When Richard Yu Chengdong spoke at the launch of Huawei’s Mate 70 range of handsets in Shenzhen on Tuesday, he was more focused on the HarmonyOS Next operating system than any great leaps forward in chip tech.
Yu called the new series “the most powerful Mate phones in history”, according to a South China Morning Post report, “without mentioning any details about the processor that powers them”.
The indigenous HarmonyOS Next within the Mate 70range sees Huawei cutting ties with Google’s open source Android operating system, on which earlier iterations of HarmonyOS had been partially based.
“Yu highlighted the HarmonyOS Next operating system, which the company says offers 40 per cent better performance on the latest smartphones over the Mate 60 series,” the SCMP reported.
“HarmonyOS Next is Huawei’s home-grown mobile operating system that has diverged from Android to the point of no longer being compatible with those apps.”
New AI features on the Mate 70 include photo enhancement and hand gestures. On a promotional video two people touching their phones together grab and release images for sharing.
The SCMP says the Mate 70 launch “has been closely watched by the industry looking for any indication that it would be able to advance beyond the China-made processor in last year’s Mate 60 devices”.
It said that chip was reportedly produced by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) using a 7-nanometre process, but that “US sanctions on Huawei and SMIC have sought to restrict access to such technology”.
“The Mate 60 ignited patriotic fervour at home, helping reverse Huawei’s flagging smartphone sales and enabling it to take on Apple and domestic rivals such as Xiaomi. The subsequent Pura 70 series handsets, which reportedly run on chips produced with the same 7nm process, helped put the firm back among the top Chinese Android brands.”
Bloomberg reported that Yu said HarmonyOS Next “will still need another two to three months to improve the user experience, but the plan is to henceforth use it on upcoming gadgets”.
