Looking to Buy The Huawei Mate 30 Pro? Remember, There’re No Google Services.

via HUAWEI

The Mate 30 Pro is Huawei’s latest phone in its Mate series and looking at its top-end specs, it’s obviously Huawei’s crown jewel. Top of the line processor, a beautiful display and an amazing camera setup — the Mate 30 will surely have no trouble competing with the new iPhones and Pixels.

But there is just one caveat though. A big one. It doesn’t come with Google Services.

There’s no Google Play Store, YouTube and Gmail. Nada. Zilch. If you remembered the Trump-Huawei fiasco earlier this year, Google had no choice but to take away Huawei’s access to its services for all its future devices due to Trump’s executive order. Which brings us to the Mate 30.

If for some reason you can think you can live without Google and its services, then let’s check out what the Mate 30 has to offer.

Operating System & Specs

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The Mate 30 Pro runs on Android 10 with EMUI 10 and features the Kirin 990 processor, which sits right behind Apple’s A13 chip that’s found on their latest iPhone 11. According to myfixguide it’s probably the next best processor you can have on a phone. It also comes with 8GB RAM and a hefty 256GB of space. There’s also 5G connectivity, so at least you’ll be ready when that rolls out.

Now for the elephant in the room — the lack of Google services. Without it, there’s a whole lot that you can’t do on your phone. No access to your apps on the Play Store, calendar, maps and more. Sure there are workarounds, but it’ll never as convenient. For those like us outside of China, this could be a very big dealbreaker.

Display & Design

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A curve or what HUAWEI’s calling as the “Horizon” display will always make a phone feel premium and for the Mate 30 Pro, it’s rightly so. The 6.53″ OLED screen curves beautifully (a near 90-degree curve!) around the sides and it’s not just for show either. It has an intuitive side-touch that lets you customise virtual buttons for a number of things like volume control and camera set-ups.

The back of the phone is made of glass with Black, Emerald Green, Space Silver and Cosmic Purple finish. If unsightly fingerprint on glass isn’t your thing, vegan-friendly leather material in Orange and Forest Green are available too.

Camera & Battery

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This is the era of triple and quad-camera setups and the Mate 30 Pro has a 40MP f/1.6m wide-angle, 40MP f/1.8 ultra-wide, 8MP f/2.4 telephoto and a 3D depth-sensing camera all housed within a circular module. With the 3D depth sensor, you’ll be able to produce the bokeh effects while shooting videos and stills. On the front, you’ll have just as impressive 32MP selfie camera. While all these sound good on paper, we’ll be sure to test the Mate 30 Pro’s camera once we can get our hands on a review unit.

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The phone is powered by a 4,500mAh battery. And if you’re talking strictly just about battery capacity, it’s second only to the Moto G7 Power that has a whopping 5,000mAh battery capacity. So expect the Mate 30 Pro to finish strong at the end of the day. Plus there’s also the 27W wireless SuperCharge and 40W SuperCharge to power up your phone in a short time.

Early Thoughts

Everything about the Mate 30 Pro sounds amazing and it will definitely be one of the more powerful mobile devices in the market. Expect it to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Samsung, Apple and Google. But for an Android phone, the lack of Google’s services really puts a damper on everything. Even with Huawei coming up with its own app store, it’ll be hard to convince consumers to choose that over Google’s.

BUT… As with any devices running Android, there will always be a way to get around things. If you really want to get your hands on the Mate 30 despite the lack of Googled services, check out this video on how you can get Google on the phone.

 

The HUAWEI Mate 30 series will be available later this year. Price and availability TBC.