Huawei says goodbye to Android with the Mate 70

Huawei has been on the US government's boycott list since 2019. As a result, the Chinese manufacturer is no longer allowed to use Google services or install Snapdragon chips in its smartphones. However, Android apps could still be installed with the in-house replacement operating system HarmonyOS. This is now changing with the Mate 70 and HarmonyOS Next.

Restart with fewer apps

In 2020, Huawei was competing with Apple and Samsung to see who sold the most smartphones. The manufacturer is now a long way off this in Europe. On the domestic market, however, things are looking much better. It is therefore not surprising that new smartphones are launched there first and no longer globally at the same time. In addition, the features are increasingly geared towards the interests of buyers in China.

This may have made the decision to once again reduce the painstakingly built-up range of apps in the "AppGallery" somewhat easier. With the Mate 70, Huawei gives people the choice between the old HarmonyOS 4.3 and the new HarmonyOS Next. The former is still compatible with Android apps, while the Next version is not. Only 15,000 apps will be available for the latter at launch. Huawei wants to increase this number to 100,000 in the coming months. This is still significantly fewer than in the old AppGallery, which already offered over 220,000 apps in 2022.

Huawei also announced that only HarmonyOS Next will be installed on all new smartphones and tablets from 2025. The manufacturer has not yet unveiled the Mate 70 for Europe and has therefore not yet provided any information on the software plans for this country.

Four variants of one smartphone

Huawei has presented four variants of the Mate 70 for China. The basic version has a 6.7-inch display and a 5300 mAh battery. The camera setup consists of a main camera (50 megapixels), an ultra-wide-angle camera (40 megapixels), a periscope telephoto camera (12 megapixels) and a front camera with 13 megapixels.

The Mate 70 Pro gets a 48-megapixel periscope telephoto camera, Wi-Fi 7, 5G and can connect to satellites as an upgrade. It also charges its battery a little faster. The Mate 70 Pro Plus has improved telephoto and ultra-wide-angle camera sensors and the base model has 16 gigabytes of RAM and 512 gigabytes of storage space. The other two models start with 12 and 256 gigabytes. The Mate 70 RS is a more sophisticated version of the Pro Plus, in which Huawei uses titanium as one of the body materials.

Huawei does not provide any information on the chipsets used. However, the manufacturer recently used its own Kirin models. It is also currently unclear which variants will be launched on the European market. Recently, the selection here has always been smaller than in China.

Mate X6: The next thin foldable smartphone

In addition to the Mate 70 series, Huawei has also unveiled a new foldable smartphone. The Mate X6 is comparatively thin. It is only 9.85 millimetres thick when folded and just 4.6 millimetres when unfolded. Despite this, there is room for a 5110 mAh battery and a total of five cameras in the housing.

Two selfie cameras with 8 megapixels each are located in the 6.45-inch (inside) and 7.93-inch (outside) displays. On the back, there is a 50-megapixel main camera, a 48-megapixel periscope telephoto camera and a 40-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera. The memory configuration of the Mate X6 starts at 12 gigabytes of RAM and 512 gigabytes of storage space.