Huawei is announcing new products at an event in London. You can watch the event streamed live, above.
The announcements so far:
Huawei Mate 20 Pro: The company's newest flagship phone is an Android handset with a 6.39-inch 3,120×1,440 AMOLED display. But it's got a host of unique features that sets it apart from the pack, including an in-screen fingerprint reader and 3D face scanning, three rear cameras and ultrafast charging (top off to 70 percent in 30 minutes). And it can even wirelessly charge other devices and phones. It also offers expandable storage in the form of a new "namomemory card," a flash memory format that's the size of a nano-SIM.
The Mate 20 Pro (left) and Mate 20
Josh Miller/CNET
Read: Huawei's Mate 20 Pro is a wild bag of phone tricks
Read: Huawei Mate 20 Pro's three cameras put to the test in London
Huawei Mate 20: Why announce one phone when you can announce two? In addition to the high-end Mate 20 Pro, Huawei has a step-down device, too. The standard Mate 20 has tiny teardrop notch, a less muscular camera array (albeit still three rear lenses) and the fingerprint reader moves from inside the screen to the back of the phone. It has a slightly smaller battery, too — "only" 4,000 mAh, versus the Pro's 4,200. But the screen on the standard Mate is a bit larger: 6.53 inches diagonal.
Huawei Mate 20 RS: Following in the footsteps of the earlier Mate, Huawei will also offer a luxury Porsche Design version with leather accents.
Huawei Mate 20 X: If that 6.53-inch screen of the Huawei Mate 20 isn't big enough for you, you're in luck. The company will also offer the jumbo-sized Mate 20 X, with a whopping 7.2-inch screen and 5,000mAh battery. There's even a gamepad attachment — sold separately, of course — that adds a thumbstick and d-pad, too.
3D Live Emoji: Huawei unveiled a new feature it calls 3D Live Emoji, which — in the demo, at least — seemed to one-up the AR offerings from Apple. Using Google's AR Core technology, it allows real-world objects to be scanned in and then placed and animated in a mixed reality environment. On stage, a Huawei executive scanned in a stuffed panda, then showed it interacting and dancing with another person. The resulting mixed reality scene could be captured on photo and video and saved or shared on social media, too.
Huawei Watch GT: Also unveiled today was a new wearable. The Watch GT ditches Google's Wear OS and instead opts for Huawei's own Light OS. It's a round smartwatch that promises up to 22 hours of battery life with GPS and heart rate tracking engaged, and up to 2 weeks of battery life when those features aren't engaged.
Read: Huawei Watch GT ditches Wear OS for longer battery life
Suffice it to say, Huawei continues to push the envelope in terms of features and performance on phones. But for American consumers, Huawei announcements continue to be exercises in FOMO. Following open Congressional testimony in February in which the heads of the CIA, FBI and NSA bluntly advised all Americans not to purchase or use Huawei products and services out of concerns that they're used to spy on Americans, the company's products have effectively been unavailable from US wireless carriers and most retailers.
The earlier version of this story, published on October 15, follows.
Huawei will take the wrapper off its latest super phones, the Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro, at its launch event in London on Tuesday 16 October.
The livestream is embedded above and will kick off at 2:00 p.m. local time, which is 6:00 a.m. PT/9:00 a.m ET. (Find out what time that is where you are.)
Although we don't officially know everything Huawei will unveil, we do know it'll be the Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro. The Mate series is Huawei's answer to the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 and Google Pixel 3 XL — a larger phone, packed with top tech.
As it's done with the previous Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro, it's expected that the two phones will share similar specs and designs, but the Pro will likely have the edge when it comes to amounts of RAM, storage and almost certainly price, thereby earning its "Pro" moniker.
In terms of design, the phones are expected to be large — with some rumours pointing to a whopping 6.9-inch screen on the Pro model — but with an edge-to-edge design, complete with notch at the top.
With the camera, industry leakster Evan Blass posted images of the phone on Twitter, sporting a square camera unit on the back containing three separate camera lenses and a flash, as well as Leica branding. That's not particularly surprising, given the Huawei P20 Pro already has three cameras. We'll have to wait and see whether the Mate's cameras operate in the same way as the P20 Pro.
Rumours also point to an in-screen fingerprint scanner, as well as two-way wireless charging, letting you hold a wireless charging device against the Mate 20 to take the Mate's charge. Hopefully it also comes with a huge battery so you won't mind giving away your power.
Huawei has already announced its latest top-end processor, the Kirin 980, so it's a safe bet to assume it'll be inside the Mate 20 Pro, at least, if not in the standard Mate 20 as well.
