Huawei is one of the biggest phone makers in the world, but the company’s success, combined with China’s national security laws, has raised security concerns in the US. These concerns mean that Huawei, a Chinese manufacturer, has not been able to sell its phones in the US, and the situation has escalated. President Trump signed an executive order that blocks US companies from buying foreign-made telecoms equipment, and the US Commerce Department placed Huawei on the “Entity List,” which prevents it from buying technology from US companies without government approval. In response, Google suspended Huawei’s Android license, meaning that Google will no longer provide the Chinese firm with forthcoming Android updates. As a result, Huawei phones don’t have access to the Google Play Store (meaning no Android apps), and they can’t use Google services. But Huawei keeps building phones, and people all over the world keep buying them.
There was a big shock earlier this year about Huawei’s development, but Nvidia’s CEO doesn’t see it as a huge deal.
“These are just numbers. Is it really 7? Did they shrink it down to something sufficiently good that you can make a phone from? There’s no magic in these numbers. It’s just 7.”
It opened a few years ago, but this post by a travel vlogger put the “mini Europe” project back on my radar. Housing the Huawei R&D department (which is probably where it designs new chips) and reportedly costing over $1.5 billion to build, it has replicas of 12 European cities, including Gothenburg and Prague.
However, despite the travel reels from invited and/or sponsored visitors circulating on social platforms, you won’t just casually access the Huawei Dongguan Campus in Shenzhen — it’s only for “Huawei employees, family, and clients.”
But that’s never a good thing for smartphone battery life and performance. According to a new FT report:
“Huawei’s chips also consume more power than its competitors’, according to measurements, and can cause the phone to heat up.”
While those sanction-skirting chips made by Huawei’s HiSilicon chip design business might be a source of national pride in China and consternation in the US, they’re not necessarily any good.
[Financial Times]
The Kirin 9000s chip made by SMIC in China inside the new Mate 60 Pro is still a few generations behind what TSMC is producing for current iPhones (4nm), expected to move to 3nm next week. And without access to advanced machines from ASML it’s going to be very hard for China to advance efforts further.
The teardown does not confirm 5G, although the phone is certainly capable of 5G-like speeds.
Before TikTok and semiconductors, the US was fighting a war against Chinese telecom. What happened?
GSMArena is reporting that both the foldable Mate X3 and flagship P60 Pro will be present at the company’s upcoming event in Munich on May 9th. We already knew the event was taking place, but now the exact models being launched have been confirmed.
Unfortunately, sanctions mean that whatever launches won’t be able to ship with Google’s apps and services.
[GSMArena.com]
It has a great screen but some weird quirks
