Bad News for AT&T Customers: Huawei's Mate 10 Pro Is Super Fast

Under pressure level from the U.s. government, AT&T won't exist selling Huawei's Mate 10 Pro. Simply new results from Cellular Insights show that AT&T turned downwardly a telephone designed to be 1 of the carrier's fastest LTE devices.

The Huawei Mate 10 Pro was supposed to be Huawei'due south big breakthrough in the The states. Only its carrier debut was scuppered just a few days before its presumed AT&T carrier proclamation due to pressure level from government officials who see Huawei equally a potential Chinese spying threat. (For the record, Huawei denies information technology'southward a threat, and we don't believe it is either.)

The Mate ten Pro is now available unlocked for $799, and Cellular Insights' testing shows that it may be the fastest phone ever on the AT&T network in strong signal weather. Retailers' spec sheets for this telephone announced to be incorrect, so we're going to be very precise. The AT&T model of the phone supports LTE bands 1/2/iii/4/5/7/8/12/14/eighteen/20/28/29/30/39/46/66. It has 4x carrier aggregation including LAA, and 4x4 MIMO on bands two, iv, 30 and 66. The phone will do all possible carrier-aggregation permutations that AT&T has available, Cellular Insights says.

All of this means the phone is capable of hitting gigabit LTE speeds, which AT&T calls "5G development," with more flexibility than any other telephone we've seen so far. This is the first time we've seen 4x4 MIMO on Band 30; information technology will increase speeds on this frequency band, which is used to relieve congestion in busy urban areas.

The international model of the Mate x Pro does not accept many of AT&T's band combinations or 4x4 MIMO on AT&T's bands. All of these optimizations look like they were washed specially for the Us model.

Cellular Insights hasn't taken the time all the same to cheque the AT&T unit of measurement's speeds in poor point situations, where other phones could outpace it, peculiarly on the U.s.'due south critical Band 4. Only 4x4 MIMO helps there as well, and the presence of 4x4 MIMO on those 4 bands could assistance extend AT&T's fastest speeds into buildings where AT&T phones frequently accept to fall back on the slower bands v and 12.

The modem features we saw would also aid the Mate 10 Pro achieve fast speeds on T-Mobile, which uses many of the same bands and combinations equally AT&T. The phone lacks T-Mobile's new Ring 71 for rural coverage, though.

While the Mate x Pro advertises "category 18" LTE, which has maximum download speeds of 1.2Gbps, AT&T currently says it'southward supporting theoretical speeds up to 1Gbps.

The upcoming Samsung Galaxy S9, based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor and X20 modem, is also anticipated to back up Category xviii and a very wide assortment of frequency combinations on all the US wireless carriers.

We oasis't completed our full review of the Mate 10 Pro, although our columnist Michael Miller has an in-depth hands on with the phone. He finds the hardware, especially the photographic camera, to be fantabulous, but he was disappointed in Huawei's software.

Rohde & Schwarz, the global leader in test and measurement equipment, provided Cellular Insights with the cut-edge CMWFlexx solution consisting of two CMW500 Wideband Communication Tester boxes, CMWC Controller, and R&S TS7124 RF shielded box equipped with four Vivaldi antennas for up to four×4 MIMO, ensuring high reproducibility of about-field OTA MIMO measurements. The study was done independently by Cellular Insights and shared with PCMag.