Huawei's Pura 90 Pro Max has a lock screen that looks see-through

Huawei's latest flagship, the Pura 90 Pro Max, can make its lock screen look transparent — and a video making the rounds online shows just how convincing the effect is. The trick uses the phone's rear camera array to capture a live, blurred image of whatever is in front of the device, then displays it as a wallpaper while keeping the time, date, and notifications readable on top. Tech blogger Ice Universe posted the demo on social media, calling it "real magic."

How it works

The feature is a live wallpaper running on the lock screen. The rear cameras film in real time, and HarmonyOS 6.1 applies a blur before rendering it on the display. The result looks like the phone itself has become semi-transparent — the clock and status bar float over a soft, moving background that mirrors the real world behind the screen. It's a software-and-hardware combination rather than any physical property of the display.

The Pura 90 Pro Max is a serious piece of hardware regardless of the party trick. Per GSMArena, it carries a 6.9-inch display, Huawei's Kirin 9030S chip (roughly 25% faster than the previous generation), a 6,000 mAh battery, up to 1TB of storage, and Kunlun Glass on the front. It launched in China in late April 2026, with 73,000 Pro Max units activated in the first five days.

China only — for now

The phone is sold exclusively in China, starting at CNY 6,499 (around £670 / $840). No UK or US release date has been announced. Even if it does arrive internationally, Huawei phones run HMS — Huawei Mobile Services — without Google Play Store support, which remains a practical barrier for most Western buyers used to Android's app ecosystem. Rivals like the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and the iPhone 17 Pro Max fill that space in the US and UK.

The privacy question

Running a live camera feed on the lock screen — the part of the phone visible to anyone nearby — raises an obvious question: where does that image data go? Huawei has not published documentation explaining whether the feed is processed locally on the device or sent to external servers. That gap matters under UK data protection rules and the EU's AI Act. It's a question worth answering before any global rollout happens.

The transparent lock screen is a genuinely striking idea. Whether it travels beyond China depends on how Huawei handles both the regulatory paperwork and its ongoing trade restrictions with Western markets.