Huawei P50 Pocket launches globally to take down the Galaxy Z Flip 3

About a week ago, Huawei officially announced its first flip-up (or clamshell) foldable phone - the Huawei P50 Pocket. And now the Chinese company has launched the device, aiming to take down rivals such as the Galaxy Z Flip 3.

This could prove tough, though - the Huawei P50 Pocket is available only in China starting at 8,988 yuan (~$1,411) for the 8GB/256GB model. There’s a gold premium version with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage that costs 10,988 yuan (~$1,725), and when you take into account the $999 price tag of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 and its global availability, things are not looking too good for Huawei.

There’s a chance Huawei might try to launch the P50 Pocket globally but no information about it at the moment. Let’s get to the device and see what we’re missing, shall we?

Huawei P50 Pocket specs and features

The P50 Pocket features a Snapdragon 888 chipset inside, which is a bit of a surprise, given the troubles Huawei has been facing with US intellectual property and sourcing silicon components. It’s a last-gen chipset but it should prove fast enough, as it’s a proper flagship-grade SoC.

There’s a state-of-the-art hinge that Huawei boasts about being able to fully fold with no spaces between the two parts of the phone, and also there shouldn’t be any crease when the device is unfolded (which has become the number one complaint about modern foldable phones).

This new hinge has been developed by Zhaoin Technology, and it is also cheaper than other solutions and more reliable. At least that’s what Huawei says. The design of the phone follows the clamshell philosophy and it also resembles the looks of the non-foldable Huawei P50 model - with two big circular camera housings.

One of the circles is home to a triple camera system, and there’s a 1.04-inch display with a 340x340 resolution inside the other - a pretty interesting design solution. The idea is to be able to take selfie shots with the phone in a folded state, but then again, there’s a hole-punch selfie camera on the main screen, which is kinda disappointing.

This tiny screen can also show notifications, incoming calls, date/time, and more. Inside the clam, you will find a 6.9-inch flexible OLED display with a resolution of 2,790 x 1,188 pixels and a 120Hz refresh rate. For comparison, the Galaxy Z Flip 3 comes with a 6.7-inch display with pretty much the same resolution and refresh rate.

The camera system on the back consists of a 40MP main camera with an aperture of f/1.8 and 26mm focal length equivalent, a 13MP ultrawide camera (13mm, f/2.2, with a 120-degree field-of-view, and macro shooting on board), and finally a 32MP “super-spectrum” sensor (30mm, f/1.8).

The “super-spectrum” sensor first appeared back on the Huawei P30 and it was supposed to offer better low-light shots but now Huawei has taken this technology to new heights, offering a strange “fluorescent photography” mode. It’s hard to describe it, so check out the sample image below.

There’s an ample 4,000 mAh battery onboard (the Z Flip 3 only comes with a 3,300 mAh cell, or should we say two 1,650mAh cells). The Huawei P50 Pocket supports wired fast charging with up to 40W of power, and even though there’s no charging time cited, it should charge the battery from 0 to 100% in about an hour.

On the software side of things, we have Huawei’s own Harmony OS, which means there’s no Google Services anywhere to be found (which is to be expected). There’s also a side-mounted fingerprint reader of the capacitive type, Huawei’s proprietary nano memory card (at least some storage extension option), WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 support.