At this extremely difficult time for Huawei, the Mate 40, the most important flagship of the year, is here.
At this global press conference, Yu Chengdong spoke in his trademark English accent, and he could no longer see the serious and vicissitudes of expression in his previous appearances. The tempo of the entire conference was also very fast, and there was not too much space to “sensitize”. Yu Chengdong also smiled when showing the product.
At the end of the press conference, Yu Chengdong said: “In the past ten years, everyone has witnessed that Huawei has gone from an unknown brand to the world’s leading smart device brand. Huawei is in an extremely difficult time, but no matter how difficult it is, Huawei promises to continue to innovate.”
Mate 40 and Kirin 9000 are both Huawei’s current situation, the best level it can come up with, but whether they can continue to iterate in the future is still unknown, it is likely to be the last of Kirin processor phones bullet. Mate 40, and buy and cherish.
Unconsciously, the Mate series has been 8 years old
Yu Chengdong specifically mentioned at the press conference that the Huawei Mate series has a history of eight years and has successively launched ten generations of Mate products. Although Huawei did not give any special naming to the tenth generation, the special significance of this year’s Mate 40 series no longer needs to be emphasized.
This generation of products still has multiple versions to choose from, such as Mate40, Mate40 Pro, Huawei Mate40 Pro+, Mate40 RS, etc. In addition to the Kirin 9000 processor, the central lens module and other signature configurations, the Mate 40 uses a 6.5-inch OLED waterfall Screen, 90Hz refresh rate; Pro is a 6.76-inch 1344P OLED waterfall screen, which also has a 90Hz refresh rate. In terms of charging power, both are the highest 66W wired fast charging, 4600 mAh battery capacity.
On the basis of the waterfall screen, physical buttons are retained, stereo dual speakers, IP68 waterproof and other configurations are consistent with Huawei flagships. In terms of appearance, in addition to the three glass materials of black, glaze white and secret silver, the plain leather version is also available The reservation.
The appearance of the Mate40 RS Porsche Design version is relatively radical. The shell material is made of high-strength nano-microcrystalline ceramics. The rear lens module also uses a relatively rare octagonal design. The recognition is indeed sufficient, and you can see at a glance. Customized version. In addition, the RS version also has an infrared temperature sensor.
Price:
Mate40 official price: starting at 899 euros;
Mate40 Pro official price: starting at 1199 Euros;
Mate40 Pro+ official price: starting at 1399 euros;
Mate40 RS official price: starting at 2,295 euros.
The “Sweetheart” Kylin 9000
In August of this year, at the 2020 Summit of the China Informatization 100, Huawei’s consumer business CEO Yu Chengdong publicly confirmedDue to US sanctions, Huawei’s self-developed Kirin series chips cannot be manufactured after September 15, and will become a swan song. If the US ban is not revoked (or even upgraded) in the future, Mate 40 will be the last Huawei flagship phone equipped with a self-developed Kirin processor.
According to past practice, Huawei will give priority to the Kirin flagship SoC, and then release the flagship mobile phone. But this year due to various reasons, finally this ill-fated Kirin 9000 was unveiled together with the Mate 40.
Kirin 9000 adopts 8-core CPU with 1+3+4 structure, A77 with the highest main frequency of 3.13, 24-core Mali-G78, dual-core + micro-core NPU architecture…… GPU parameters are outstanding, GeekBench can reach 6430 points According to Huawei, the performance is 52% better than that of the Snapdragon 865 GPU. The Snapdragon 875 needs a great improvement to maintain its previous graphics performance advantages.
But it should be noted that the Kirin 9000 does not use Arm’s latest Cortex-A78 architecture, just as the Kirin 990 only used A76 last year. Last year, Huawei explained that it did not catch up with the development cycle, but this year and in the future, can Huawei still use A78?
Kirin 9000 is also the first 5nm SoC with integrated 5G baseband (Apple A14 is an external Qualcomm X55), which also allows Kirin 9000 to reach 15.3 billion transistors, ahead of Apple A14.
In addition, it can be seen that, unlike last year’s Kirin 990 4G, the lower-positioned 9000E has no obvious castration in the manufacturing process and other parameters. Only the CPU’s main frequency and CPU and core number are slightly inferior, which can guarantee a good one. Experience.
As you know, TSMC can no longer provide Huawei with advanced manufacturing process foundry. Although Huawei has plans to enter chip manufacturing, it cannot catch up with the advanced level in a short period of time. The Kirin 9000 series basically can only rely on Inventory maintenance.
According to the usual practice, Kirin’s flagship SoC has a life cycle of one year and will be installed on Huawei and Honor flagship machines. But this year, Huawei is facing difficulties whether it is the output of the chip itself or the supply of various parts of the mobile phone. In addition to the Mate 40 series, will there be other models with this flagship SoC? Not too optimistic.
biggest label, image
Since the cooperation with Leica, the image has become the most prominent label of Huawei’s flagship machine.
This year, after the launch of the Mate 40 series, the ranking of this new machine on DxOMark was quickly updated, with 136 points regaining the top spot, 3 points ahead of the second Xiaomi 10 Ultra.
The image update of this generation of Mate 40 is mainly equipped with front and rear dual film cameras and front and rear dual super wide-angle. The update range of functions and configurations is not as good as that of previous generations. Of course, the parameters are still very prominent. Mate 40 Pro still has an oversized base, reaching 1/1.28 inches, it is still a RYYB sensor, an aperture of f 1.9, and an improvement is that Huawei has greatly optimized the ultra-wide-angle algorithm to reduce Distortion of the edges.
Mate40 Pro uses the periscope optical zoom structure to achieve 10x hybrid zoom and 50x digital zoom, while Mate40 Pro+ achieves 20x hybrid zoom and 100x digital zoom, basically from ultra wide-angle to ultra-telephoto The coverage of all focal lengths. Huawei did not follow the direction of high pixels, but continued to iterate on the RYYB sensor and outsole, and it did achieve certain results.
In terms of video, the rear lens realizes real-time video HDR and super motion stabilization, and the front lens realizes the functions of front slow motion, front and rear dual scene recording, and front 4K.
Huawei’s photo effects have been verified by the market, and this year’s Mate 40 series has also maintained a high level. But compared with the squeezed toothpaste-style update of the iPhone 12 next door, such as the shooting and editing of Dolby Vision on the mobile phone, the surprising update point is slightly less.
and buy, and cherish
Through the continuous iteration of several generations of Mate series and P series, Huawei has established a firm foothold in the high-end market, which is unimaginable in the era of “China Cool Alliance”.
According to IDC data, in the first half of this year, Huawei’s market share reached 44.1% in mobile phone products priced above US$600, surpassing Apple by a slight advantage of 0.1, ranking first.
From the perspective of product design, Huawei’s current thinking has escaped the logic of spelling parameters, such as fast charging and screen refresh rate. It does not seem to be enough compared with other domestic flagships this year; but at the same time, Huawei’s consistent advantages are Is still stable, such as images, self-research, appearance design, etc., which is very similar to Apple. Considering that the two are competing in the high-end market, perhaps this is the idea that high-end machines should have.
Huawei has gone out of its own way on the flagship machine, but the Mate 40 may be the last glory. Its price and brand are still stable, and the target consumer group is still there, but production capacity will become the biggest problem.
Before the release of the Mate 40, the previous-generation model was difficult to find in the offline market and the price soared. It is foreseeable that due to the objective capacity problem, the initial price increase of Mate 40 will be even more severe and become a real “tip product”.
Buy and cherish.