If you're keen to get your hands on the Huawei Mate 30 Pro, a limited number of devices will be hitting the Australian market from November 21 for an outright price of $1,599. The Mate 30 Pro builds on Huawei's excellent camera tech, but there two major caveats. Firstly, it runs Android, but without Google apps and services. Secondly, only 200 devices will be available locally at this stage.
The Huawei Mate 30 Pro will be sold through the Huawei Authorised Experience Store, Mobileciti, and select HappyTel stores in "Space Silver", but you'll need to pre-register through the Huawei website if you want a chance of buying one.
The fine print on the Huawei's pre-registration page says the Mate 30 Pro will not be available for customers who do not pre-register. It also states that only 200 customers will be given the opportunity to purchase the Mate 30 Pro, so if you desperately want one, pre-registration is your only shot for now, short of an import.
As part of the pre-registration process, you'll have to list which Huawei smartphones you've used in the past, regale "your favourite memory with a Huawei device", and confirm you understand that the Mate 30 Pro doesn't run Google apps and services. Twice.
Anyone who pre-registers and then purchases the Mate 30 Pro will get a free pair of Huawei's FreeBuds 3, valued at $299.
UPDATE (11/11/19): Huawei has now confirmed that additional Mate 30 Pro stock will be made available for the Australia market, but has yet to provide details on how these devices will be sold and when.
Of course, the lack of Google apps and services should be enough to give anyone pause when it comes to actually purchasing a Mate 30 Pro. While the handset runs the open source version of Android - Android Open Source Project, or AOSP - with Huawei's EMUI 10 skin it is devoid of the Google apps and services many of us have come to rely on. This means the Mate 30 Pro won't run the Play Store, Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail, and more, all as a result of the ongoing dispute between Huawei and the US government.
Instead, the Mate 30 Pro has Huawei's app store on board. At present, the Huawei app store is home to over 45,000 apps. For comparison, the Google Play Store has almost 2.5 million apps, and the Apple App Store has almost 2 million.
While quantity is not necessarily equal to quality, we found some pretty significant omissions in a brief hands-on back in September. At the time, the Huawei app store was missing Netflix, Spotify, Uber, and Tinder, to name just a few.
In the event there's a breakthrough in the whole Huawei vs. Trump situation, Huawei says it would be able to upgrade the Mate 30 Pro to the Google-complete version of Android in about two days. Notably, Bloomberg recently reported that the US will begin to grant licenses that allow US companies to work with Huawei "very shortly".
Politics and software drama aside, the Mate 30 Pro sure looks like an impressive piece of kit.
On the display front, you get an extra-curvy 6.53-inch OLED 1080p+ display. The screen is bent by 88 degrees, which makes the rounded edges a lot more pronounced than what we've seen on devices like the P30 Pro and Galaxy Note 10+. To account for this change, Huawei has axed the volume rocker. Instead, double tapping either curved edge will bring up a virtual volume slider. In our hands-on, we found this a little finnicky, but it might just be a case of getting used to the action. Much like the P30 Pro, the Mate 30 Pro's speaker sits underneath the screen.
As expected, the Mate 30 Pro's camera builds on the P30 Pro's, with a few key differences. This time around you get a:
- 40MP primary lens
- 40MP ultra-wide angle lens
- 8MP telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom, 5x hybrid zoom, and 30x digital zoom
- A Time-of-Flight lens for capturing additional depth information
While the primary lens seems to be identical to the P30 Pro, the ultra-wide lens has had a massive upgrade from 20MP to 40MP. Resolution isn't everything, but from a quick hands-on, the Mate 30 Pro ultra-wide lens seemed to produce noticeably better shots than what you'd get on the P30 Pro.
The Mate 30 Pro does make some camera trade-offs, however. Its zoom lens is only 3x, rather than 5x as we saw in the P30 Pro. This means you'll get 5x hybrid zoom, and 30x digital zoom, as opposed to the P30 Pro's 10x hybrid zoom and 50x digital zoom.
Other key specifications for the Mate 30 Pro include Huawei's in-house Kirin 990 processor, 256GB of storage, 8GB of RAM, and a 4,500mAh battery said to last up to two days per charge.
Alex Choros
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