Huawei Mate 90 Series Goes on Sale From 5,999 Yuan With Kirin 9050 Pro and Modular Camera

The launch also included earphones and watches, according to the report. Huawei said devices running HarmonyOS 6 and HarmonyOS 7 have passed 90 million, with the 100 million mark expected soon. The report said the Mate 90 series design had already been shown in Huawei stores before the event, so the main news was hardware and pricing. The report said Huawei brought back the Mate series' signature star ring camera module and the two-tone back panel that first appeared on the Mate 60 series.

The Mate 90 standard model comes in Crystal Pink, Crystal Green, Zero-degree White and Obsidian Black, with 12GB+256GB base storage and up to 12GB+1TB. The Mate 90 Pro and Pro Max come in Amber Orange, Emerald Green, Rose Gold, Crystal Diamond White and Obsidian Black, with 12GB+256GB base storage and up to 16GB+1TB. The Pro starts at 6,999 yuan and the Pro Max at 9,499 yuan. The RS Ultimate Design comes in Ruihong, Haobai and Xuanhei dual-tone finishes, uses glossy titanium for the frame and lower body, and starts at 12,999 yuan. The full series spans 5,999 yuan to 18,999 yuan, with a national-subsidy price as low as 5,499 yuan for the standard model, according to the report.

The Mate 90 Pro Max 16GB version, Collector's Edition and RS Ultimate Design use the Kirin 9050 Pro, the report said. Huawei said the 9C16T Lingxi CPU improves multi-core performance by 23 percent over the previous generation, the Mali GPU improves rendering performance by 40 percent and the NPU improves by 140 percent. The chip supports hardware ray tracing at 55 million rays per second, and Arena Breakout is the first game to run at 120fps with extreme ray tracing on the Mate 90 Pro Max. The Mate 90 Pro uses the Kirin 9035, while the Mate 90 standard model uses the Kirin 9030.

The Mate 90 Pro series inherits the dual-layer OLED display and upgrades it to a second-generation Linglong screen. Its 1 percent APL peak brightness reaches 12,000 nits and its more common 20 percent APL window brightness holds at 6,000 nits, which Huawei says makes HDR highlights more intense and video more vivid while using less power than single-layer OLED. With the HarmonyOS 7 Lingxi microkernel, the phones support large-area always-on display interactions, including zooming and checking maps without waking the screen. Huawei also introduced communication sharing, which uses smart traffic splitting, channel aggregation and multi-path concurrency across devices to improve speeds and reduce lag on high-speed trains, at concerts and in dense outdoor areas. The Mate 90 Pro Max goes further with dual physical SIM slots plus dual eSIM and four-card three-standby support.

For imaging, the Mate 90 Pro series and RS use third-generation Kunlun Glass on the front and new Optical Kunlun Glass on the rear camera module. Huawei says the new glass reduces internal scattering found in traditional microcrystalline glass, improving clarity in complex light while keeping Kunlun-level drop resistance. All Mate 90 models have infrared optical coating and a new night algorithm, with improvements in glare suppression and color-temperature balance. Huawei also added real-time skin-tone zone calibration using on-device AI models, which works even when no face is in the frame. The company said these functions sit at the bottom of the ISP pipeline, so third-party apps can use them for video calls, Live Photos and livestreams. The Mate 90 Pro Max main camera reaches 18EV dynamic range. Its telephoto system switches from a dual-telephoto setup to a single 200MP sensor, supporting up to 20x 4K60 video and real-time 200MP RAW processing.

The Ruiying Z10 modular camera is the first product after Huawei's XMAGE brand added the Chinese name Huawei Ruiying. It is not a teleconverter for a single lens but an external camera with a one-inch CMOS sensor that connects to the phone through hardware contacts for power and communication. Only the Mate 90 Pro Max Collector's Edition and Mate 90 RS Ultimate Design support it, and their mounts differ. The Z10 supports 24mm to 240mm 10x optical zoom; beyond 240mm it relies on XMAGE algorithms. The report said the Z10 has almost no noticeable delay in its wired zoom, does not block other focal lengths and produces stronger optical bokeh than a teleconverter attachment. It costs 5,999 yuan. The report said the price is not high for a mirrorless lens but is aimed at users who want to treat a phone as a camera.

The report described the Mate 90 series as moving the Mate line toward an all-round ultra-high-end position covering design, features and imaging. It said the combination of the phone and the Z10 pushes phone photography into territory previously held by cameras. While modular phone cameras are not a Huawei invention, the report said Huawei is the only company to bring this kind of modular camera to mass sale. The series covers a wide price range from 5,999 yuan to 18,999 yuan and includes more than a dozen models and dozens of SKUs, which the report said requires strong supply-chain management and may reflect a new normal for a saturated phone market.