Friday 6th September saw Huawei Consumer Business Group CEO Richard Yu take the stage at IFA 2019 to deliver one of the two keynote addresses at the annual trade show held in Berlin.
He used that opportunity to introduce the world to several products that the company is going to the market with immediately and over the next few months.
1. Kirin 990
As we had learned during the IFA Global Press Conference back in April, one of the recurring themes at IFA 2019 from the various companies and brands parading their wares is 5G. There was no shortage of the mention of 5G, which itself played a huge role in the troubles the company has found itself in the West this year, at Huawei’s event.
The Chinese device maker used the IFA 2019 platform to announce a new chipset, the Kirin 990.
The chipset, which will power the company’s upcoming premium smartphones in the Huawei Mate 30 series, also has a 5G variant.
Huawei is set to announce the Mate 30 series at an event in Munich, Germany, on September 19th.
Just as was the case with the Kirin 980 last year and the Kirin 970 the year before, the Kirin 990 and Kirin 990 5G score a couple of industry firsts.
According to Huawei’s presentation at IFA 2019, the Kirin 990 5G is the world’s first…
- 5G SoC that is the result of a 7 nanometer+ EUV process (yeah, depending on your level of understanding of such matters, you may or may not need Wikipedia’s help to understand what they mean by Extreme Ultraviolet lithography)
- 5G SoC to support both SA (standalone) and NSA (non-standalone) architectures
- 16-core Mali-G76 GPU
- Image Signal Processor (ISP) to use dual-domain video NR (noise reduction) for more accurate noise processing for videos
- Flagship SoC that packs a dual-core NPU built on the Da Vinci architecture, which comprise large NPU cores and tiny NPU cores (Huawei’s last two chipset releases have also had other “world-first” records when it comes to their NPUs). The large cores are instrumental for heavy computing scenarios as they are meant to deliver high performance and power efficiency while the tiny ones are for applications that don’t require as much power thus both sets of cores are able to match performance and efficiency whenever necessary.
In simple terms, with the two chipsets, Huawei is out to guarantee users of all the devices that will be powered by it of 3 things: industry-leading 5G experience (with 1.25Gbps peak uplink speeds and 2.3Gbps peak downlink speeds), the best AI experience and the best performance. How that materializes in the real world, however, will be the subject of our exploration when experiencing such devices in the future should we lay our hands on them.
2. Huawei FreeBuds 3 powered by Kirin A1 chip
Huawei’s wireless stereo earbuds, the FreeBuds 3, were also announced during the IFA 2019 keynote. Like the upcoming Mate 30 series smartphones, they are powered by a Kirin chip. In this case, the Kirin A1 which was also making its debut on the same day.
Like its more superior siblings, it also features a couple of firsts. It is the world’s first Bluetooth 5.1 and Bluetooth 5.1 Low Energy wearable chip, according to its makers. They are also the “first Open-fit TWS earbuds that both support call noise reduction and accurate real-time active noise cancellation”.
What end-users like you and me need to know by the support for all those wireless standards that Huawei is making a victory lap for is that when paired with a smartphone, the earbuds’ connectivity will be very stable. Should another wireless network be using the same frequency band(s) as that used by the Huawei FreeBuds 3, the Kirin A1 chip will hop on to another free one seamlessly while ensuring there is no interference.
Huawei is also touting the FreeBuds 3’s low latency, which is highly beneficial to anyone who uses them while gaming on their device for the instant feedback required (hello, Fortnite gamers), and crediting to the Kirin A1’s superiority.
Better aesthetic appeal, ergonomic design and acoustic benefits are the other qualities that its maker can’t hold back on. As is the Kirin A1’s approach to noise cancellation thanks to its Audio Digital Signal processor. And the endurance – up to 4 hours playback from a single charge and 20 hours when used with the accompanying charging case.
3. Huawei WiFi Q2 Pro home Wi-Fi system
If you have internet in your home, Huawei’s new router might be a good proposition once it hits the market.
The plug-and-play device, launched on Friday, allows for the connection of up to 15 devices with the ability of one router piggy-backing on another to extend transmission to another similar number of devices.
Fast data transfers (with theoretical connections of over 1Gbps being possible), low latency and resolving any interference issues along the way (during network signal transmission), Huawei says that the WiFi Q2 Pro will “cover every nook and cranny in any household”.
4. New colour options for the Huawei P30 Pro
Announcing new device colour options several months down the line after unveiling is a sure way of generating some much-needed buzz at a trade show like IFA 2019. Especially if you are holding out from making any new smartphone announcements and saving that excitement for a later date, as Huawei is doing with a later release date for the Mate 30 family.
You get to have press coverage in the sea of product announcements being made at the same. Tried and tested method. Works every time.
Like everyone else, we’ve also swallowed the bait: Huawei’s flagship smartphone now comes in 2 new colours, Mystic Blue and Misty Lavender.
The two new colour options, which we are unsure of whether they’ll ever make it to our shores, bring the much-needed attention to Huawei’s best-selling smartphone series (16.5 million units have been sold, according to the company)) as it readies itself to pick up its Android 10 update this month.
Photos: Huawei
