Huawei’s Mate 50 and Mate 50 Pro feature satellite texting

Huawei Mate 50 series announcedthe day before the Apple event in September and with a feature iPhone 14 is expected to be presented: Possibility to send texts via satellite. The Mate 50 and Mate 50 Pro will be able to send short texts and use navigation thanks to China’s global BeiDou satellite network, allowing communication in areas without a cellular signal.

The flagship Mate 50 series includes 4G-only versions of the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset with 8GB of RAM. The 50 Pro comes with a larger 6.74-inch OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate, while the Mate 50 offers a 6.7-inch 90Hz OLED display. Both have a 50MP main rear camera with a variable aperture with stops from f/1.4 to f/4 – most smartphone cameras use fixed apertures, so a moving aperture is neat, but the lens itself is so small that it’s unlikely to create any Some kind of meaningful difference in depth of field in most situations.

Both models share an ultrawide 13-megapixel f/2.2, and while they each have a telephoto lens, the Pro gets an upgraded 64-megapixel camera capable of 200x digital zoom – the standard Mate 50 offers 100x digital zoom with a lower 12-megapixel resolution. Megapixel sensor.

If you feel you hear a lot about satellite-based communications these days, it’s because you are. T-Mobile and SpaceX just announced a partnership It is intended to provide this feature to T-Mobile subscribers via Starlink satellites. and rumors Apple’s satellite messaging feature It has been going around since last year.

In all of these cases, the technology is likely to be limited, at least initially. T-Mobile says its system will allow text messages and even photos, but voice and data calls won’t come until later. Based on Huawei’s description of the system, it appears that the Mate 50 phones will only be able to send messages via satellite, and you won’t be able to receive them. In all of these cases, satellite-based texting is intended to provide emergency communication in places where there is no signal to deliver urgent messages, rather than a way to keep up with your group chats when you are out of cell range. In any case, we’ll have to wait at least a little longer to get the feature in the US – Huawei devices, of course, won’t be sold here.