The Mate 40 Pro is available in black and white locally, while other countries get an additional Mystic Silver finish that shimmers according to the angle of the light.

Design only takes you so far, of course, so the Mate 40 Series taps Huawei’s latest silicon inside. That’s the Kirin 9000 Series, a 5nm 5G SoC that the company says uses the most powerful GPU in any of its phones to-date. Alongside the CPU, which runs at up to 3.13 GHz, there’s a 24-core Mali-G78 GPU. A 3-core NPU – with two big cores and a more frugal tiny core – is also included.

Altogether they power the 6.76-inch display on the phone. Huawei isn’t using a 120Hz panel, topping out at 90Hz instead, though there’s a 240Hz touch sampling rate.

As for the cameras, that’s arguably the topic Huawei fans have been most excited about. There’s a whole host of sensors on the back, with the Mate 40 Pro having a 50-megapixel wide camera (f/1.9 with OIS), a 20-megapixel ultra-wide (f/2.4), an 8-megapixel 10x periscope lens (f/4.4 with OIS), a 12-megapixel 3x telephoto (f/2.4 with OIS), and a ToF camera for depth sensing. Altogether, Huawei says, you’ll get a maximum 17x optical zoom range.

For power, meanwhile, there’s the latest version of Huawei SuperCharge. That supports up to 66W of power, and can handle extreme low-temperatures too.

Cut out of the official Google Android apps – and the Play store – you’ll find that Huawei is still pushing its own EMUI platform. EMUI 11 delivers things like hand gestures – such as swiping up or down in front of the phone to scroll, left or right to flip through galleries, or pressing inward to answer calls or play/pause music – and split-screen views with floating windows for multitasking. There’s that 1080p MeeTime video calling app, its own Petal Search and Petal Maps app, and a virtual assistant called Celia that, according to Huawei’s Akhram Mohamed, is now supported in 15 countries.

The Mate 40 Pro will set you back R19 999 at launch which includes the Huawei Freebuds 4i and Huawei Wireless charger.

These devices come at a time perfect to take on the lack of a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 product in the wild, and just after the first iPhone 7 Plus rush.

Starting with the Porsche Design Mate 9, prospective buyers can look forward to a 5.5-inch curved AMOLED screen that displays in 2560 x 1440 resolution. The whole package is powered by a Huawei Kirin 960 octa-core CPU, which is joined by an i6 co-processor. Those CPUs will be working in tandem with a Mali-G71 MP8 GPU.

The Porsche Design Mate 9 is outfitted with 6GB of RAM and 256GB of onboard storage. It has support for both dual-SIM capabilities and NFC, along with a 4,000 mAh battery to power everything. Finally, users can look forward to an 8MP front-facing camera, along wi a rear-shooter capable of 20MP monochrome photos and 12MP RGB photos. This version of the device will cost users around €1,395 (ZAR20 879)

Moving right along to the Leica Mate 9, you’ll be getting a larger 5.9-inch screen that displays in full HD instead of 2K. The processor and GPU remain unchanged in the jump from the Porsche Design model. The battery isn’t changing either, offering 4,000 mAh regardless of the model you choose.

Just as well, both the front-facing and rear-facing cameras are the same ones found in the Porsche Design model. RAM is being downgraded to 4GB in the Lecia Mate 9, while onboard storage goes down to 64GB. It should be noted that the Mate 9 comes with support for SD cards, so if 64GB isn’t enough, you’ll be able to expand it. The standard edition will cost users ZAR10 499 and will be launching first in several Asian and Europe-based markets.

Both devices will be running Android 7.0 out of the box, and both will offer support for Huawei’s SuperCharge tech. While the Leica Mate 9 will be available in six different colors – Space Gray, Moonlight Silver, Champagne Gold, Mocha Brown, Ceramic White, and Black – the Porsche Design Mate 9 will only be available in what Huawei calls “Graphite Black.”

 A SA-based release will take place in the near future, but we do not yet know when. We’ll have more details on the Mate 9 as they’re made available, so stay tuned.

The Android-powered Mate S has a metal unibody with a curved back and rounded edges, as is the standard design these days. It measures only 2.65mm thick, the 5.5-inch screen offers 1080p, and on the rear is a 13-megapixel rear camera with optical image stabilization. There’ll be two versions – standard and premium.

Differentiating them is the Force Touch technology, which – just as we’ve seen on the Apple Watch – tracks not only touchscreen-taps but how hard you press on the display. But where the Mate S really differs is with its use of Force Touch and “Knuckle Sense” technology, which allows the screen to recognize the difference between taps and presses with a finger tip and drags of a finger knuckle. Thus unusual Knuckle Sense feature can spot when you’re sketching out things with your knuckle and treat them as launcher shortcuts.

Force Touch allows users to make specific like gestures, like directional swipes or firm presses, to trigger certain actions. Like, gestures can be made with knuckles, like a long drag across the display to take a screen capture, or drawing a letter to launch specific apps instead of searching for them. Huawei’s demonstration showed launching the camera with the letter “C.”

Along with dual SIM support there’s the  32GB of storage, priced at R10 699 (Vodacom ) and R10 799 (MTN), respectively. Oddly enough, Vodacom has been retailing the device for the past 4 weeks – or so – whilst MTN announced on Friday that they’ll be retailing the device soon. The version with Force Touch will be limited to “select markets,” the company says, but with no details on pricing just yet.

On the other hand, Samsung’s Note 4 is set to mount the biggest challenge to Huawei’s Mate 7 to date, so it’s only natural to want to compare the standard features, extra features, UI, camera, dimensions and proportions of the two. I found that a strangely difficult task with the press packs and standard PR talk provided from both manufacturers: Huawei still shy away from overselling their products to you. Only when you get a hands on with their device do you fall in love, and Samsung tends to worship their machines, well, because, they’re worthy of that much praise. So I have spent adequate time with both devices to get a real feel, hands-on productivity wise in accordance with the official specs. Obviously, this is the very definition of head-to-head review, but it’s a fun diversion for us to set the record straight. Follow the below links for reviews of each handset. 

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