Samsung and Huawei – Dodgy flagships.

Two flagships not-market ready.

Huawei Mate 30.

• Huawei pulled out all the stops except the one that really mattered and launched would be argued to be the best looking and best-performing smartphone of 2019.
• Apple could take some lessons from Huawei in terms of design as the Mate 30 Pro makes the iPhone 11 look like an engineering project and even beats the Galaxy 10 and Note 10 in my opinion.
• Huawei has also gone all out on the radio and its Kirin 990 supports both non-stand-alone and stand-alone 5G, has 14 5G antennas covering 8 5G bands compared to the Note 10 5G which covers 3.
• iPhone11 has no 5G at all.
• Huawei’s relationship with Leica has also been leveraged to the maximum with 3x optical zoom (iPhone 11 Pro 2x), super slow motion of 7680 frames per second as well accessories from professional photography equipment makers (e.g. Profoto), support for which is built into the camera app.
• The device also has gesture recognition which is partially responsible for the big notch and can recognise how the phone is being used to prevent annoying screen rotation when looking at the phone lying down.
• All of this top-notch hardware and great looks come at a price to match where users are being asked to fork out E1,099 for the Mate Pro (E1,199 for the 5G version).
• This is, as much, if not more than its flagship rivals and it is here that the Mate 30 Pro’s proposition comes to a crashing halt: there is no Google ecosystem installed.
• Instead of Google Mobile Services (GMS), Huawei has installed Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) which have hundreds of millions of users (claimed) where I think that 95%+ of these users are in China where the iOS and Google ecosystems are irrelevant.
• This means that almost no-one outside of China is using Huawei apps and they are very unlikely to start.
• Furthermore, almost all of the 3^rd party apps that a non-Chinese user might want to install will be expecting GMS software to be present on the device meaning that on this device, how well these apps perform will be very uncertain.
• For smartphone at this price point, this is completely unacceptable especially as there are so many excellent rivals to choose from for the same or even less money.
• To make this proposition fly, Huawei needs to price its device at a significant discount to compensate users for the added risk they are taking when buying a Huawei non-GMS device outside of China.
• This leads me to believe that Huawei will hardly sell any devices with HMS on them outside of China leading me to continue forecasting that smartphone market share will quickly trend to 0% over the next 12-24 months.
• This launch does nothing to change the seriousness of the outlook for Huawei outside its home market.

Samsung Galaxy Fold.

• Severe abuse of the Galaxy Fold has revealed that the weaknesses that I have been concerned about are worse than expected but also that some aspects of the device are fit to form the basis of future products.
• Well-respected YouTube phone review channel JerryRigEverything has put the fold through its series of abuse tests with interesting results (see here).
  • First, Screen: as expected the foldable screen scratches at the slightest abuse which is why Samsung put it on the inside.
  • The video also shows just how sensitive it is to scratches with thumbnails able to leave a permanent mark.
  • Furthermore, the slightest nick is capable of rendering the screen completely unusable clearly showing that this device is not ready for the abuse of the real world.
  • Second, the gap between the two sides of the display allows debris, pocket fluff, dust etc to get into the gap even when the device is closed.
  • Furthermore, it is still very easy for debris to get inside the hinge meaning that Samsung’s fix is not nearly good enough.
  • With enough use, I suspect that this will be enough to destroy the screen as was observed in the previous version of the device.
  • Second, the hinge is far more robust than expected.
  • The notorious bend test that first came to light with the iPhone 6, and totally destroyed Royole’s FlexPai, showed the Galaxy Fold hinge to be very robust.
  • Consequently, if Samsung can work out how to keep dust and debris from entering the hinge, it has a winning design on its hands.
  • Third, drop tests (see here) are showing that the new version of gorilla glass to be extremely strong on both the Galaxy Fold and the iPhone 11 and variants.
  • The glass is so robust that it failed to shatter on a 10-foot drop but the shock was enough to destroy the fragile internal screen in a similar manner to above.
• It is important to remember that these tests are anecdotal and not scientific in nature and as such do not represent hard data.
• However, they do serve as an indication of the kind of experience that the user can expect as well as where the segment is heading.
• Not only are folding screens very scratchable, but they also appear to be more fragile than I had expected, making them less suitable to life outside of a test lab.
• The net result is that Samsung has the winning design by putting the screen on the inside and I suspect that when the Mate X goes on sale in China next month, it will very quickly start failing.
• Foldable screens are still not really ready for the mass market, but there is plenty of innovation in this device (especially around the hinge) that can be taken forward into future products.
• Samsung remains my top pick as the best way to play Huawei’s demise outside of China and I remain happy to keep it in my portfolio.