huawei – Page 2

A glimpse into one of Huawei’s campuses in Beijing, China. This is the entrance to their technology showcase. Yes, it looks like something out of Star Trek.

Thanks to beautiful premium mobile devices like the Mate 10, P10 and Watch 2, Huawei has become a powerhouse with consumers overseas. Yet, the Chinese megacorp’s brand recognition and presence in the U.S. is still very much a work in progress.

I got to visit Huawei last week and the experience surprised me in several ways. Here are 7 things that I learned while visiting Huawei that totally surprised me.

Despite being a relative newcomer in the U.S., Huawei is the no. 3 smartphone manufacturer globally – right after Samsung (no. 1) and Apple (no. 2).
Huawei has built 1500 networks globally, and they provide global network service to a third of the world’s population.
Think Apple’s new campus is spectacular? Huawei is building a new campus in Dongguan, China that looks like it may end up wiping the floor with Apple’s campus in many ways – and yet no one is talking about it – at least not yet. The campus is being designed to resemble multiple European cities, using a mixture of several European architectural styles ranging from Mediterranean to Gothic and everything in between. There is even a beautiful clock tower on campus. A special train is being built for employees to use to get there.
Their phone manufacturing facilities and tech campuses are incredibly state of the art. When phone companies come to mind, a lot of us tend to picture a dimly lit, sketchy environment somewhere in China that packs in people in like sardines. Yes, I went there. It turns out that that’s the furthest possible from the truth for Huawei. I got to take a tour of Huawei’s factory and was blown away by the efficiency and the good working conditions there. Granted, I was on an escorted media tour, but I was still very impressed. Factory workers are encouraged to come up with suggestions and to be a part of the process. Huawei also told us that their phone manufacturing process actually takes fewer steps, and is more streamlined and efficient than the iPhone’s manufacturing process. After seeing just how high tech their “assembly line” is, I’m sure that that statement is true.
Huawei encourages and promotes females in tech. I toured Huawei’s campuses in Shenzhen and Beijing, and in each city, I encountered many women working in different facets of the corporation, from executive level to software and engineering. Could there be more women working there? Sure. But it looks like Huawei is actively taking the steps to encourage more women to work in tech.
Huawei is investing a ton of money in R&D. So much so that they have 16 R&D centers globally and 7000 R&D staff members. This R&D goes beyond just smartphones, tablets, laptops and wearables. To that effect, they have developed tech for everything from super advanced conference video call systems for meeting rooms, to security systems that assist law enforcement when combatting terrorism, as well as comprehensive tech for building smarter cities.
Huawei’s brand, Honor, is the no. 1 e-commerce phone brand in the USA and I highly recommend the brand if you’re looking for a great unlocked mid-range phone sans contract.

These 7 facts about Huawei are just the tip of the iceberg. One thing’s for sure, while so many other mobile manufacturers are struggling, this a mobile phone company to keep an eye for in 2017 and beyond.

Huawei’s retail store and service center in Shenzhen, China is very similar to what Apple and Microsoft stores are like here in the U.S.

This smart lamp designed by Huawei offers a glimpse into the future of smart cities

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Tagged: huawei

7 Surprising things you probably didn’t know about Huawei originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 22, 2017 at 8:00 am.

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Thanks to artificial intelligence, the Mate 10 is able to recognize the object that the camera is looking at and it automatically switches the camera into “flower” scene mode.

Huawei’s flagship phone has landed in the form of the Mate 10 and Mate 10 PRO. The new Mate 10 series not only brings an all new glass body to the series, but it’s also the first of Huawei’s phones to come with the AI powered NPU (Neural Processing Unit) that Huawei announced at IFA last month. What does that mean exactly? It means that the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro are a lot more intelligent than your average smartphone because they are able to learn about your behavior and adjust to it. But more on that later.

On the design front, the Mate 10 and Mate 10 PRO sport an all new glass body that is curved on all four sides. That means that there are no sharp edges, so they are comfortable to hold. But there are significant differences between the Mate 10 and the even more premium Mate 10 PRO. For starters, the Mate 10 packs in a 5.9” FullView display with a 16:9 aspect ratio and a barely-there-bezel, while the Mate 10 Pro packs in a 6” OLED FullView Display with an 18:9 aspect ratio and a high screen-to-body ratio. The 6” display on the PRO is packed into the body of a 5.5” device, and its 18:9 aspect ratio allows for a neat smart split screen multi-tasking mode on the PRO. Both phones are also powered by a Kirin 970 processor that offers 20% better performance over the 960.

