Huawei Adds Satellite Texting to Mate 50

A day ahead of Apple’s September presentation Huawei announced the Mate 50 series, a new model that features a new function: the ability to send texts via satellite communication.

The Mate 50 and Mate 50 Pro will be able to send short texts and utilize navigation thanks to China’s global BeiDou satellite network, allowing for communication in areas without cellular signal.

The flagship Mate 50 series includes 4G-only versions of the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset with 8GB of RAM. The 50 Pro comes with a slightly bigger 6.74-inch OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate, while the Mate 50 offers a 6.7-inch, 90Hz OLED panel. Both models feature a 50-megapixel main rear camera and share a 13-megapixel f/2.2 ultrawide. While each has a telephoto lens, the Pro gets an upgraded 64-megapixel camera capable of 200x digital zoom, the standard Mate 50 offers 100x digital zoom with a lower-res 12-megapixel sensor.

More and more companies enter the mobile satellite market. Recently, T-Mobile and SpaceX announced a partnership that aims to bring this feature to T-Mobile subscribers by way of Starlink satellites.

The rumors of Apple’s satellite messaging feature have been swirling since last year.