When it launched the Mate 20 series last fall, Huawei came out with a few features that were not available on any other Android handsets at the time. The Mate 20 Pro was the flagship version of the three Mate 20 phones, and Huawei also launched a regular Mate 20 as well as a Mate 20 X model geared toward gaming. The latter has just received 5G support, and it’s available in the UK for £999 unlocked. That’s £200 more than the 4G model.
Verizon just launched the Galaxy S10 5G, but Samsung is hardly the only company putting out 5G smartphones this year. International carriers have also started rolling out 5G networks and compatible smartphones, and UK carriers are the latest ones to prepare for their 5G launches.
Huawei unveiled the 5G version of the Mate 20 X in London on Friday, reports 9to5Google, and it’s exactly what you expect — a 5G version of the device that Huawei launched as a gaming phone last year.
However, one of the first phones to deliver 5G experiences in Britain is a device that you’ll have a hard time scoring in the States, even if you just want the older 4G version. That’s because it’s made by Huawei, the Chinese company the US government has just targeted with additional punitive measures.
The phone packs the same huge 7.2-inch Full View display, Kirin 980 chip, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and class-leading triple-lens main camera as the 4G version. But the phone has a smaller battery (4,200 mAh vs. 5,000 mAh) and lacks the 3.5mm headphone jack the 4G version has.
You still get fast 40W battery charging on the 5G model, though. That’s probably because of all the extra internal space occupied by the 5G components, including a Balong 5000 5G chip and the 5G antennas.
It may be a race that the U.S. is willing to concede, but it should be noted that Huawei’s sphere of influence on other shores continues to expand, even as the company’s ability to operate in the U.S. is completely proscribed.
While U.S. government officials celebrate what they must consider to be a win in their battle against the low-cost, high-performance networking vendor Huawei and other Chinese hardware manufacturers, the country is at risk of falling seriously behind in the broader, global competition for telecom tech and customers.
The Mate 20 X 5G is obviously still a flagship device by all accounts and will work on all local carriers in Britain, including EE, O2, Three, and Vodafone. The Mate 20 X 5G is the first Huawei 5G phone to launch this year, but it should be followed somewhat closely by the foldable Mate X the company unveiled earlier this year.
Indeed, Huawei’s executive director and chairman of its investment review board, David Wang, told Bloomberg that, “Our U.S. business is not that big. We have global operations. We still will have stable operations.”
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