Huawei announced the Mate 70 series at an event held in Shenzhen on November 26, 2024. This phone is the first product to be able to run Huawei’s new operating system called HarmonyOS NEXT.
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Huawei on Tuesday launched its Mate 70 series of smartphones running on its latest homegrown operating system as it continues its drive towards technological independence in the wake of US sanctions.
The Mate 70 is the successor to the Mate 60, which shocked the tech and political worlds when it was released last year. It includes semiconductors that many thought would be difficult for Huawei and China to manufacture, given extensive U.S. regulations that seek to cut off the supply of cutting-edge chips from the world’s second-largest economy. was included. Huawei was separated from Google’s Android operating system in 2019, forcing the Chinese tech giant to develop its own software.
Huawei did not say what kind of chip the phone is equipped with, but Richard Yu, head of Huawei’s consumer and automotive business, said the Mate 70 is the company’s first It said it can run on HarmonyOS NEXT, a completely in-house developed mobile operating system.
Huawei hopes the OS will become a viable alternative to Android and Apple’s iOS in China. The initial version of the company’s HarmonyOS was built using open source Android code.
However, HarmonyOS NEXT reportedly no longer uses that code, marking an important update in Huawei’s software development.
“HarmonyOS Next has great potential as an alternative in China,” Will Wong, senior research manager at IDC, told CNBC. “This is not only because of Huawei’s brand name, but also because Huawei has focused on bringing developers into its ecosystem.”
White House regulations have crippled the company’s consumer business, cutting off access to key technologies from chips to software. But the launch of the Mate 60 last year revived Huawei’s China operations, putting pressure on Apple.
Huawei started accepting pre-orders for the device earlier this month, and the number of reservations for the device has exceeded 3 million on Chinese e-commerce websites. It doesn’t necessarily lead to sales.
The company talked about the artificial intelligence features of its devices, including photo editing tools. It comes at a time when smartphone makers are trying to woo customers with new AI tools. In China, competition continues among domestic players to make an impression with their AI tools ahead of the launch of Apple Intelligence in the country.
The Mate 70 series comes in three types: Mate 70, Mate 70 Pro, and Mate 70 Pro+. The Mate 70 starts at 5,499 Chinese Yuan ($759), while the Mate 70 Pro+ starts at 8,499 Yuan.
On Tuesday, Huawei also unpacked its latest foldable smartphone called the Mate X6, which starts at 12,999 yuan.
New OS attracts attention
Over the past year, Huawei seems to have been buoyed by the success of its devices in China, growing and returning to the list of the country’s top five smartphone players.
To show it’s not held back by U.S. sanctions, the company has been trying to publicly show off its technological prowess, from its September tri-fold smartphone to HarmonyOS NEXT.
Huawei said that in addition to the Mate 70 series and Mate X6 Foldable being able to run the new OS, some older devices will receive software upgrades in the coming months.
The success of an operating system often depends on the suite of apps available. During the launch event, Yu demonstrated how AI can interact with popular apps such as Alipay, one of China’s largest mobile payment services, as part of HarmonyOS NEXT.
For now, Huawei’s latest phones, along with HarmonyOS NEXT, are very focused on the Chinese market, as the company still faces mounting challenges overseas.
