The wait is over. This morning Huawei released its first 5G phone, the Mate 20 X 5G, in China. The phone was launched earlier this year in Switzerland and several other countries. Its highly anticipated appearance in the world’s largest consumer market came with a reasonable price tag of CN¥6199 (US$901). Huawei also announced that additional mobile network operators in Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East are adding the 5G phone to their roll-out plans.

Mate 20 X 5G network communication is powered by Huawei chip subsidiary HiSilicon’s novel Balong 5000 7nm multi-mode chipset. The Balong 5000 supports 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G networks and is also the world’s first modem chipset that supports both standalone (SA, 5G independent networking) and non-standalone (NSA, 5G network deployment based on LTE) architectures — the two current 5G networking modes. The SA mode includes a new 5G Packet Core architecture rather than the 4G Evolved Packet Core to allow 5G deployment without an LTE network. The NSA mode meanwhile relies on existing LTE networks for control functions. This enables operators and vendors to speed up 5G adoption, with the potential trade-off of slowing SA implementation.

Huawei Mobile Phone Vice President Xiaolong Li says Huawei is the only company currently providing such SA/NSA 5G dual-mode mobile phones. The Mate 20 X 5G is also the only mobile phone that allows users to mount a 5G and 4G SIM card at the same time.

Working alongside the Balong 5000 is the Huawei Mate 20 X 5G’s powerhouse, the Kirin 980 HiAI. As Synced previously reported, this 7nm smartphone SoC (system-on-a-chip) has a dual-core NPU (Neural Network Processing Unit) and was the world’s first chipset to adopt ARM’s Cortex-A76 CPU. It has an eight-core ARM big.LITTLE CPU architecture comprising two 2.6GHz A76, two 1.92GHz A76, and four 1.8GHz A55, enabling a 75 percent increase in performance and 58 percent increase in power efficiency compared to its predecessor Kirin 970.

Other Mate 20 X 5G features include a 7.2" OLED screen, a Leica Triple Camera, and a nifty optional stylus. The phone has a smaller battery size of 4200 mAh compared the Mate 20 X’s 5000 mAh, and Huawei boasts it can be charged in “mere minutes” using the TÜV Safety Certified 40W HUAWEI SuperCharge power bank.