Huawei Mate 30 Pro coming to Australia ...without Google apps

Well Huawei sure has balls of steel.

The embattled Chinese smartphone manufacturer tonight unveiled its next flagship smartphone - the Huawei Mate 30 Pro - and dropped a few bombshells along the way. The Mate 30 Pro will run Android, but without Google apps and services. Despite this, Huawei is still bringing the phone to Australia. All things considered, that's pretty damn brave.

The Google-less Mate 30 Pro is a result of the ongoing dispute between the US government and Huawei. While the handset runs the open source version of Android - Android Open Source Project, or AOSP - with Huawei's EMUI 10 skin it is devoid of the Google apps and services many of us have come to rely on. This means the Mate 30 will ship without the Play Store, Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail, and more, all as a result of the trade ban.

Instead, the Mate 30 Pro will have a Huawei app store on board. At present, the Huawei app store is home to over 45,000 apps. For comparison, the Google Play Store has almost 2.5 million apps, and the Apple App Store has almost 2 million.

While quantity is not necessarily equal to quality, we found some pretty significant omissions in a brief hands-on. The Huawei app store is missing Netflix, Spotify, Uber, and Tinder, just to name a few.

Given Android's open source nature, it may be possible to sideload Google apps and services onto the device. (Sideloading is a process of directly installing an app onto your phone from its APK file, rather than by downloading it through an app store. Think of it it as like running an EXE file on Windows.)

"It's not something we will be doing, but it's something that consumers could do themselves," said a Huawei spokesperson. The company won't be going out of its way to make it easy for Mate 30 Pro owners who want to sideload apps, presumably because this could further inflame tensions.

In a brief hands-on with a pre-production device, we found sideloading apps like Chrome was a fairly painless process, and sideloaded apps seemed to run without a hitch. However, this could change when it comes to final hardware. And there is, of course, the question of whether customers will be willing to jump through so many hoops to get the apps they want.

In the event there's a breakthrough in the whole Huawei vs. Trump situation, Huawei says it would be able to upgrade the Mate 30 Pro to the Google-complete version of Android in about two days.

Politics and software drama aside, the Mate 30 Pro sure looks like an impressive piece of kit.

On the display front, you get an extra-curvy 6.53-inch OLED 1080p+ display. The screen is bent by 88 degrees, which makes the rounded edges a lot more pronounced than what we've seen on devices like the P30 Pro and Galaxy Note 10+. To account for this change, Huawei has axed the volume rocker. Instead, double tapping either curved edge will bring up a virtual volume slider. In our hands-on, we found this a little finnicky, but it might just be a case of getting used to the action. Much like the P30 Pro, the Mate 30 Pro's speaker sits underneath the screen.

There's also an in-screen fingerprint reader which is said to be even faster, and if you'd prefer, there's 3D facial recognition tech (similar to the iPhone's) housed above the Mate 30 Pro's display. Rather than just using the camera to unlock your phone, there's a whole array of other sensors packed in that chunky notch to improve security and ensure it's actually you trying to access your device.

As expected, the Mate 30 Pro's camera set-up builds on the P30 Pro's camera setup, with a few key differences. This time around you get a:

• 40MP primary lens
• 40MP ultra-wide angle lens
• 8MP telephoto lens with 3x optical zoo, 5x hybrid zoom, and 30x digital zoom
• A Time-of-Flight lens for capturing additional depth information

While the primary lens seems to be identical to the P30 Pro, the ultra-wide lens seems to have had a massive upgrade from 20MP to 40MP. Resolution isn't everything, but from a quick hands-on, the Mate 30 Pro ultra-wide lens seemed to produce noticeably better shots than what you'd get on the P30 Pro.

The Mate 30 Pro does make some camera trade-offs however. Its zoom lens is only 3x, rather than 5x as we saw in the P30 Pro. This means you'll get 5x hybrid zoom, and 30x digital zoom, as opposed to the P30 Pro's 10x hybrid zoom and 50x digital.

One interesting new video capability is the ability to shoot 720p slow motion video at 7,680 fps. For comparison, the iPhone 11 shoots slow motion video at up to 240 fps.

Other key specifications for the Mate 30 Pro include Huawei's in-house Kirin 990 processor (although we don't know if the model coming to Australia will use the 5G or 4G variant), 256GB of storage, 8GB of RAM, and a 4,500mAh battery said to last up to two days per charge.

At this stage, the Huawei Mate 30 Pro will only be available outright in Australia, with pricing and availability to be confirmed in the next week or two. The phone will be available in a choice of black or silver. A standard Mate 30 is launching alongside the Mate 30 Pro, but it won't be ranged in Australia.

In addition, Huawei confirmed the foldable Mate X will be available locally before the end of the year.

Alex Choros

Managing Editor + Group Telco Editor | X | Instagram | Threads | LinkedIn

Alex Choros is the Managing Editor of WhistleOut Australia and an award-winning journalist. He's been writing about consumer technology for over a decade and is an expert on the Australian telco sector, to the point where he knows far too many phone and internet plans by heart. In addition to leading the WhistleOut editorial team, Alex is responsible for ruining the office Sonos with his troubled taste in music.

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