- Analysis by KJ David
Porsche Design expands its lineup of luxury-class smartphones with the 2018 Huawei Mate RS, a 6-inch phablet that challenges the best photography smartphones on the market. While a lot of effort was put into its cameras, however, some of its other specs lag behind in terms of sophistication.
For starters, it passes up on a spot in our list of the fastest smartphones (most of which clock in at 2.5GHz or higher), seeing that its Kirin 970 eight-core processor peaks at only 2.36GHz 
-- its secondary quad-core cluster runs at 1.8GHz. That said, with an i7 co-processor and a Neural Network Processing Unite (NPU) 
tagging along, the Mate RS's hardware setup still manages to level with those of many other premium-class contenders as of this review of its pros and cons.
Also helping out its engine is a Mali-G72 MP2 graphics processor and a hefty 6GB RAM , although we would have loved to see it join the 8GB RAM club. As for storage, although its lack of a microSD card slot could put off some multimedia junkies, this Huawei-crafted Porsche Design smartphone boasts a reassuring 256GB's worth of on-board memory -- a value that doubles to 512GB for the red-coated Chinese version . It also satisfies our expectations when it comes to power supply, housing a 4000mAh battery with 10W wireless quick-charging (a first for Huawei) inside its Porsche-inspired metal-plus-glass fuselage .
As for its strong suits outside of the engine room, the Mate RS's rear-facing camera is a huge pro in two ways. First, it is one of the world's earliest triple-lens camera systems (Huawei co-engineered it with Leica), and second, it features a 40-megapixel primary RGB lens whose resolution was the highest total pixel count on a smartphone camera when it debuted. Its other two lenses come in the form of a 20-megapixel monochrome lens and an 8-megapixel telephoto lens. Since its forenamed Kirin 970 chipset is enabled for AI applications, its triple rear camera boasts things like AI-aided scene recognition and image stabilization alongside 4K-2160p video-recording and Hybrid Zoom (up to 5x).
It also likely brushes shoulders with the best selfie phones available, boasting a 24-megapixel selfie camera , although one marred by a fixed focal length .
Among its other luxury-class pros and cons are dual fingerprint identification (It has an in-screen sensor and a physical sensor at the back) as well as the aerospace-grade microcapsule PCM cooling technology .
Its specs are covered by a premium-tier 6-inch 2K (2880 x 1440) 18:9 OLED display that possibly comes out on top versus those of many 2018-released wide-screen smartphones. It runs on Android 8.1 Oreo with EMUI 8.1 and ships with its own leather flip case.
To rehash, the Huawei Mate RS Porsche Design delivers a premium spec sheet from Huawei and injects it with Porsche Design's signature aesthetics, obviously to cater to users with luxury lifestyles.
** This phone is also known as: Porsche Design Mate RS, Huawei RS Porsche Design, Huawei NEO-L29
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