It’s time to check the health of Huawei, everyone’s favorite Chinese smartphone maker. The company is dealing with all sorts of export restrictions and plummeting market share, but somehow it still delivers phones. The company’s latest devices are the Huawei P50 Pro and P50 Pocket, which are finally getting a wider international release after launching in China earlier.
With this international launch, Huawei is positioning the P50 Pro and P50 Pocket as a pair of devices. The P50 Pro is a plain old flat phone, while the P50 Pocket is a foldable flip phone. When we reviewed Samsung’s foldable flip phone, the Galaxy Z Flip, our main takeaway was that it felt exactly like a regular smartphone, but folded in half as a neat trick. Huawei now offers two similar phones – one folds in half and the other doesn’t. It would be like selling the Samsung Galaxy S21 and Galaxy Z Flip 3 next to each other.
This does not mean that the phones are the same size. The P50 Pro is a 6.6-inch device (158.8×72.8×8.5mm) and costs €1,199 (~$1,353), while the Pocket is a 6.9-inch (170×75.5× 7.2mm) and costs 1299 euros (~$1465). Huawei says the two phones will be available in “key markets in Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, Europe and Latin America.”
Both devices are flagship smartphones using the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 SoC. Huawei received approval to buy Qualcomm chips at the end of 2020, but not Qualcomm 5G chips, as if a slight increase in mobile data speed is some incredible feature. Perhaps the purpose of this restriction was to burden Huawei with older chips, but the reality is that Huawei is running the same Snapdragon 888 as everyone else, only with 5G disabled to comply with the rules. Most people won’t notice any difference.
Competing these two phones against each other highlights the difficulty of creating foldable designs. The pocket variant has a larger screen and a smaller battery than the P50 Pro thanks to the space-occupying hinge. Huawei also needed to reduce the thickness of the Pocket so it wouldn’t be as bulky when folded. The Pocket has a 6.9-inch display, 7.2mm thick, and a 4,000mAh battery, while the P50 Pro has a 6.6-inch display, 8.5mm thick, and a 4,360mAh battery.
The pocket version also has a round lid. There are two large circles on the back of both phones, and on the P50 Pro it’s both camera bumps. The Pocket replaces the bottom camera bump with a 340×340 resolution round OLED display that looks like it’s been pulled out of a smartwatch parts bin.
Huawei continues to struggle, but these phones are a terrible deal. The $1,465 equivalent of the Samsung P50 Pocket is the significantly cheaper $999 Galaxy Z Flip 3, while the $1,353 P50 Pro is close to the $999 Galaxy S21+. Huawei phones, with their lack of Google apps and generally bleak future when it comes to updates, should be cheaper than big OEM offerings, not 35 percent more expensive.