Huawei Technologies is the largest smartphone manufacturer in China and is on pace to overtake Apple as the second largest in the world. Huawei has achieved this massive growth despite the fact that none of their smartphones are available in one of the largest smartphone markets in the world: the United States. The company has attempted selling smartphones direct to consumers via Amazon in the past, but in order to take on the likes of Samsung, Apple, and to a lesser extent LG, Huawei needs the help of U.S. carriers to breach the market. Earlier this year, two separate reports from The Information suggested that Huawei is working with AT&T in the U.S. to sell one of its flagships in Q1 2018. Building on these reports, we now have direct evidence pointing to the existence of a Huawei Mate 10 Pro model coming to AT&T.
The Huawei Mate 10 Pro was announced last month and while it packs the same HiSilicon Kirin 970 SoC, many of its key specifications differ from the regular Mate 10 model. For instance, the Mate 10 Pro offers a 6″ 2160×1080 OLED panel and foregoes a 3.5mm headphone jack and microSD card slot, but also adds IP67 water resistance. Comparatively, the regular Mate 10 offers a 5.9″ 2560×1440 LCD panel but retains the 3.5mm headphone jack and microSD card slot. A full specification comparison can be found in the table below.
| Huawei Mate 10 | Huawei Mate 10 Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Display | 5.9″ 2560×1440 RGBW HDR LCD Panel | 6″ 2160×1080 OLED Panel |
| SoC | Kirin 970 SoC, Mali G72 GPU | Kirin 970 SoC, Mali G72 GPU |
| RAM | 4GB | 4GB/6GB |
| Internal Storage | 64GB | 128GB |
| MicroSD Card Slot | Yes | No |
| Rear Cameras | 12MP RGB + 20MP Monochrome Camera, both f/1.6 | 12MP RGB + 20MP Monochrome Camera, both f/1.6 |
| Front Camera | 8MP Front Camera with an f/2.0 Aperture | 8MP Front Camera with an f/2.0 Aperture |
| 3.5mm Headphone Jack | Yes | No |
| Certification | IP53 | IP67 |
| Fingerprint Scanner | Yes (front) | Yes |
| Price | €699 | €799 |
Recommended Reading: The Huawei Mate 10 Duo is Held Back by Nonsensical Feature Disparities
According to the firmware files we obtained, only the Mate 10 Pro will make it stateside and will be exclusively carried by AT&T. Notably, the firmware we obtained is named BLA-A09-att-us which differs from the BLA-L09 that represents the international model. This suggests to us that the AT&T Mate 10 Pro may have some minor differences, though we aren’t sure what those differences may be.
Dump from /system/app showing pre-installed AT&T apps
The firmware shows that the AT&T Huawei Mate 10 Pro does come with all of the usual AT&T carrier software (which can thankfully be uninstalled) on top of Android 8.0 Oreo and EMUI 8.0. Interestingly, the device comes pre-loaded with Mozilla Firefox Browser as well as Google Chrome, indicating the company may have struck some sort of agreement with Mozilla.
Unfortunately, the firmware files don’t give us any information about an actual launch date or pricing. We’re likely to hear more about the AT&T Huawei Mate 10 Pro at the upcoming year Consumer Electronics Show (CES), where Huawei unveiled last year that the Mate 9 would be sold in the U.S. through Amazon.
The Huawei Mate 10 Pro AT&T firmware I obtained was provided by FunkyHuawei, a service which lets you install pre-release Huawei firmwares, recover bricked devices, and rebrand/convert China region phones to international variants. The service supports the Mate 10 series and offers root tools as well as ways to rebrand devices without unlocking your bootloader.
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