Huawei plans to launch its latest flagship phone on October 16th, but Evan Blass has spilled a few beans by sharing a picture of the upcoming Huawei Mate 10 a few weeks early.
The new phone looks nearly identical to last year’s Mate 9, but Blass says there’s also a Mate 10 Pro in the works, and that it’ll probably have slimmer bezels.
But the biggest changes will likely be under the hood.
That’s because the Mate 10 is expected to be the first phone to sport Huawei’s new Kirin 970 processor. It’s a quad-core processor that combines four 2.4 GHz ARM Cortex-A73 CPU cores, four 1.8 GHz ARM Cortex-A53 CPU cores, ARM Mali-G72 MP12 graphics and an LTE CAT 18 radio.
The Kirin 970 processor also includes a new Neural Processing Unit, or NPU, that Huawei says can identify 2000 images per minute. Why would it need do that? Just ask Apple.
One of the key new features in Apple’s iPhone X is a new “Face ID” system that uses a system of cameras and sensors to scan your face, and on-device algorithms to recognize it in an instant, even if you’re wearing glasses, a hat, a new hairstyle, or if you’re in a dark room.
It’s not clear if Huawei’s NPU is designed for exactly the same purpose… the company has posted an odd video to Facebook with a caption saying “Let’s face it, facial recognition isn’t for everyone,” but I can’t really tell if Huawei is saying that Apple’s system isn’t as good as Huawei’s… or if Huawei plans to use its NPU for some other form of secure identification.
We should know more in a few weeks when Huwei officially launches the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro… or sooner than that if Evan Blass and other leakers have anything to say about it.
That would be embarrassing and the ugliest Mate flagship in some years.
In that case, they’re pretty much all ugly after you throw a case on them.
I see what you did.
Ugly and Bulky become mandatory on this trend of new fragile phones.