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Huawei's flagship phone is a shameless iPhone X copy

By Victor Hristov

Updated: May 03, 2018, 9:02 AM

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Editorials Huawei

This article may contain personal views and opinion from the author.

Huawei's flagship phone is a shameless iPhone X copy

You have probably seen more than one product coming from China that you can associate with another, more popular product by a Western company and hence, we have the cliche about “cheap Chinese knock-offs”.

With Chinese phone tech companies on the rise in the past few years, however, some have argued that some Chinese phone makers are are now finally aspiring to build their own identity and change this perception. We ourselves were impressed with the hardware design of phones like the Huawei Mate 10 Pro and the Xiaomi Mi Mix series that look both stylish and original.

Unfortunately, that is not quite the case with Huawei's latest and arguably most important phone: the new Huawei P20 Pro.

Rather than continue in the footsteps of the original Mate 10 Pro design, Huawei has made a 180-turn with the P20 Pro and the new phone looks surprisingly similar to one other certain phone.

It’s just obvious: the notch, with its similar shape and form, the overall design styling with the glass-metal look, the vertical camera arrangement positioned on the left handside on the back of the phone, the curved metal sides that are now shiny as well, the drilled holes for the microphones, and then even little things like the icons (of course, Huawei’s music icon has to look eerily similar to the one on the iPhone and there was of course no other way to make Huawei’s health icon than an identical red heart on a white background…). We can go on and on: the identical dialer icon, the clock icon, the weather app icon, but then also inside the weather app, the copycat design of the app that is just a rip-off of the one on the iPhone X and even has the same animations, the settings icon!, the same folder view, the rounded rectangles for notifications, the rip-off wallet icon… it’s everything!

Notch, design style... Huawei even copied whole apps

We get it: it’s okay to be inspired by great ideas. It's okay to interpret them in your own way and follow when someone else worth following leads the way, but such blatant copying shows nothing but an incredible lack of original thought and great impudence. It’s excessive, preposterous.

So yes, while the Huawei P20 and especially the P20 Pro are the best phones that Huawei has made to date, they are actually in many ways a shameful rip-off and it's impossible to unsee that.

And that really is a shame because the Huawei P20 Pro has an exciting camera - probably the best smartphone camera for night photos out there - and it has a solid battery life, a nice display and a good overall experience. It's a shame because the P20 Pro does not need to copy the iPhone to be successful. Yet it does. And if you are okay with that, you will likely enjoy using the phone, but there will always be that voice in the back of your head that will remind you about Huawei's little sins.

Read our Huawei P20 & P20 Pro Review here

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Victor, a seasoned mobile technology expert, has spent over a decade at PhoneArena, exploring the depths of mobile photography and reviewing hundreds of smartphones across Android and iOS ecosystems. His passion for technology, coupled with his extensive knowledge of smartphone cameras and battery life, has positioned him as a leading voice in the mobile tech industry.