The Huawei P50 is finally here, but only in China

The date was no mystery: 29 July. The time, on the other hand? Undisclosed. And the nature of the presentation? Also undisclosed. In the end, it was a livestream that started at 1 p.m. which presented the Huawei P50 to the world. For now, the phone is only available in China and runs on HarmonyOS 2.0.

The international (and somewhat unstable) livestream was hosted by Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei's Mobile Division. It covered the lineup of upcoming smartphones and included a presentation of HarmonyOS features. The entire presentation was in Chinese with Chinese subtitles.

No details have been announced yet regarding a launch in Switzerland. Unfortunately.

Kirin, Snapdragon and Leica

As usual, the «Huawei P50» name doesn’t just refer to a single smartphone. Instead, it’s an entire series. You’ll find the specs of the individual devices listed below, as found on Huawei's official Chinese site. The specs are by and large identical to the leaks published in recent days – emphasis on by and large.

Speaking of large, the P50 Pro is the first phone to have the Sony IMX800 sensor. That’s a one-inch sensor. That’s big. Very big. This means it captures more data than any other camera sensor, which gives the phone system more to work with.

Huawei P50 Pro specs

The Huawei P50 Pro is the mid-range phone in the P50 series. There will be two versions of the device, one with Qualcomm Snapdragon, the other with Huawei Kirin 9000. On paper, the Kirin version is more powerful than the Snapdragon version. A charger is not included.

• Length: 158.8 mm
• Width: 72.8 mm
• Thickness: 8.5 mm
• Weight: 195 grammes (without SIM card)
• 4,360 mAh battery
• 66 watt charging
• IP68 rating
• 6.6-inch 120 Hz OLED screen
• 10-bit colour depth
• Resolution: 2700×1228 pixels

Pixel density: 450 ppi

• Kirin 9000 system-on-a-chip (SoC) or Qualcomm Snapdragon 888
• Kirin: Dual Neural Processing Unit (NPU)
• Snapdragon: 6th Generation Qualcomm AI Engine
• HarmonyOS 2
• 8 or 12 GB RAM
• Version with 8 GB RAM: 128, 256 or 512 GB internal memory
• Version with 12 GB RAM: 512 GB internal memory
• Expandable up to 256 GB with a Nano SD card

The Huawei P50 Pro will be available in the following colours, though which ones will make it to Europe remains unknown:

• Black with gold accents
• A light yellow or gold called «Cocoa Tea Gold»
• Snow White
• «Dawn Powder», also known as pink, not to be confused with rose gold
• «Rippling Clouds», a kind of colour gradient that’s supposed to represent clouds in the sky

On to the camera specs on the Huawei P50 Pro:

• 50-megapixel main camera (f/1.8, OIS)
• 40-megapixel monochrome camera (f/1.6)
• 13-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera (f/2.2)
• 64-megapixel telephoto camera (f/3.5, OIS)
• 13-megapixel selfie cam (f/2.4)
• 3.5x optical zoom
• 100x digital zoom
• Photo resolution up to 8192×6144 pixels
• Video resolution up to 4K, i.e. 3840×2160 pixels
• Slow motion with 960 fps and 1920×1080 pixel resolution
• Audio Zoom
• Selfies: up to 4160×3120 pixels
• Selfie-cam video: up to 4K, i.e. 3840×2160 pixels

Huawei P50 specs

The low-end model in the P50 series – simply called the Huawei P50 – also has Leica lenses, which will certainly ensure impressive photos. This model is essentially a downgraded version of the P50 Pro.

• Length: 156.5 mm
• Width: 73.8 mm
• Thickness: 7.92 mm
• Weight: 181 grammes
• 4,100 mAh battery
• 66 watt charging
• IP68 rating
• Screen size: 6.5 inches
• 10-bit colour depth
• 90 Hz OLED display
• Display resolution: 2700×1224 pixels
• Pixel density: 458 dpi
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 4G
• HarmonyOS 2
• 8 GB RAM
• 128 or 256 GB internal memory
• Expandable up to 256 GB with a Nano SD card

Hardware-wise, the cameras aren’t quite as impressive as on its big sister:

• 50-megapixel main camera (f/1.8)
• 13-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera (f/2.2)
• 12-megapixel telephoto camera (f/3.5, OIS)
• 13-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera (f/2.2)
• 5x optical zoom
• 50x digital zoom
• Photo resolution up to 8192×6144 pixels
• Selfies: up to 4160×3120 pixels
• Video resolution up to 3840×2160 pixels
• Slow motion with 960 fps up to 1920×1080 pixel
• Selfie-cam video: up to 3840×2160 pixels

The big question is: where’s the Huawei P50 Pro+? There were leaks, after all. The rumour mill was churning. But at the event, Richard Yu said not one word about the Pro+. He did mention 200x zoom at one point, but it doesn’t appear in any of the published specs. The same goes for 5G.

I’m certainly saying alert. Just because nothing was mentioned here doesn’t mean that nothing is coming. My Chinese is a little rusty.

HarmonyOS 2: mainly back-end updates

Both the Qualcomm and Kirin models come with HarmonyOS 2. Visually, the operating system resembles Emui, Huawei’s Android user interface – pastel colours, curved lines, icons and widgets.

The focus of HarmonyOS 2, known as «Hongmeng» in China, is not on improving the user interface and its use; it’s on integration with other devices. Huawei relies on an ecosystem, which is supposed to enable Harmony’s harmonisation (pardon the terrible pun). How exactly Harmony interacts with other Huawei devices has so far only been shown in a demonstration, not in an actual live example.

There appears to be an app that shows you all the devices in the ecosystem, your smartphone being in the middle. Let’s say you have a Huawei Sound X speaker. You could simply drag the Sound X icon to the centre of the circle to connect it to your phone.

First impressions

And that’s really all we got from Richard Yu, who appeared in front of a black background, accompanied by canned clapping. We got to see two separate products.

The P50 series sounds exciting, especially since the phones feature gigantic Sony camera sensors and Leica lenses. Testing the camera will be very exciting, and the pictures will certainly be good. I’m still a huge fan of the camera on the P40 Pro and the Mate 40 Pro. But some questions remain unanswered. What about the P50 Pro+? Does it even exist? And where are the 5G chips? Is the back of the «Rippling Clouds» P50 Pro slightly coarse to the touch?

But what’s really exciting is HarmonyOS. Because – to varying degrees – the big limit of any software currently on the market is integration into an ecosystem. Huawei claims that HarmonyOS was conceived with ecosystems and device boundaries at its very core. So, it’s supposed to bridge them more easily than ever before. I want to see that.