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Huawei just did what Samsung couldn't

By Daniel Petrov

Published: Mar 27, 2018, 11:45 AM

The new Mate RS phone by Huawei, of its Porsche Design series, has plenty of unique features and "firsts" to brag with, besides the price (it is the first to crack the 2000 EUR barrier on the upside). It's got a crazy triple 40MP RGB + 20MP mono + 8MP telephoto camera, and is the first phone with 512GB of memory to store all the high-res photos that are fit to print on a roadside billboard.

It's also the first phone with PCM microcapsules for cooling that absorb heat and become in a liquid state, or the first one with two finger scanners, one embedded into the display. Wait, what? Yes, the Mate RS offers a way to unlock the phone with your fingerprint both at the front, and on the back, and both scanners are situated right under your thumb or index finger, respectively, without having to do yoga and stretching exercises down to the bottom of a big-screen phone. What's more, it "allows consumers to wake up the device by floating their finger above the display, while touching the sensor to unlock the device is lightning fast. The back fingerprint sensor can also be used to unlock the device or to access a second, secure space." Cool beanies.

That anywhere-on-display scanner used to be considered the Holy Grail of fingerprint scanning, and we just previewed a crude version of it at the MWC expo in the beginning of the month on a concept phone. Well, it is now appearing in a retail device, with a high-res OLED display - something that reports said Samsung struggled for the last year or two to implement. We expected one in the Galaxy S9, and it didn't materialize.

The Note 9 in-screen fingerprint scanner rumors are on and off, as the technology is apparently "challenging," "expensive," "doesn't work with screen protectors," and so on. Well, while it certainly isn't in an affordable phone, Huawei just pulled it off, and with a ergonomics twist at that, so we can only hope that Samsung will master it, too, by the time the Note 9 ships. After all, it will also be a niche device, and, judging from its predecessor, is unlikely to come cheap.

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Daniel, a devoted tech writer at PhoneArena from 2010 to 2025, has been engrossed in mobile technology since the Windows Mobile era. His expertise spans mobile hardware, software, and carrier networks, and he's keenly interested in the future of digital health, car connectivity, and 5G. Beyond his professional pursuits, Daniel finds balance in travel, reading, and exploring new tech innovations, while contemplating the ethical and privacy implications of our digital future.