Huawei Unveils Mate 90 Series With 'LogicFolding' Kirin Chips and HarmonyOS 7 as US Curbs Bite

Huawei Technologies unveiled its Mate 90 smartphone series on Thursday, betting on a home-grown chip design breakthrough and its own operating system to keep its flagship line advancing despite US export curbs that continue to choke off China's access to cutting-edge semiconductors.

The launch, held in China, introduces four models — the standard Mate 90, the Pro, the Pro Max and the RS Ultimate Design — headlined by the Kirin 9050 Pro, Huawei's most advanced mobile processor, built with a technique the company calls "LogicFolding."

LogicFolding restructures a chip's internal wiring in three dimensions rather than the conventional flat two-dimensional layout, packing more computing power into each processor at the cost of using more silicon wafers during manufacturing. Huawei says the technique stems from a broader chip-design principle it calls the Tau Scaling Law, developed to bypass US technology restrictions and offset China's lack of advanced chipmaking facilities.

"Advanced semiconductor capacity remains very limited in China, and Huawei's Ascend AI chips also draw on that same capacity," consumer business chief Richard Yu told reporters ahead of the launch. "The capacity for smartphone chips remains tight."

Yu said China's chipmakers still rely on deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines, and that while extreme ultraviolet (EUV) technology is "valuable," domestic manufacturers are still working toward it. Huawei declined to name the manufacturer of the Kirin 9050 Pro; Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), China's top logic foundry, is widely believed to produce Huawei's Kirin chips.

The premium Mate 90 models — including the Pro Max Premium Edition and RS Ultimate Design — run on the Kirin 9050 Pro, which Huawei says delivers a 31 percent increase in overall performance over the previous generation. The standard Mate 90 starts at 5,999 yuan (about $895), roughly 1,300 yuan more than last year's Mate 80, while the Pro starts at 6,999 yuan.

The top-end Mate 90 Pro Max with 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage is priced at 9,999 yuan (about $1,491) — 2,000 yuan more than the equivalent version of its predecessor at launch.

All four phones run HarmonyOS 7, Huawei's home-grown, Android-free operating system, which the company says now supports more than 450,000 apps and services.

Yu attributed the higher prices partly to rising memory costs, which he said had added an average of $200 to the cost of each handset. "We have to increase prices as well, yet at a slower pace," he said. Research firm IDC estimates China's smartphone shipments fell 7 percent year on year between January and August, even as Huawei's own shipments rose 13 percent.

Huawei is also accelerating shipments of its Mate XT 2 trifold phone — the first device to use processors based on the LogicFolding architecture — with Yu saying the company has shipped about 100,000 units since its September 12 release and is on track to sell more than 1 million. Huawei plans to launch the trifold in markets across Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and potentially Europe.

Asked about Apple's first foldable phone, announced last month, Yu welcomed the competition. "I am very pleased to see the launch of a similar product by our peers," he said.

Yu said Huawei would use more chips built with the LogicFolding technique in future smartphones, signaling that the workaround has become a central pillar of the company's strategy as US restrictions show no sign of easing.