Huawei stunned the tech world back in August when it announced the Mate 60 series. The line was Huawei’s first phones in three years to be powered by a 5G Kirin chipset designed by Huawei. The chip was built by China’s largest foundry, SMIC, and was manufactured on the latter’s 7nm process node. It was a shocking announcement considering that U.S. sanctions seemed to prevent Huawei from producing or obtaining application processors (AP) that support 5G.
The U.S. had given Huawei permission to power its previous flagships, like the P50 series (2022), Mate 50 line (2022), and the P60 line (2023), with Snapdragon chipsets that were modified not to support 5G signals. So when the Mate 60 series was unveiled with the 7nm Kirin 9000s 5G chipset, U.S. lawmakers and officials went berserk, and Chinese consumers were overcome with waves of nationalistic pride.
The next flagship series due from…
