Huawei unveils its first flip-style flagship foldable smartphone, the P50 Pocket

Huawei today (Dec 23, 2021) announced its first flip-style foldable flagship smartphone, the Huawei P50 Pocket.

While this flip-style form factor is new to Huawei, this is hardly the Chinese firm’s first foldable phone, thanks to its experience through its book-styled Huawei Mate Xs handsets.

At the P50 Pocket’s livestream event, Huawei said that the P50 Pocket uses a new and improved Multi-Dimensional Hinge and Multi-Dimensional Lifting design that leaves ‘zero gap’. Both ends of the device are exactly 15.2mm in thickness when folded.

Huawei also said the steel hinge is ‘more solid and reliable’ than its previous hinge technology, with 62per cent better impact resistance and 33 per cent better extrusion/crushing resistance.

The P50 Pocket’s cover plates use a 3D micro-sculptured, gemstone-patterned 0.5mm glass sheen. If you want a different texture, there’s the gold Huawei P50 Pocket Premium Edition, which features a different feel created by haute-couture designer Iris Van Herpen.

Unlike the other popular flip-style foldable phone of 2021 , Huawei P50 Pocket offers a tinier, circular cover screen roughly the same size as its rear camera housing. The Smart Cover Screen is capable of delivering simple notifications and supporting Huawei-made dynamic widgets.

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The rear cameras (collectively called Ultra Spectrum Camera Matrix) is a mix of three cameras (40MP True-Chroma, 13MP Ultra Wide Angle, 32MP Ultra Spectrum), and two support features (10-channel Multi Spectrum Sensor and Ultra Spectrum Illuminator). Its cameras are further supported by Huawei’s XD Fusion Pro image engine, a software algorithm that helps in partially restoring data lost during image processing.

The main screen is a 6.9-inch panel with 442 PPI pixel density and 21:9 aspect ratio. Huawei didn’t specify the display’s resolution, but working backwards from its size and density would tell us that it’s likely to be a 1440p display. The panel has 120Hz refresh rate, 300Hz touch sampling rate, and 1.07 billion colour support, so it’s likely an AMOLED panel as well.

Huawei P50 Pocket runs on HarmonyOS , the company’s very own cross-platform operating system for smart appliances and connected devices. That also means that the foldable phone can support Android apps, but does not have access to Google Mobile Services. Certain features like built-in compatibility with Google Maps or YouTube aren’t available without workarounds or compromises, no thanks to ongoing trade restrictions.

Other features are its 4,000mAh battery with Huawei 40W SuperCharge fast-charging, auto-disabling of microphone, cameras, and GPS when folded, and AI-based sunscreen detection if you’re very particular about applying sunscreen evenly on your skin. It also uses a 4G version of Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 within.

Over in China, the Huawei P50 Pocket (8+256GB) retails at CNY8,988 (S$1,900) while the Huawei P50 Pocket Premium Edition (12+512GB) goes at CNY10,988, with pre-orders starting today (Dec 23, 2021).

Huawei Singapore said that this phone will be coming to Singapore in Early 2022, although no details on its pricing, variants, software compatibility, or retail promotions were shared.

This article was first published in Hardware Zone.