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ICYMI: Huawei’s Mate 50 series has launched in China! Comes with satellite communications and variable aperture!

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It’s been two years. Mainly because the US has caused them significant suffering.

Two years since the last Mate phone. And also, that phone was released before Huawei got hit with disaster so the Mate 40 was able to secure 5G bandwidths from ARM, the supplier of CPUs for Huawei and Kirin. After that, Huawei was forced to be silent. While Leica hold them off for a while and stayed. It wasn’t too long until it found a significant other, that being Sharp and Xiaomi.

Now what? Where to go after that? Certainly, you can’t top the Kirin 9000E after all the restrictions. Huawei circumvented this by allowing satellite communications to work on their phones (though, only in China) and since Huawei’s R&D is so large, they were able to develop their own imaging technology called XMage. Effectively discarding the need for Leica’s help.

There are two phones released here, the punch-hole Mate 50 and the sensor-filled Mate 50 Pro with a bar notch like some of their older Mate series phones.

Huawei Mate 50

The first phone, the Mate 50, features a stylish design with a typical punch-hole front with a screen that curves around the body. The phone has a tall 6.7in FHD+ (2700x1224px) OLED screen with 90Hz refresh rate and 300Hz touch sampling rate. It also features an IP68 rating. Typical to that of high-end flagships. This display also has support for HDR10+, and P3 colour gamut for maximum vibrancy and brightness. The back and front are protected by “Kunlun Glass”.

The phone uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 but with 5G services disabled. On the top of this screen is a 13MP selfie camera. The chipset is paired with 8GB RAM and 256GB internal storage. Its external storage uses a proprietary nanomemory SD card of up to 256GB.

Speaking of cameras, this is one of the latest Huawei flagships without Leica support (they now belong to Xiaomi). So without their help, which was significant in boosting Huawei’s camera game, the company developed its own imaging technology called XMage. XMage’s contribution to the phone is its changing aperture which is very helpful for actual portrait shots. As aperture changes, the field of view can also change physically. This was rarely down for smartphones now. This variable aperture tech is not new but at least it’s good to see that major manufacturers saw its benefit.

It has a 50MP rear camera with OIS and variable aperture (f/1.4 to f/4.0) complemented with a 13MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera with cinematography levels of quality. It also comes with a high-res 12MP (f/3.5) periscopic telephoto with 100x digital zoom as well as Optical Image Stabilization (OIS).

With that being said, Leica’s image tuning capabilities are now gone, and the Mate 50 has lesser fillers and features than that of the Mate 40.

The battery inside has a 4460mAh capacity. This is charged via USB-C. As a flagship phone, it has two charging options. Mainly, the 66W Huawei SuperCharge fast charging and the 50W fast wireless charging. The phone comes with the 66W charger bundled.

While it does not have 5G services, it does compensate for it by having satellite services. It is also the world’s first non-satphone to have it (beat that Apple and your “innovation”). Satellite services are quite useful during disasters or if you want to communicate in areas where cellular signals are far too weak. We have a dedicated article talking about satellite services. You can go there for more info. Android 14 has also been confirmed to feature satellite connectivity.

It has Bluetooth 5.2, Bluetooth LE, and Wi-Fi 6/6E connections. You can technically have 5G services enabled for it, provided you buy the appropriate case. This is Huawei’s way to have 5G on some of their models without having to rely on their own connectivity or modems.

It comes in Black and Silver. Pretty straightforward naming scheme I must say.

SPECS:

Huawei Mate 50 Pro

The Mate 50 and Mate 50 Pro look almost identical. The latter also sports a black colour scheme with a gold trim and also features the same camera design. However, the Mate 50 Pro has a noticeably larger notch because it houses more sensors than the base model.

The phone features a rounded 6.74in. FHD+ (2616x1212px) OLED screen with 120Hz variable refresh rate and 300Hz touch sampling rate. Pretty much the only thing that changed is the higher refresh rate screen. It also features an IP68 water/dust resistance rating, obviously.

Like the Mate 50, it features a 4G-only Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset inside. It also has satellite connectivity compensating for the lack of 5G modems inside. The phone is paired up with 8GB RAM and either 256 or 512GB internal storage. Like the Mate 50, it is expandable through the 256GB NM card that it supports.

The cameras here are also slightly different. Still adapting Huawei’s XMage technology, the main camera has 50MP resolution and also features variable aperture and OIS. Meanwhile, this is paired with the same 13MP ultrawide and a more powerful 64MP telephoto with OIS and up to 100x digital zoom.

Remember when we said that this phone features more sensors? Those sensors are for in-depth face recognition. The 13MP front camera is supported by a 3D depth camera for a more accurate 3D face recognition system. It is similar to Apple’s LiDAR scanner where it accurately scans your face for its FaceID feature.

Inside the phone is a 4700mAh battery that’s again paired with 66W fast charging and 50W fast wireless charging. Like the Mate50, it runs HarmonyOS 3.0 with Huawei Mobile Services. For those who wanted to use Google’s apps, the browser is the easiest way to do it, though it may be limited.

It is now available in Europe and China but availability in the Philippines is yet to be announced.

The phone also comes with an Orange colour option with a synthetic leather back.

SPECS:

Source: Huawei Mate 50, Mate 50 Pro

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