The Huawei Mate 70 won't be launching anytime soon

Huawei is not the force it was once because of many ongoing sanctions against it from the U.S., but it still manages to surprise us. Last year, it did just that when it launched the Mate 60 Pro with a 7nm 5G-capable Kirin 9000s chipset (Huawei didn't use Kirin chipsets since 2020), SK Hynix RAM chips, and other components that it shouldn't have been able to get.

Now, we're waiting for the successor series, the Mate 70 series. However, reputable leaker Digital Chat Station has now stated on the Chinese social media website Weibo that the series may be getting delayed. The leaker didn't specify the reason for the delay but says the Mate 70 series will be launched in China in mid-to-late Q4 of this year.

The Mate 60 series was introduced in August last year. Rumors earlier indicated that the Mate 70 is expected in September. Mid-to-late Q4 of this year means we can expect the new phones not earlier than October or maybe even November. Late Q4 would mean a December launch.

The report suggests that among the upgrades for the new series, we have a more capable Kirin 9100 chip, a 1.5K LTPO OLED display with 3D face scanning, and also an OmniVision OV60K sensor for the main camera. The sensor is also said to sport a variable aperture, just like the one on the predecessors.

On top of that, the Mate 70 series is reportedly going to come with larger silicon batteries which might get a bump up in capacity over 5,000mAh - exactly how much is yet unclear, but any battery capacity bump is always welcome, at least in my book.

The reason for the delay is, as I mentioned earlier, unknown at this moment. Although Huawei has lost a lot of its US customers in recent years, the phones it makes are still exciting (at least to me) and I am somewhat bummed something is stopping them from launching as planned. That is if the leaks were right about the planned launch, to begin with.