Inside The Austrian Design Studio Building The World's Most Luxurious Tech

Nestled in the mountains of the small Austrian town of Zell am See, Studio F.A. Porsche is surrounded by cow bells, ski lifts and the imposing shadows of the Alps.
When Professor Ferdinand Alexander Porsche founded the eponymous studio in 1972, he had already created the most convincing evidence of his recipe for timeless design: the Porsche 911.
Today, the professor’s office remains an untouched time capsule on the top floor of the working studio. His heavy wooden desk remains piled with papers and drafts, while his signature pipe sits atop its cluttered surface.

The studio’s first lifestyle product, the Cronograph I wristwatch, was modelled after a race car’s dashboard. While the studio’s offerings have gradually expanded into everything from luxury surfboards and ski equipment to sunglasses and pipes, the studio still roots itself in F.A. Porsche’s ethos of simple design. This month, it announced its newest addition: the Porsche Design Huawei Mate 10.

An update on last year’s sold-out Porsche Design Huawei Mate9, the high-end mobile is a luxury machine with a price point to match. Retailing at €1,395 (the 256GB iPhone X will sell for €1,319), the phone comes exclusively in ‘diamond black’ and has a handcrafted glass uni-body exterior.

Emblazoned with a Porsche Design logo on the barely there lower front bezel, the phone has a 6-inch 1080p OLED FullView Display with HDR10. On the back, a rear stripe includes dual Leica cameras, a fingerprint scanner and – you guessed it – another Porsche Design logo.

While it’s clearly designed to be a luxury accessory as much as a phone, the device isn’t all style over substance.

Like the flagship Mate 10 Pro (the hardware at the core of the Porsche-designed version), the Porsche Design handset has a Kirin 970 chipset paired with 6GB of RAM, 256GB of internal storage, a 4,000mAh battery, an EMUI 8.0 based on Android 8.0 Oreo, NFC and Bluetooth 4.2 with aptX/aptX HD and LDAC HD.

It comes neatly presented in Porsche packaging with two chargers (UK and EU), a leather case, two USB-C cables, USB-C earphones, a 3.5mm audio adapter, and a VIP card. Among its many tricks, the screen can support a split-screen interface, enabling users to run two apps side by side.

For avid travellers, a pre-installed real-time AI Accelerated Translator instantly translates text, voice, conversations, and images into 50+ languages across devices, and dual SIM support means you can seamless switch between SIMs, without any physical swapping.

The smart battery management system learns from the user’s behaviour and allocates resources to avoid power-wastage and maximise battery life. Huawei’s SuperCharge technology even means a 20-minute charge can supply a whole day’s power.
But the real standout is the phone’s camera capabilities. The front-facing camera is an 8MP shooter, and includes (a somewhat unsettling) set of built-in filters to help get the perfect selfie. On the back, the Leica Dual Camera shoots sharp and colourful pictures in 20/12MP resolution and captures even the smallest details thanks to Hybrid Zoom.

Zell am See, shot with the Porsche Design Huawei Mate10

While it doesn’t come cheap, the Porsche Design Huawei Mate10 is a handsome and well-executed machine for lovers of the brand.

The Porsche Design Huawei Mate10 will have 6GB of RAM and 256GB of storage and will be available from early December in exclusive UK pre-sale at Harrods. The Huawei Mate10 Pro will have 6GB of RAM and 128GB storage and will be available in the UK from 17 November for £699.

About the author

Claire Lancaster

Tech & Entrepreneurship Editor

English-American, Claire has lived and worked in the U.S., South America, Europe and the UK. As Culture Trip’s tech and entrepreneurship editor she covers the European startup scene and issues ranging from Internet privacy to the intersection of the web with civil society, journalism, public policy and art. Claire holds a master’s in international journalism from City University, London and has contributed to outlets including Monocle, NPR, Public Radio International and the BBC World Service. When not writing or travelling, she can be found searching for London's best brunch spot or playing with her cat, Diana Ross.