Monotonous / metal smartphone has been lagging behind, Chinese handset maker Huawei has been thinking about the difference has just announced the Huawei P10 flagship mobile phone, offering a range of tones, including eye-catching dark blue options and light green.
The main thing is to emphasize how tricky Android vendors are standing in such a crowded and competitive space these days the phone buyers are really a place to choose from.
As well as the colorful hardware, Huawei also talked about the software theme customized for each external hue. There are three different hardware finishes, from high gloss to more textured-look blasting.
Elsewhere you’d be hard pressed to distinguish these high end Androids from scores of others. Which is really a comment on the incremental nature of smartphone innovation these days. Essentially hardware quality is very high across the board now, even as software differences have shrunk. The days of clunky Android skins are thankfully in the past.
Aside from some eye-catching colors, other features flagged by the world’s third largest smartphone maker during its press conference here at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona included camera tech, with Huawei continuing to lean on a Leica-branded partnership that lets users do things like style photos to have a Leica-ish film look.
It’s also been working with GoPro for a mobile editing tool called Highlights that lets users mix images and video with transitions and music.
Both devices have dual lenses on the rear, a 20MP monochrome and 12MP RGB lens, to support photo-processing features such as a bokeh effect that blurs the background. The Plus also gets boosted low light performance thanks to an f1.8 aperture lens.
Huawei also talked up a selfie feature for the front-facing lens which automatically adjusts to fit more than one person in a shot — handy if you’re trying to get a well composed group shot.
It also noted “no camera bump at all” — a little side-swipe at the iPhone’s ongoing lens bump.
The P10 has a 5.1inch screen but Huawei touted a “super narrow bezel” which allows for a “compact design” and dimensions that are “similar to the iPhone” — while also packing a larger battery. The larger P10 Plus has a 5.5in screen, is a little wider but no thicker.
Huawei also notes it has incorporated the fingerprint sensor directly into the front screen, removing the navigation bar to make yet more screen space.
Both devices are also apparently waterproof. And have fast-charging technology — it touted a full day’s usage off of 30-minutes of charging.
Despite rumors of the company working on its own voice assistant, Huawei did not dwell on voice assistants during the presentation. So if it’s cooking something up there, it’s not yet ready to load it onto its flagships.
Notably it’s also not clear whether the new flagships are coming to the US. They certainly are not going to be available in the first wave, with the handsets listed to come to a wide variety of countries in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, South American, South Africa and Australia from this March — but not, apparently, to the US. We’ve asked whether there will be a release and will update this story with any response.
