Huawei Mate 90 phones certified as 5G in China for first time since 2020

Two Huawei smartphones have appeared in China's telecommunications equipment certification database officially labeled as "5G digital mobile phones," a designation the company has not used for its China-market handsets in years. The listing, which surfaced on September 3, points to a formal return of 5G connectivity for Huawei's flagship line after U.S. sanctions forced the company to drop the feature starting with the Mate 50 series in 2022.

Back on the 5G Map

The two devices, carrying model numbers CMM-AL10 and CMM-AL00, were spotted in the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's network access license database. Leakers and bloggers have identified the phones as likely members of the upcoming Mate 90 Pro series, based on the listing's mention of six cameras and a rated battery capacity of 6,615 mAh. The phones run HarmonyOS and support a range of connectivity standards including NearLink, Huawei's proprietary short-range wireless protocol.notebookcheck+3

The 5G label is the most notable detail. Huawei's Mate 40, released in 2020, was the last flagship to ship with full 5G support before sanctions cut off access to advanced chipmaking. Subsequent models, including the Mate 50 and P60, launched without it. The Mate 60 series in 2023 used homebrew Kirin silicon widely believed to support 5G speeds, but Huawei never marketed it as such in China. A HarmonyOS update earlier this year introduced "5A" branding — Huawei's own term for what it described as faster, lower-latency connectivity — while recent international models like the Pura 90s Pro shipped with explicit 5G support.notebookcheck

Launch Expected Later This Month

The Mate 90 series is expected to debut on or around September 23 at the Shenzhen World Exhibition and Convention Center, according to a regulatory filing for a "Huawei Device Haco Launch Event" approved on August 10. Huawei has not officially confirmed the date.huaweicentral+1

The lineup is rumored to include four models: the Mate 90, Mate 90 Pro, Mate 90 Pro Max, and Mate 90 RS Ultimate Master. The phones are expected to run on a new Kirin chipset built around what Huawei calls the "Tao Law," a semiconductor scaling principle announced in May by Huawei chip executive He Tingbo. Leakers have also indicated the Mate 90 may adopt LPDDR6 memory.huaweicentral+2

A Quiet Milestone

The certification marks a practical end to one of the most visible consequences of U.S. technology restrictions on Huawei. Whether the underlying silicon fully matches the capabilities of mainstream 5G chipsets from Qualcomm ↗ 0.10% or MediaTek remains to be seen, but the regulatory label itself represents a threshold Huawei has not crossed domestically since 2020.