Huawei launched the first Mate smartphone way back in 2013, with the tenth-generation device now making its appearance in South Africa. The Huawei Mate 50 Pro was launched last night at the Sun Arena in Pretoria, bringing with it a few new features to entice buyers.

Huawei announced its very own mobile imaging brand “XMAGE” in 2022, with the Huawei Mate 50 Pro packing what it calls an Ultra Aperture XMAGE camera. With an industry-first 10-size adjustable physical aperture adjustment and f1.4 large aperture on the 50 MP camera, the system furthermore incorporates Super Night Mode, Professional Portrait and Super Macro.

Another aspect Huawei emphasised is the Mate 50 Pro’s screen. While the specs are impressive: 6.74-inch Huawei FullView Display, a screen resolution of 2616 x 1212 pixels and a high refresh rate of 120 Hz and 1440 Hz PWM dimming, it’s the material the screen is made of that stands out. The Huawei “Kunlun Glass” consists of 10 quadrillion-level nanocrystals, the result apparently of composite ion strengthening, which make it more resilient and drop resistant as verified by the first-ever five-star glass drop resistance certification from Switzerland’s SGS. If you are going to break the screen, you have 100 days to do so, since Huawei will replace it for free if this happens.

Another key feature is the power management of the device. The Huawei Mate 50 Pro packs a 4700 mAh battery within its slim body. According to Huawei, it offers 66 W Huawei SuperCharge wired and 50 W Huawei SuperCharge wireless fast-charging solutions. It’s the low-battery Emergency Mode that’s also impressive - this activates when the battery level falls to 1%, with SuperEnergy Boosting kicking in to extend standby time by three hours or 12 minutes of call time.

 If you are one for stylish design, then you might be swayed by the Space Ring Design and the elegant Clous de Paris step-patterned embossing design around it. The orange vegan leather design should then also be your colour of choice, if not there’s also grey and black models available, albeit in glass.

By now, users must be aware that Huawei doesn’t make use of Android, instead the Mat e50 Pro runs on EMUI 13, with apps from Huawei AppGallery.

As far as the engine of the machine, The Mate 50 Pro runs on Qualcomm’s octa-core SM8475 Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 4G chipset (which, importantly, means no 5G), and 8 GB of RAM.

With pre-ordering available, the Huawei Mate 50 Pro will be available in SA from 1 February, with options starting at R25k for the 256 GB model, rising to R27k for the 512 GB unit. If you pre-order the device, you also receive the Watch GT Runner smartwatch for mahala.