Huawei held its Mate 90 series and全-scenario product launch in Beijing on October 1, showing off the HUAWEI Mate 90 series, a limited-edition nova 16 Pro collaboration box set, FreeBuds Neo, the WATCH D3 wrist ambulatory blood pressure recorder, and the MateTV 2 smart display line. It was the first time a Huawei flagship phone has been announced and put on sale the same day, with Mate 90 sales opening at 12:08 pm.

Five models went on sale: the Mate 90, Mate 90 Pro, Mate 90 Pro Max, Mate 90 Pro Max Collector's Edition, and the Mate 90 RS Ultimate Design, starting at 5,999 yuan, 6,999 yuan, 9,499 yuan, 10,999 yuan, and 12,999 yuan respectively. Rising prices for memory chips and other key upstream components pushed entry prices across the main product lines up by 1,000 to 1,500 yuan versus the previous generation. Richard Yu put it this way: "With memory prices soaring the way they are today, our pricing is still very sincere."

Three Chip Tiers Across the Line, Kirin 9050 Pro for Pro Max and Above

According to Richard Yu, Huawei executive director, chairman of the product investment review committee and chairman of the consumer business group, the entire Mate 90 series runs on flagship Tau (τ) chips, with vertical integration across software, hardware, chip and cloud delivering gains in design, performance, imaging, reliability and smart features.

The three tiers break down as follows: the Mate 90 uses the Kirin 9030, the Mate 90 Pro the Kirin 9035, and the Mate 90 Pro Max, Pro Max Collector's Edition and Mate 90 RS Ultimate Design the Kirin 9050 Pro. Huawei's own lab figures put overall device performance up 27% on the Mate 90 versus the Mate 80, 20% on the Mate 90 Pro, and 31% on the Kirin 9050 Pro models.

Logic Folding: 238 Million Transistors per mm², 125TB/s Cross-Die Bandwidth

The Kirin 9050 Pro is the centerpiece of the chip story. It uses what Huawei calls "logic folding," stacking logic units in three dimensions and shortening signal paths through high-density vertical interconnects. Rather than shrinking transistors further, the approach substitutes "time (τ) scaling" for geometric scaling.

Huawei says the Kirin 9050 Pro reaches a transistor density of 238 million per mm², up 28% from the previous generation, with 5 million signal bonding connections and cross-die bandwidth of 125TB per second. Clock buffers are down 55%, and critical path latency falls by more than 30%.

On specifications: the CPU uses the Lingxi architecture with nine cores and 16 threads, made up of one 3.1GHz ultra-large core, two 2.7GHz performance cores, four 2.2GHz efficiency cores and two 1.75GHz small cores, for a 23% gain in multi-core performance. The GPU is the Maliang 955, with rendering performance up 40%. The NPU uses the Da Vinci architecture, with AI computing power up 140%, running a 30B MoE model on-device and improving AI scene understanding by 47%. A tenth-generation ISP lifts telephoto sharpness by 34%.

For the other two tiers, the Kirin 9035 is a higher-clocked Kirin 9030 Pro, with peak frequency moving from 2.75GHz to 2.85GHz, and gains of 11% on CPU, 10% on GPU and 51% on NPU. The Kirin 9030 improves on the Kirin 9020 by 13% on CPU, 54% on GPU and 13% on NPU, and integrates a mobile security processor (MSP) certified for post-quantum cryptography.

Imaging and Display: Third-Generation Red Maple Camera, Debut of the Full-Color Linglong Screen

On imaging, every Mate 90 model carries the third-generation Red Maple True Color camera, the first to apply infrared optical coating across all focal lengths, with global color accuracy up 37% and portrait skin tone accuracy up 62%. The Pro Max pairs an 18EV ultra-high dynamic range main camera with a 200-megapixel periscope telephoto, rated CIPA 7.5 for stabilization. Huawei also introduced the Ruiying Z10 modular camera, with a 1-inch sensor and 24-240mm continuous optical zoom.

On displays, Pro models and above get the second-generation Linglong screen, with 1% APL peak brightness of 12,000 nits. The Pro Max and RS Ultimate Design debut the full-color Linglong screen, with end-to-end BT.2020 coverage.

Connectivity and On-Device AI: Industry-First Quad-SIM Triple-Standby, 30B MoE Model On-Device

On connectivity, the Mate 90 series is the first to use a fused Wi-Fi and cellular antenna architecture, improving signal strength by 2dB. All models support eSIM, and the Pro Max is the industry's first quad-SIM triple-standby phone. An outdoor exploration mode supports 36 hours of screen-off track navigation, with extreme battery life stretching to 15 days. Multi-device cooperative communication sharing raises photo and video transfer speeds by up to 40% in congested concert venues or weak outdoor signal conditions.

On AI, Pro Max models and above run a 30B MoE full-modality on-device model. Celia Call 2.0 can answer calls on the user's behalf, summarize conversations and translate in real time; the Celia Gallery assistant handles photo editing and video creation from a single spoken instruction; and the Celia navigation bar proactively suggests more than 30 categories of services.

On software, the Mate 90 series ships with HarmonyOS 7. Huawei says HarmonyOS now counts more than 450,000 apps and services and 35,000 games, with devices running single-framework HarmonyOS 6 and HarmonyOS 7 passing 90 million.

Also Launched: Collaboration Box Set, Noise-Canceling Earbuds, Blood Pressure Recorder and Smart Display

The nova 16 Pro gets a limited-edition box set with Hirono, an IP from Pop Mart, built around a "Setting Sail Day" theme and designed to resemble a shipping container adrift at sea. Inside are a phone in an iridescent mother-of-pearl finish, a co-branded case, a mini phone bag and a phone charm, limited to 7,000 sets worldwide. The box set version comes preloaded with a Hirono theme spanning always-on display, lock screen and home screen, earbud pop-ups and charging animations.

The FreeBuds Neo noise-canceling earbuds went on sale at 699 yuan. The charging case uses a fully curved shuttle-shaped design and comes in Galaxy Silver, Nebula Pink, Zero White and Starry Black. The earbuds offer adaptive noise cancellation across scenarios, with average noise reduction of 30dB across the full frequency range and end-to-end gaming latency as low as 43ms. A Doria limited edition co-branded with Honor of Kings is priced at 799 yuan and goes on sale October 14.

The WATCH D3 wrist ambulatory blood pressure recorder starts at 2,988 yuan. Its blood pressure function holds a Class II medical device registration certificate in mainland China and EU CE MDR certification. The body is 11.3mm thick, 15% slimmer than its predecessor, with a 1.92-inch screen peaking at 3,000 nits. Hybrid pressure measurement technology cuts the number of inflations in an ambulatory reading from 27 to seven. A one-tap mini health check takes about 60 seconds and reports up to 17 health indicators.

The MateTV 2 smart display line runs HarmonyOS 7 and opens four routes to content via the app market, app lab, phone sharing and Zhuoyitong, making both HarmonyOS apps and the full range of phone apps compatible. Built on a flagship Kirin 9-series chip, the standalone Honghu Vivid image processor integrates a 3D dual-viewpoint decoding module, which together with the SuperMiniLED black diamond screen enables a first-of-its-kind 3D viewing feature that converts 2D content from Huawei Video, Douyin and other platforms into 3D in real time.