Huawei unveils Mate 70 handsets

Huawei Technologies Co on Tuesday unveiled its Mate 70 smartphone series, dubbed by several industry insiders "the most powerful Mate ever", directly intensifying competition in the premium handset market.

Industry experts said a breakthrough has been made from operating systems to chips, and it is likely to extend beyond smartphones, once again showing that the suppression of China's tech sector by the United States will only fuel a domestic drive for independent innovation.

At a time when Apple has yet to launch its artificial intelligence features in China, Huawei's Mate 70 series boasts AI-enabled functions, including improved photography, AI gestures and live transcription.

The new smartphone series also marks the first major commercial rollout of HarmonyOS NEXT, a "pure-blood" version of Huawei's own operating system, that does away with roots to the Android system and enables connections with other products like electric cars and watches.

Yu Chengdong, executive director of Huawei, said at a product launch event on Tuesday that the new series is "the most powerful Mate in history" and its "smartest" flagship product.

The price of Huawei's Mate 70 series starts at 5,499 yuan ($758) for the base model, 6,499 yuan for the Mate 70 Pro, 8,499 yuan for the Mate 70 Pro+ and 11,999 for the Mate 70 RS.

As of Tuesday, there were more than 3 million preorders for the latest flagship series on the Chinese technology company's website.

"It is a major breakthrough moment for Chinese smartphones," said Xiang Ligang, director-general of the Zhongguancun Modern Information Consumer Application Industry Technology Alliance, a telecom industry association.

In addition to several new features, Xiang said the Mate 70 series' chips and the performance of applications fully supported by HarmonyOS NEXT were its two spotlights.

Huawei's Mate 70 series is a successor to its Mate 60 series launched by the company in August last year with a surprisingly advanced chip that it said had been completely produced in China.

Though the Shenzhen, Guangdong province-based company did not reveal details of the chips on Tuesday, Xiang said that he had "immense confidence" in Huawei.

"When the outside world generally believes Huawei has hit a dead end, it often surprises us with groundbreaking achievements," he said.

"Similar breakthroughs have extended from chips to operating systems, and are very likely to go beyond smartphones," he added.

"US' suppression of China's tech industry is counterproductive to global supply chains and will only cause harm to itself," Xiang emphasized. "Instead, these pressures will only fuel China's drive for more homegrown and independent technological breakthroughs."