Both devices pack in a large 4,000 mAh battery, but neither of the phones come with wireless charging. Huawei explained to us that between the large capacity battery and SuperCharge, there isn’t much need for it. To that effect, SuperCharge provides a full day’s charge in just 20 minutes, and it’s also 4x faster than wireless charging. Huawei is also proud to show off that the Mate 10 series phones are the first phones to meet qualifications for the TÜV Safety certification, so you can be sure the phone won’t explode on you. And for those who are still paying attention to headphone jacks, the Mate 10 has a 3.5mm jack on top, while the PRO has a type c jack only, but it does come with a 3.5mm adapter.

Aside from sporting the larger display of the two, the Mate 10 PRO is IP67 certified for water and dust resistance, which is something the Mate 10 lacks. Another significant difference between the two models is that the Mate 10 PRO houses its fingerprint reader on its back side, while the Mate 10’s fingerprint sensor is located on its front side.

Both Mate 10s’ dual-lens cameras were co-engineered with Leica to produce 12-megapixel RGB + 20-megapixel monochrome sensors, optical image stabilization, an aperture of f/1.6, an AI-powered bokeh effect and AI-powered digital zoom.

The Mate 10 will be available in several colors including mocha brown, champagne gold, pink gold, and black, while the PRO will be available in midnight blue, gray, pink and mocha brown, and there will also be a Porsche Design version of the Mate 10 PRO.

Mate 10 PRO

But enough about the hardware – the Mate 10 series also represents a major leap forward for phones thanks to its NPU. This starts with EMUI 8.0 (Huawei jumped from EMUI 5.1 to EMUI 8.0 so they could align better with Android 8.0). EMUI 8.0 unlocks machine learning and artificial intelligence from the NPU. This brings everything to the table from better performance to improved battery optimization. You know how most Android phones slow down with age? Even a year old phone can get quite sluggish. Fortunately, when it comes to performance, EMU 8.0 helps make sure that your phone is “born fast, stays fast”. The NPU helps make that possible through its performance engine. Battery life is also improved thanks to the AI which learns about how you’re using your phone and optimizes for the best possible battery life.

A Food scene is automatically recognized thanks to the NPU

The AI even helps improve the experience of taking photos. To that effect, the phone understands what the camera is looking at, and does real time scene and object detection all powered by AI. Essentially, the phone processes what it’s looking at – as if it were a human brain, and it will set the best camera parameters based on what it recognizes. For example, the Mate 10 recognizes when it’s taking a photo of a sunset vs a plate of food, and it will automatically optimize the camera settings for the object it’s taking a photo of in that scene. It can even recognize when you’re taking cat photos and optimize accordingly! We briefly got to try this feature and were impressed with how quickly the Mate 10 recognized flowers in a scene and automatically optimized the camera for the flowers to create a beautiful photo. In addition to cats and flowers, there are scenes for food, stages (if you’re watching a show), outdoor landscapes, snow, water, low-light, sunsets, plants, portraits, and dogs, and Huawei says that future updates will bring additional scenes.

Mate 10 (Left) and Mate 10 PRO (right)

But this is just the beginning. Huawei has built out a 3rd party app engine with APIs so that app developers can further take advantage of the NPU. With the Mate 10 series, Huawei has become a pioneer in the AI space, and we expect other phone manufacturers to try and play catch up soon.

Last but not least, the Mate 10 has the ability to transform into a mobile PC. That might not sound so unique right off bat, but it actually is. That is because unlike the competition which offers similar functionality, Huawei doesn’t require you to invest in a pricey dock. Instead, you can use just about any inexpensive USB-C to HDMI or USB-C to DisplayPort cable to connect your Mate 10 to a monitor and keyboard for a full desktop-like experience.

Pricing and availability for the Huawei Mate 10 and Mate 10 PRO are not available yet, but we’ll update this story once we have it.

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Don’t call them smart, Huawei’s Mate 10 series are the most intelligent phones ever made (Hands-on) originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 16, 2017 at 9:00 am.

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