China's Huawei launches Mate 60 Pro smartphone with 5G chip breakthrough
Chinese tech giant Huawei launched its new Mate 60 smartphone series on Monday but offered few details about a possible semiconductor chip breakthrough for 5G speeds.
BEIJING — A packed stadium and a millions-strong online audience were eager Monday to hail a Chinese breakthrough that would defy the U.S. But the high-profile launch by Huawei — a tech giant whose products are restricted by the U.S. and other countries over national security fears — kept fans, experts and rivals guessing about its secretive new smartphone.
The Chinese firm revealed no new details about the phone, whose purported capabilities have fueled frenzied speculation in the U.S. and Europe about whether Beijing had achieved a major advance in semiconductor chip technology that would worry Washington.
The lack of new information about the Mate 60 smartphone series left many fans in China disappointed but still eager to show their support for a product that has been accompanied by great nationalistic fanfare.
“Buying domestic chips is to support my own country,” Zhiwen Yang, 18, said outside a Huawei store in Beijing. He said he has been using Apple’s iPhone but planned to buy the new Mate 60 series for its homegrown 5G capabilities.
Reviews from users and analysts have indicated that the phone is able to use 5G rapid internet speeds thanks to Chinese-made advanced semiconductor chips, brains that power toasters to fighter jets, which have emerged as a key battleground between the world’s two largest economies.
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