- click to enlarge -

The Mate range of the 30 series is the first hit by the ban

By chance all this happened just as Huawei was about to launch on the marked  the most sophisticated and solid range of all its smartphone series, the "Mate". The ban has in fact forced Huawei to give up  the GMS, the Google Mobile Services that allow the smartphone to install the entire galaxy of apps contained in the Google Play Store (Google Map, Gmail and YouTube, for example, but also OS firmware updates and security patches), an asset that for many users represents an indispensable value added whose presence is taken for granted on every smartphone that adopts the Android operating system.

- click to enlarge -

It is wrong to say that the effects of the ban have first intervened on the 40 series, as it is sometimes simplistically stated. In reality, the 30 series has also been hit and right on the head, its most valuable part, consisting of the Mate models (declined in the Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro models, the first smartphone that does not use any American component of the brand, also offered in the Mate 30 Pro 5G variant) which, as said, have been marketed without GMS, as they use instead the HMS (Huawei Mobile Services) and maybe in the future also the proprietor operating system Harmony.  Despite all this, it is interesting to note that millions of Mate 30 units have been sold (mainly in Asia). Whereas it seems almost obvious to underline that the discrimination between the different models of the 30 series has been precisely the presence "in the reference block" of 5G compatibility: all those in the block without 5G compatibility (30 lite, 30 and 30 Pro) have in fact GMS onboard and have not suffered (nor it seems they will suffer  in the future) limitations of any kind.

- click to enlarge -

 Vitaminization of the "non-Mate 30"

Huawei moved quickly and, taking note of the situation, devised an ingenious exit strategy to avoid being cornered. On the one hand, in fact, it considered that, despite the excellent technical features and the driving power of a well established brand, the Series 40 had to struggle hard to gain a foothold in the extra-eastern world,  due to the absence of the galaxy of apps contained in the GMS;  on the other hand, it managed to turn a dangerous crisis into a happy opportunity, paradoxically exploiting the most favourable hemi-part of the meaning which in 1959  an excellent American, the never enough mourned John F. Kennedy, attributed (in a way, it seems, a bit approximate) to the two ideograms that in Chinese make up the concept of "crisis": "danger", but above all "opportunity".  The permission to use the GMS available for the "non-Mate" models of the 30 series would in fact have given Huawei the opportunity to continue to develop products, evolving a particularly fortunate series, well engineered and, in short, in great demand because of the quality-price ratio, at the cost of not changing too much its original technical substance subjected to certification. So, the idea arose to use to advantage this series by presenting the first “vitaminized” version of P30 lite, brushing up the cheapest and most convenient model of the trio of the penultimate series, and deciding to put on the market the  P30 lite New Edition. (Incidentally, the same strategy has also been used for lower end products such as the P Smart, released in 2018, followed by the 2019 version and more recently by the 2020).

- click to enlarge -

The P30 lite New Edition

The new model differs from the old one substantially for the better resolution of the selfie camera (from 24 to 32 Mpix) and for the implementation of the memories, as the system RAM capacity has increased from 4 to 6GB, whereas the data storage ROM capacity has increased from 128 to 256GB.  In the first month of marketing (9 January-9 February) a pair of Freelace Bluetooth headsets was also bundled to promote sales at almost list price on the Italian market. This new product is also getting a good commercial response due to the favourable price/performance ratio, however borrowed from its predecessor:  this factor, on the other hand, represents exactly the reason why nerds all over the world now tend to grant their preference to mobile phones of Chinese origin, even though in reality in recent times there has been a marked increase in the cost of the top-of-the-range segment by the more established brands.

- click to enlarge -

The new P30 Pro New Edition

The P30 Pro, a model that has become famous in particular for the amazing technical features of the periscope zoom (the first of its kind made available on the market, so powerful that it allows you to photograph the moon freehand), as well as for being the latest mobile phone in the Huawei's premium segment authorized to use GMS, has remained the same for months.  Since its release, in fact, in the first half of 2019, the only update it had received was announced in early September, during the oldest international consumer electronics fair held every year in Berlin, the IFA, and was of an exquisitely aesthetic nature:  the release of the Mystic Blue and Mystic Lavander color variants.  

It is not known how much by mistake or how much by calculation (as it sometimes happens with leaks), however, a short article appeared recently all of a sudden on the Huawei Deutschland website, announcing a promotional period from May 15 to June 4 2020 that would concern precisely the Huawei P30 Pro New Edition model, of which in fact nothing was known until then.  This piece of news seems to be a prelude to the commercialization of a further new model, which (as happened already for the P30 lite) would derive from that of the penultimate series, the 30, also subjected to a “vitaminization” process probably based, at least, on the increase of ROM and RAM memory capacity.