We stayed off the beer (well, we had a bit) and arrived bright and early for the big Huawei announcement here in Berlin. There was confirmation of the upcoming Huawei P30 Series, confirmation of the P30 Pro, confirmation that it would launch in “Mystic Blue” on September 23rd, confirmation of EMUI10, confirmation of Android 10…
…but nothing was mentioned about the elephant in the room. Google, thanks to Trump adding Huawei to a “naughty” list, can’t do business with the company. Current phones are fine. Phones in shops are fine, but upcoming devices like the P30 Pro? Well, they get Android, but no Google Apps. no YouTube, no Gmail, no Google Play etc.
So, all ears and eyes were trained on the stage as we heard about the highly-anticipated Huawei P30 Pro device. However, the question about those all-important apps remained unanswered.
What we did find slightly strange was the lack of a named network carrier during the launch. we know that the P30 Pro is coming to Carphone Warehouse, but nobody mentioned EE, Vodafone, O2, Three or any other network. That sent our spidey senses into overdrive and perhaps, maybe, possibly, Huawei is going to try and launch without them.. maybe using some post-installation method or their own apps?
Either way, we did see Google Play on the demo handset that was on display here at IFA ..
The handset was also, well, no other way of saying this, bloody gorgeous..
Either way, Huawei told us that it’ll use the new HiSilicon Kirin 990 series CPU, with a new Kirin 990 5G version on the way too. These chips are designed to bring added performance, energy efficiency and AI capabilitie to your smartphone. The Kirin 990 5G CPU is integrated with a 5G modem, achieving a smaller area and lower power consumption.
The Play Store.. but will it make it into the production handset?
It’ll provide a peak downlink rate of 2.3 Gbit/s and an uplink peak rate of 1.25 Gbit/s.
The new P30 Pro will come in two colours, with a “Mystic Blue” and “Misty Lavender” available. There’s also some new earphones on the way – the Huawei FreeBuds 3. These come in a round case and will be available in black and white with the Kirin A1 chip powering them. They have noise cancelling and will be arriving later in the year.
Walter Ji, President of Huawei’s Western Europe Consumer Business Group told us..
The P30 Series has been hugely popular in Europe so we wanted to refresh the range and appeal to new audiences. Last year at IFA we released new colours of the P20 which proved to be extremely popular, so this year we have created some bold, eye-catching new colours for the P30 Pro which we think will make this award winning product even more appealing.
The P30 Pro has a new high-gloss redesigned lens surface, a super night selfie function (which will also come via an update to other phones) an AI editing function for your videos and a Leica quad-camera system with a 50x zoom lens.
