Against pressure from key component supply shortages and the Google services kit, Huawei has kept moving, launching its autumn flagship Mate 40 series and the upgraded Kirin chipset.
On October 22, 2020, China's biggest smartphone provider Huawei unveiled its flagship Mate 40 series of smartphones, which global consumers have been expecting for a long time. The Mate 40 series might be the last Huawei phones that carry its self-developed chipset Kirin.
Five models of the new series greeted the public – Mate 40, Mate 40 Pro, Mate 40 Pro+, and Mate 40 Porsche Edition. Living up to the reputation of Huawei's flagship phones, the Mate 40 series bear numerous outstanding features, including the quad-lens camera system on the back with a 50-megapixel main sensor, and the ability to capture high dynamic range (HDR), video for more vivid colors which adapts well to the video-sharing and live-streaming era.
In terms of pricing, the Mate 40 will retail at EUR 899, the Mate 40 Pro will sell for EUR 1,199 and Mate Pro+ will cost EUR 1,399. The pricing is a bit higher than the recently released iPhone 12 series.
The highlight of the launching event is the Kirin 9000 chipset, which is manufactured using TSMC's 5-nanometer process. The CEO of Huawei's consumer business unit Richard Yu claimed that the Kirin 9000 is the most powerful chip ever, with 15.3 billion transistors on it – 30% more than on Apple's (AAPL:NASDAQ) A14 processor. Compared to the most popular Android phone processor Snapdragon 865+ powered by Qualcomm (QCOM:NASDAQ), the overall performance in terms of picture processing is 52% higher and the battery efficiency is 25% higher.