It is expected that Huawei will be unveiling its new flagship by early November. A hint at the unconfirmed debut states that Huawei is reportedly presenting its new Kirin 960 chipset later this month.
Phone Arena reports that Huawei has already started sending out invites for a press launch scheduled on Oct. 19. Supposedly, the China-based tech maker will be announcing the new Kirin 960 chipset, the company's next-generation, home-grown flagship processor. Meanwhile, with the Oct. 19 launch, it is expected that the first flagship to be powered by the Kirin 960 chipset, the Mate 9, will be released soon after.
While Huawei has yet to confirm the release date for its next flagship, it is already expected that the Mate 9 will be unveiled as early as Nov. 3. Huawei has already confirmed that it will have another press launch on the said date. Meanwhile, in terms of timeline, having a new flagship debut just weeks after a chipset launch has already been done by Huawei. Last year, the company launched the current-generation Kirin 950 processor in November. The launch has been followed weeks later by the debut of the Mate 8, the then-first flagship to carry the Kirin 950 processor.
As for the Mate 9, it is said that Huawei will launch the new flagship as a full lineup with at least three iterations of the series. The base model for the flagship will carry at least 4 GB of RAM and storage options for either 64 or 128 GB onboard. Meanwhile, there will be a top-tier variant carrying a massive 6-GB RAM and featuring up to 256 GB of native storage.
It is also rumored that one expected feature for the new flagship is a Leica co-engineered dual cam setup. This means that the main camera for the Huawei Mate 9 — for the 6-GB RAM version, at least — will carry a similar setup to the Huawei P9 but with a number of improvements like pixel count and image capture features.
