Ryan-Thomas Shaw / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Huawei has announced that the Mate 50 series will launch on September 6.
- This will be the first Huawei flagship line after its partnership with Leica ended.
Huawei has had a tough time since a US trade ban was instituted against it in 2019. The company’s phones no longer have Google integration while sanctions also mean that it’s unable to offer cutting-edge in-house Kirin processors. That hasn’t stopped the brand from releasing new flagship phones though, and the next high-end series is coming soon.
Huawei announced on Weibo that it will launch the Mate 50 series on September 6. It specifically mentioned that this would be a series, so we’re guessing that a standard Mate 50 and Mate 50 Pro will be on offer at the very least. Check out the event poster below.
Either way, this will be Huawei’s first Mate flagship since 2020’s Mate 40 series. The company skipped a Mate release last year, ostensibly due to issues related to the US trade ban.
We don’t know much about the Mate 50 family, but it will be the first Huawei flagship line without Leica branding since 2015’s P8 and Mate 8 series. Instead, the company will use an in-house imaging brand dubbed Xmage.
Huawei has also switched to 4G versions of flagship Snapdragon chipsets due to its inability to produce in-house flagship silicon, with the P50 series using the Snapdragon 888 4G SoC. So we’re guessing that the Mate 50 series will be powered by a 4G Snapdragon processor once again.
We’ve asked Huawei about global availability and will update the article accordingly. But if it’s anything like the Huawei P50 series, then this could be a China-only launch at first.
