Huawei to announce new phones on September 1

Huawei's next big smartphone launch will happen on September 1. The Chinese company has already sent us an invite for the event which will take place on the eve of IFA 2016 in Berlin (which this year takes place from September 2 to September 7).

It's obviously pretty early to speculate about what exact devices will be unveiled, however a successor for the Mate 8 phablet from last year seems likely. Sure, the Mate 8 was outed in November, but perhaps Huawei was inspired by Samsung's continuous moves to push its Note launches ever so slightly closer to those of the S-series flagships. Samsung's done so last year, and by all accounts it will do the same in 2016, announcing the Note7 in early August.

So from this point of view, such a move by Huawei wouldn't be completely out of the ordinary. It might also want to present its new Mate handset before Apple gets around to announcing the new iPhone 7 Plus (or iPhone 7 Pro), to make sure the Mate 9 will have the spotlight to itself for at least a couple of weeks or so. Anyway, stay tuned for our coverage of Huawei's September 1 event, and before that - of all the leaks and rumors we expect to see in the coming weeks regarding the smartphones it will launch on that occasion.