Huawei Quietly Debuts Flagship Smartphone in Effort to Ride Sales Wave

While tech giant stays mum on chipset details, online tests show the new Mate 60 Pro is equipped with a Kirin 9000s chip with a download speed rivaling 5G handsets

Huawei begins selling its flagship Mate 60 Pro smartphone on Tuesday. Photo: VCG

Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. launched a new flagship smartphone on Tuesday, in a discreet fashion and ahead of schedule, said to be powered by a self-developed chip that can rival the speed of 5G handsets, as the tech giant tries to shrug off the impact of U.S. sanctions and capitalize on robust quarterly sales growth in China.

The company began offering the Mate 60 Pro at 6,999 yuan ($962) in its stores and online around noon, without prior advertisement other than an open letter that cited the early launch as a celebration of its Mate series reaching 100 million units in cumulative shipments. The company gave no detail about what kind of system-on-a-chip (SoC) the smartphone uses and whether the handset is compatible with 5G wireless networks.

The model, which Caixin learned was originally slated for release on Sept. 12, runs on Huawei’s latest HarmonyOS 4.0 mobile operating system and has advanced functions including satellite calling, artificial intelligence-powered large language model applications and wireless fast charging, according to the company.