Huawei Mate 60 Pro smartphone first impressions: world-beating camera, good enough chip, no Google apps but Facebook, Instagram, X, Spotify work

The Huawei Mate 60 Pro has a breakthrough ‘telemacro’ camera lens, and the expected flagship phone features: great speakers, a decent battery and plenty of RAM

The Kirin 9000s chip, while not as good as the latest from Apple and Qualcomm, wins on 5G connectivity and, considering US sanctions, is quite an achievement

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The Huawei Mate 60 series smartphones have a world-beating “telemacro” camera lens. The in-house chip powering the phones is, overall, not a match for the latest Apple and Qualcomm silicon, but is amazingly good considering US sanctions against Huawei. Photo: Ben Sin

Published: 12:44pm, 11 Sep 2023Updated: 1:05pm, 13 Sep 2023

It would not be an overstatement to call the new Huawei Mate 60 series of smartphones – comprising the Mate 60 Pro and the coming Mate 60 Pro+ – the most controversial, and perhaps important of the year.

Launched last week in China without advance notice or marketing, the Mate 60 Pro is the first Huawei handset in three years to run on the tech firm’s self-designed silicon.

The three-year hiatus was the result of sanctions imposed by the United States that deny Huawei access to advanced silicon manufacturing technology.

How and where Huawei was able to manufacture the 7nm chip that powers the Mate 60 series is the subject of intense speculation within the US government.

And there are fears within the mobile industry that Huawei has essentially reignited the ongoing US-China tech cold war.

Politics aside, how does the Mate 60 Pro fare as a smartphone? Here are our first impressions.