This flagship claims a record-breaking 8,000 nits brightness, but there’s a catch

Like clockwork, Huawei has announced its latest flagship devices, the Mate 80, Mate 80 Pro, Mate 80 Pro Max, and Mate 80 RS, with various improvements over their predecessors. Among the highlights is the display of the top-tier model, which the company claims has a record-breaking peak brightness, but there’s a catch.

Huawei Mate 80 Pro Max supports up to 8,000 nits brightness, kind of

The Mate 80 Pro Max stands out from the newly announced Huawei Mate 80 series with a dual-layer OLED display that the company claims can hit 8,000 nits of peak brightness. If that sounds too good to be true, you’re not wrong, as there’s a major caveat to how Huawei measures that peak brightness.

In the clarifications for the 8,000 nits claim, Huawei explained the measurement was made at 1% APL. APL stands for “average picture level” and describes the brightness average across the screen. If the whole screen is white, we have a 100% APL, and if one half is white and the other black, it’s at 5% APL. You can check our detailed explanation of how that works, but that 1% APL measurement is unrealistic.



With that in mind, we’ll need to see real-life tests of the Mate 80 Pro Max display to learn how it compares to devices like the Oppo Find X9 Pro and OnePlus 15. Those are the two devices with the brightest displays at 20% APL that we’ve ever measured. Regardless of the measurement trick, Huawei’s device is likely to have a very bright display.

All Mate 80 phones feature flat screens, with the two smaller devices featuring the same 6.75-inch 1-120 Hz LTPO OLED panel with 1280 x 2832 pixels. The Mate 80 Pro Max and Mate 80 RS displays are a tad larger at 6.9 inches, with 1320 x 2484 pixels. The Mate 80 RS supports the BT.2020 ultra-wide color gamut, while the other devices cover P3. All devices are protected by second-generation Kunlun glass.

Rather mysterious specs in pretty designs

The base Mate 80 features a Kirin 9020 chipset, while the rest are powered by the Kirin 9030 chips, which also have a Pro version that’s about 5% faster than the non-Pro model. The company claims the Kirin 9030 has a 35% performance improvement over the Kirin 9020, which it says is 35% faster than last year’s Kirin 9010, but it doesn’t share many details about it. The devices feature up to 16 GB RAM for the Kirin 930 Pro-equipped models and 20 GB for the Mate 80 RS Ultimate Design version. The storage starts at 256 GB and goes to 1 TB.

Surprisingly, Huawei has held back with the batteries. While other Chinese brands jump at over 7,000 mAh, the larger Mate 80 models reach only 6,000 mAh. Despite that, Huawei says it has an Outdoor Exploration Mode, which can provide up to 14 days of battery life with limited usage. The larger models support 100W wired and 80W wireless charging, while the smaller models reach 66W wired and 50W wireless charging.

On the back of the three main devices is a prominent circle that highlights the position of the wireless charging coils. That part works well with the round camera bump, and both together resemble an eight.

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