Huawei’s new Mate 30 Pro, a powerful phone without Google services.

1
1867

The Huawei Mate 30 Pro is the latest flagship from the Chinese smartphone giant Huawei. Following the unstable relations between the USA and China regarding Huawei security violations in the US, Huawei was banned from using American products which meant the manufacturer had to drop the use of Google services that are very essential to an Android phone today.

Just so we get the implications of this, many Android applications in Play Store rely on Google services to ensure security to their customers and also take advantage of the many free services Google offers within their package for example the ability to push instant notifications to their users. In fact, many popular apps shall hardly run without Google services. Basically users without Google Play Services shall not be able to use apps like YouTube, Google Maps, Instagram, Spotify to mention but a few. The move to not incorporate Google services in this phone is a huge blow to Huawei given the fact that this is the best smartphone they’ve ever made. At least in runs Android, which was possible for the fact that Huawei is using the publicly free Android Open Source Project builds any smartphone company is allowed to use.

Read Also: Huawei’s ban is a major setback for the tech industry.

Talking about the smartphone itself, it’s pretty much a high-end devices. It features one of the best designs yet with cutting edge technology. The phone is wrapped in the latest Corning Gorilla Glass 6 on the front and back joined by a metallic frame.

Huawei Mate 30 Pro Front (Credits: Marques Brownlee)

It has a more boxy design with the front glass curving towards the edge to create what’s known as a waterfall display which basically allows touch interactions on the very sides of the phone. It curves way back so much so that the display is literally half of the side pushing the power button towards the back of the phone. This is the only button on the phone.

Huawei Mate 30 Pro Power Button (Credits: Marques Brownlee)

The capability of the waterfall display to allow interactions at the edge led Huawei to implement touch volume button that can be triggered by double tapping the upper part of any side of the phone to trigger the volume slider. Coupled with the vibration motor, users get the feeling of mechanical volume adjustment. At the bottom the phone has thin bezel and on the top, a small notch that houses the 32 megapixel f/2.0 wide selfie camera among other sensors.

Huawei Mate 30 Pro Back (Credits: Marques Brownlee)

Flipped to the back, the phone comes with a large camera module that houses four camera sensors, a main 40 megapixel f/1.6 wide sensor, an 8 megapixel f/2.4 telephoto lens with Optical Image Stabilization, a 40 megapixel f/1.8 ultrawide sensor and a 3D Time Of Flight camera sensor. The back also houses a dual-tone flash. The fingerprint sensor is built underneath the display.

Read Also: Huawei announces it’s 5G Foldable Mate X to rival Samsung’s Galaxy Fold

Under the hood, the device is powered by Huawei’s own latest Kirin 990 a 7 nanometer octa-core processor with a Mali-G76 GPU. It comes with 8GB of RAM for both the 128GB storage and 256GB storage models with memory card expansion via a propitiatory nano memory card slot. The on-board storage is also UFS3.0 making it one of the fastest phones with regards to interacting with data stored on phone. It runs Huawei’s latest EMUI 10 software on top of the latest Android 10. Underneath it also comes with a large 4500mAh battery with one of the fastest charging speeds up to 45W via a USB Type-C port. It comes with an Infrared blaster too.

The Huawei Mate 30 is by all means a very high-end phone but the lack of Google services may only limit it’s usage and dominance in china where customers are already used to using phones without Google services. It’s not only a bad situation to Huawei but also hurts competition in the smartphone market.