Key Takeaways
- Despite Huawei’s decline in popularity, the announcement of the Mate 60 Pro is worth paying attention to for smartphone enthusiasts and tech trend followers.
- Huawei continues to push new technologies and features, with the Mate 60 Pro offering support for satellite calls and messaging, albeit likely limited to China.
- The Mate 60 Pro stands out with its rare physical aperture that can adjust by up to 10 stops, as well as a 3D depth camera on the front, showcasing Huawei’s innovation in the camera department.
Huawei has announced the Mate 60 Pro in China. That probably doesn’t interest you at all, following Huawei’s fall from popularity after the 2019 ban on the company. Huawei still sells devices outside China, but without access to Google certification for Android, its phones are not a popular choice for customers.
But the announcement of the Huawei Mate 60 Pro should interest you if you’re a smartphone fan, or if you like to follow the trends in technology. Huawei has been a trendsetter for many years: some will say that it copied, but if nothing else, Huawei was a brand that was happy to put itself on the line and push a new technology or feature.
So the Mate 60 Pro is just the next iteration of its Mate devices, but there are some details here you should pay attention to. You might be aware that Huawei was one of the first brands to support satellite messaging with the launch of the Huawei Mate 50 in 2022. Huawei is now saying that there’s support for satellite calls on the Huawei Mate 60 Pro alongside the ability to send messages.
There’s a catch here – they are facilitated by the China Telecom network and likely only apply to China rather than being a global service, but still, if it works as described, it’s a step ahead of other satellite communication offerings that are currently available. While Apple has its solution in place, Google is still working on a solution for Android, with the most recent gossip being that Google is going to partner up with Garmin, which already uses the Iridium network for its own satellite communication solutions.
Huawei
What about the camera?
Huawei was well known for its cameras – the P30 Pro was one of the first to introduce a periscope-style lens on a mass-market device and many have followed that lead, including the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra and the Pixel 7 Pro. One interesting detail about the Huawei Mate 60 Pro is that it has a physical aperture, with the ability to adjust by as much as 10 stops. For the photographers among you, you’ll know that this is rare on a smartphone camera – the Samsung Galaxy S9 had a dual aperture option in 2018, but only offered two options, not a full range from a physical aperture running from f/1.4-f/4.0.
Turning to the front camera, you might look at it and expect there to be three front cameras. There isn’t, there’s only one optical camera, but Huawei has added a 3D depth camera to the front of its phone. This will likely give been depth mapping for selfies, but could also be used for biometrics too. But for those doubting that Huawei is a trend setter rather than a follower, it’s not too much of a surprise to me that the Mate 60 Pro front cameras are arranged like that. After all, you just need to fill those gaps and it would look a lot like the Dynamic Island on the iPhone 14.
It seems that however innovative Huawei likes to be, sometimes, Huawei will just be Huawei.
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