Huawei to unveil the Mate 20 on Oct. 16 in London
It’s an autumn birthday this year for Huawei’s larger flagship phone.
Huawei plans to introduce its Mate 20 phone in October, two months after unveiling the Lite version of the device.
Huawei will launch its next flagship phone, the Mate 20, at an event in London on Oct. 16, CEO Richard Yu announced at IFA on Friday.
In an image for the event, the company teased the outline of a phone that looks as though it has almost no bezel. The Mate range is the larger of Huawei's two flagship phone series, and rumors suggest the Mate 20 Pro could have a screen as large as 6.9 inches.
The company used Europe's largest trade show as an opportunity to unveil its latest chipset, the Kirin 980, which will be in the Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro. The chip has eight cores: four small ones to handle power management, two medium cores to provide long-lasting performance and two large cores to turbo-boost a phone, kicking in when the most demanding gaming applications are in use.
It also announced an Alexa-powered smart home hub designed to keep up with Amazon's Echo, Google Home and Apple's HomePod . The device, called the AI Cube despite its cylindrical build, combines a 4G router with a speaker. Huawei says the sound quality will set its device apart from the competition. It's expected to go on sale by Christmas.
And curiously, given that we have to wait nearly two months for the official unveiling of the Mate 20 proper, Huawei on Friday did use IFA to unveil the Mate 20 Lite. The midrange Lite phone features a 6.3-inch display, a 20-megapixel rear camera and a 24-megapixel front camera. Both of those cameras are paired with a secondary, 2-megapixel camera to capture depth information for portrait shots.
First published Aug. 31, 5:57 a.m. PT.
Update, 6:21 a.m. PT: Added more information about Huawei's other IFA announcements.
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