display fingerprint sensor? Pictures leaked alongside the CPU specs today do not show a fingerprint sensor anywhere. What else could it be? Check out the leaked image below — anyone see a fingerprint sensor anywhere? After some serious discussion behind the Ausdroid scenes we are pushing the under-display fingerprint sensor barrow. (wishful thinking?) The Mate series is their innovative series (with the P series being “lifestyle” (ie. more fashionable) focused….
A couple of days ago the specs for the new Kirin 970 CPU were leaked onto Chinese social media site, Weibo. The specs include a 64-bit octa-core configuration with four Cortex A73 cores and 4 Cortex A53 cores and a clock speed of up to 2.8GHz. The leak also confirmed the 10nm manufacturing process and LPDDR4 RAM. The CPU will also allow the Mate 10 to be 5G-ready.
Huawei are set to announce their new business flagship on October 16 in Munich with a pro version also expected to be announced. We are hearing that Huawei will be bringing both the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro to Australia to make a run at unseating the Samsung dominance at the high end of the market. We are still narrowing down the information surrounding this rumour and we can only hope that it is true.
Huawei have made some great high-end devices this year and the Mate 10 promises to top them all. If these pictures and specs are in fact true I for one cannot wait to get my hands on a Mate 10 (or more specifically a Mate 10 Pro).
That back face doesn’t look like the one in the official teaser video
Innovative 6.1′ display… Most likely marketing for the new resolution and aspect ratio. Possibly 3D touch also… If Apple and Samsung had issues trying to implement the finger print sensor under the display, I doubt that Huawei will be the first to figure it out. But then again, anything is possible. Vivo already demonstrated something similar, but that had the qualcomm CPU.
You may well be right but none of that is hardly innovative. We discussed the images leaked. All sites were taking the CPU specs as gospel so why were we and everyone else ignoring the possible significance of the images? I certainly can’t see a fingerprint sensor anywhere… It’s unlikely they’ll do a Sony which leaves under the display…
I like speculation sometimes.