Beleaguered Chinese smartphone maker Huawei has officially unveiled a number of new products at IFA 2019, including a new 5G system on chip it claims will be the first available and the fastest ever.
Rival chipmakers MediaTek, Qualcomm and Samsung have all announced chips with integrated 5G but Huawei appears to have beaten them to the punch with production and release.
Huawei said the new Kirin 990 will be the first 5G system-on-chip to become commercially available with its inclusion in the Mate 30, expected to be unveiled later this month.
The Mate 30 is being watched with interest following a government ban on US companies doing business with Huawei, which will affect the smartphone company’s access to key software and hardware.
It’s expected the phone will launch with an open source version of Google’s Android operating system, but won’t have access to Google apps or services, including the Play store.
Huawei also used time at IFA to announce two new colour variants of its P30 Pro smartphone: “mystic blue” and “misty lavender”.
The new P30 Pro phones will run an OS based on Android 10, having already been certified to run Android and use Google services before the ban was announced.
The IFA keynote, delivered by the CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group Richard Yu, also showed off the expected new FreeBuds 3 true wireless earbuds with active noise cancellation, and a new whole home Wi-Fi system.
The new FreeBuds will use Huawei’s Kirin A1 wearable chip, which the company claims is the first to include Bluetooth 5.1 and Bluetooth Low Energy 5.1.
Huawei has also developed what it’s calling “dual channel synchronised technology” that allows ear buds to independently and simultaneously receive stereo channels, rather than one bud receiving both channels and transmitting to the other.
The quite clearly Airpod-inspired buds are claimed to last four hours off a full charge, but the included wireless charging case provides an additional four charges, taking the total battery life of the Freebuds to 20 hours.
Huawei also announced the WiFi Q2 Pro, a mesh networking system designed to provide fast connection and wide coverage across large homes.
Local pricing and release dates for the new Huawei products are still to be confirmed, but recent scandals and government bans may prove difficult for Huawei when getting the products into retail stores.
