Huawei launched its new flagship line, the HUAWEI Mate 90 Series, at a global event in Shanghai on 1 October 2026. The range runs from a standard model up to the Mate 90 Pro, the Pro Max, a Pro Max Premium Edition and an RS ULTIMATE DESIGN, and the biggest change sits inside.
Every model runs Huawei's new Kirin silicon on HarmonyOS 7. The Mate 90 Pro Max uses what Huawei calls the LogicFolding Tau Chip, the Kirin 9050 Pro, which the company says lifts overall performance by 31 percent. The Pro model's Kirin 9035 is rated at a 20 percent gain and the standard edition's Kirin 9030 at 27 percent. Huawei says the Tau chip carries 5 million signal transmission bonds and 125 TB/s of inter-die bandwidth, and that gaming can render up to 55 million rays per second with hardware ray tracing.
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A 12,000-nit screen and a 1-inch modular camera
The Mate 90 Pro introduces Huawei's second-generation Linglong Display, which the company rates at a peak brightness of 12,000 nits at 1 percent APL on a Tandem OLED panel. The Pro Max and RS ULTIMATE DESIGN move to a Full-color Linglong Display with full BT.2020 colour management. Huawei says panel lifespan is extended by 138 percent, and a 1-nit low-brightness mode is included for night reading.
Imaging is where the series leans hardest, and it is the part creators will watch. The whole line ships with True-to-Color Camera 3.0, which Huawei says improves colour accuracy by 37 percent and skin-tone accuracy by 62 percent. The Pro Max adds an 18 EV ultra-HDR main camera, a 200-megapixel RYYB telephoto and CIPA 7.5-rated stabilisation for shots past 20x zoom, plus a dedicated live-streaming mode. Separately, the HUAWEI XMAGE Z10 Modular Camera pairs a 1-inch sensor with a 24 to 240mm continuous optical zoom and an f/2.0 to f/4.5 aperture.
For where rival camera flagships sit right now, see our vivo X500 Pro Max first impressions, and our earlier Huawei Pura 90s photography campaign coverage.
Built to take knocks, and to hold a signal
Durability gets its own billing. The Mate 90 Pro and above use Huawei's full-body Kunlun Xuanwu architecture, with an Optical Kunlun Glass camera cover the company rates at 20 times better drop resistance and a third-generation Kunlun Glass front with a 50 percent improvement in impact resistance. The whole lineup carries IP68 dust and water resistance to 6 metres and IP69 resistance to high-temperature, high-pressure water jets.
On connectivity, Huawei is using a converged Wi-Fi and cellular antenna it says adds 2 dB of signal gain, with eSIM across the range and four-SIM, three-standby on the Pro Max. The company claims photo and video uploads are up to 40 percent faster in congested places such as concerts.
What about Malaysia
This was a global launch out of Shanghai, and Huawei has not yet confirmed Malaysian pricing or an on-sale date for the Mate 90 Series. Huawei has brought its recent Mate and Pura flagships to Malaysia, so a local announcement is the next thing to watch, and we will update this story once Huawei Malaysia confirms the details. The full global specifications are on Huawei's official site.
Richard Yu, who chairs Huawei's Consumer BG, said the series was built through "vertical integration of hardware, software, chips, and cloud" to evolve design, performance and imaging.
