Huawei is yet to officially reveal its Mate 20 lineup of smartphones, but a leaked firmware file reveals that we can expect the flagship device from the company to run on the Kirin 980 chipset and feature an in-display fingerprint scanner, among other things.
After launching the P20 Pro, Huawei, it seems, is readying for the launch of their next flagship, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro. According to an exclusive published by XDA Developers, they’ve managed to get hold of firmware files for the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, the Mate 20 and the Mate 20 Lite. After having examined the firmware files, we get a first glimpse of the hardware specifications of these three upcoming smartphones, the most notable being the Kirin 980 chipset.
Huawei has continued to use the Kirin 970 chipsets for its smartphones till this year, prompting many to wonder why the company was not pushing out the Kirin 980 sooner. The reason for that is that the Kirin 980 SoC will be the first to be manufactured on the 7nm process, a technique that has required significant R&D on the part of all major chip manufacturers. The Kirin 980 is expected to be unveiled at IFA 2018, and will be first available in the Mate 20 as per the firmware files examined by XDA. The new 7nm FinFET process is expected to bring noticeable improvements in both battery life and performance, with the rumour being that Kirin 980 will offer 20 percent better performance and a whopping 40 percent more power efficiency. This makes the Mate 20 something to look forward to. The Huawei Mate 20 Lite most likely won’t feature the flagship SoC and would instead most likely run on the Kirin 710.
The display on the Huawei Mate 20, according to the firmware, is allegedly a 6.3-inch AMOLED panel, but whether it has a notch or not is not known. There was no mention of the display size of the Mate 20 Lite or the Mate 20 Pro, but earlier leaks suggest a massive 6.9-inch display for the Huawei Mate 20 Pro. What is known, however, is that the Huawei Mate 20 Pro will feature an in-display fingerprint sensor. The firmware files further reveal that the Huawei Mate 20 will have wireless charging that will feed a 4200mAh battery while the Huawei Mate 20 Pro will have a 4000 mAh battery. We also learn that the phones will run EMUI 9.0 based on Android P right out of the box.
XDA says in their report that the firmware files they examined were not complete and did not contain information about variants. Therefore, we only know that the Huawei Mate 20 will have a 6GB RAM/128GB storage version, but if this is the only variant or not is unclear. Additionally, we don’t have any information about the imaging setup on these smartphones but given that the Mate 20 Pro and the Mate 20 are supposed to be flagships, we can expect something similar to the P20 Pro on at least one of them.
As of now, we expect Huawei to announce the Kirin 980 at IFA 2018, but the date for the announcement of the Mate 20 series is still not known.
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Swapnil Mathur
Swapnil was Digit's resident camera nerd, (un)official product photographer and the Reviews Editor. Swapnil has moved-on to newer challenges. For any communication related to his stories, please mail us using the email id given here. View Full Profile
