While Huawei’s Paris unveiling was largely dominated by the P20 series, the company also introduced the Porche Design Mate RS which might be their most odd and exciting smartphone till date. The phone, for starters, has two fingerprint sensors, one of which inside the display and other, on the rear.
Unlike the P20 and P20 Pro, the Porche Design Mate RS lacks a notch on the front and opts for a 6-inch 2K curved screen with top narrow bezels on the top and bottom. The other big highlight of the Porche Design Mate RS is the fact that there’s a 512GB internal storage variant. Another feature exclusive to this phone is wireless charging. It’s also IP67 certified meaning the phone can survive those occasional spills and splashes.
Furthermore, the new Mate RS comes with an aerospace cooling technology called “microcapsule PCM” that prevents it from overheating. It has the same triple-camera setup on the rear as the P20 Pro that includes an 8-megapixel optically stabilized telephoto sensor, a 20-megapixel monochrome one, and lastly, a 40-megapixel RGB camera. Together, these enable features such as hybrid 5X zoom which combines optical and digital data from the telephoto and 40-megapixel lens, depth of field effects, and more. The phone can also record slow-mo videos at 960 frames per second, although only in 720p resolution.
Moreover, Huawei has added a handful of nifty software tricks for the camera. One of them is something called Huawei AIS which improves stabilization and allows you to capture long-exposure shots without a tripod. In addition to that, there’s a feature called “4D predictive focus” that helps you lock the focus on moving objects.
On the front, you’ll find a 24-megapixel selfie camera as well. It supports 3D Portrait Lightning and Portrait Mode as well. Both the front and rear cameras have a technology called “Light Fusion”. It essentially allows the sensor to combine four adjacent pixels into one and hence, generate clearer, brighter shots. It is powered by the company’s own Kirin 970 octa-core processor. There’s a 4000mAh battery which supports quick charging, 6GB of RAM and 256/512GB internal storage.
It comes preloaded with Android 8.1 with Huawei’s own EMUI skin on top. The Huawei Mate RS is also compatible with Google’s Augmented Reality platform, ARCore. There are not a ton of apps and games available right now, but whenever they do, it will be able to run them.
There are two color options — Black and Red. By now, you have probably realized that this phone is expensive considering the P20 Pro itself costs roughly $1100. The Porche Design Mate RS takes it up a notch and starts at €1,695 (~$2,100) for 256GB storage and €2,095 (~$2,600) for 512GB.
