CIA vs Huawei: intelligence agencies gang up on red menace like the Mate 10 Pro

In the latest installment of the "everybody is spying on us and we have to protect ourselves" drama, the US intelligence agencies have taken a firm stance against... the Kirin 970 chipset paired with dual f/1.6 aperture Leica cameras, and a 4000mAh battery.

Yes, we are talking about the Mate 10 Pro, or other "products and services" made by Huawei or ZTE, lumped together in Tuesday's Senate testimony by heads of security agencies like CIA, FBI, NSA, and others from the three-letter security soup that, thankfully, keeps us safe from election or NSA hacks.

FBI Director Chris Wray went on record to reiterate the multi-year mantra that they are "deeply concerned about the risks of allowing any company or entity that is beholden to foreign governments that don’t share our values to gain positions of power inside our telecommunications networks... the capacity to maliciously modify or steal information. And it provides the capacity to conduct undetected espionage."

Well, that likely explains why US carriers were forced to scrap the deal to include excellent handsets like the Mate 10 Pro in their portfolios at the last minute, depriving subscribers of the chance to look beyond the Apple-Samsung duopoly there. While we can agree that carrier network equipment could potentially warrant a second opinion, crusading against consumer products by the third-largest cell phone maker on that ground sets an interesting precedent, to say the least.

Those celebrity photos circulating not long ago came from iCloud accounts, after all, not Huawei phones, plus a lot of handsets and components are made in China anyway, so if the government there needed to install backdoors in consumer cell phones, it probably could, and we would have heard about it by now. Huawei chimed in on the matter, saying that its phones and network equipment products are used throughout the globe without other staged witch hunts to speak of:

AT&T and Verizon missed on these Huawei Mate 10 Pro features

AT&T and Verizon missed on these Huawei Mate 10 Pro features

1. Best battery life in its class

The Mate 10 Pro may check all the desirable boxes for a flagship this season, like a 10nm chipset, high-end dual camera, 6GB RAM/128GB storage, high screen-to-body ratio, and a glass body, but one feature really stands out - its battery life. Its generous 4000 mAh pack, certified by German testing, is good for a day and a half or two of heavy usage, thanks to the frugal screen and processor. That's about 50% more than the phones in its price range and specs sheet, and battery life is the main sore point of today's flagships.

2. Fastest LTE modem on a phone

The Mate 10 Pro is equipped with Cat 18 LTE modem of Huawei's own making that maxes out at 1.2 Gbps downloads. There is no current equivalent to this beast, and only upcoming phones with Snapdragon 845 like the Galaxy S9 or LG G7, will be able to brag with the same feat. It pays to be a telecom equipment company making consumer cell phones, after all.

3. Stellar camera

The performance of the Mate 10 Pro's dual camera is high up there with phones like the Note 8 or iPhone X, especially in low light (they all do fine when there is plenty of sunshine around). Here's the Mate 10 Pro shot of a busy Hong Kong street at night. Can you read the bus stop sign well?

4. This is the same shot taken with iPhone X, can you read it now, or can you see the bus stop lighting from all the halo around it?

5. Gesture-based finger scanner

Hauling groceries in one hand trying to quick-reply to a text that popped in your notification shade, or turn on your cellular data? Today's big screen smartphones present plenty of challenges towards one-handed operation, but the Mate 10 Pro's finger scanner is right where it belongs on a phone with 6" display - in the midle of the rear, right where your index finger goes.

You can use it as a programmable button, slide the notification shade up and down, or swipe between your photos, all without touching the screen - it's the most versatile fingerprint reader, and you'll love it. What about in-display scanners, you ask? Good, but for now they are still at the bottom, and you have to stretch all the way down still.

6. Project Treble support

As one of the few phones that ship with Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box, Google's Project Treble was confirmed working on both the Mate 10 and 10 Pro. Treble unifies and standardizes the basic Android drivers and APIs, so that developers only have to deal with porting the front end, instead spending most of their time porting features to specific hardware, as they do with custom ROMs. This is supposed to speed up Android updates significantly, but the side bonus is that ROMs can be ported quicker, too.

7. Top-shelf screen-to-body ratio

Over 80% screen-to-body ratio is what separates grain from chaff when it comes to compact designs with huge displays, and the Mate 10 Pro delivers it in a tall and narrow, easy to grip and operate waterproof glass body.