Last night Huawei Mobile South Africa welcomed two new devices into the country with the launch of its P50 series. This latest addition to the lineup features the Huawei P50 Pro and P50 Pocket, with both devices going up for pre-order next after the long weekend on 22nd March.
The precise nature of the pre-order offers and indeed what Huawei plans to bundle or discount alongside the new hardware, is unknown for now, but the company’s local online store will be your first port of call come 22nd March.
So how much do the new P50 Pro and P50 Pocket cost locally? The Pro starts at R19 999 and the Pocket at R28 999. Pre-orders open up on 22nd March next week and go on sale on 1st April. @HuaweiZA #HuaweiP50SeriesIsHere pic.twitter.com/b5FVGToPME
— Hypertext (@htxtafrica) March 17, 2022
As for the devices itself, we start with the P50 Pro, which will be made available in SA in either Cocoa Gold or Golden Black. Up front Huawei has gone with a 6.6″ OLED display with punch hole for the 13MP wide-angle selfie camera.
On the rear, the unique camera housing which Huawei terms Dual Matrix, features four high-powered lenses – a 50MP colour, 40MP monochrome, 64MP telephoto and 13MP ultra wid-angle.
Huawei is truly billing this device as one for creatives, with it also boasting 4K time lapse functionality, as well as Cinemagraph, Night, Story Creator and Burst Shooting modes.
Internally though there is a bit of curious addition as the processor here is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 4G. As for why the 5G flavour is not present remains unclear, but no doubt Huawei has been impacted by the global chip shortage, just like many other companies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54tGywFswXs
Shifting to the foldable and the Huawei P50 Pocket is the first folding phone that Huawei has officially launched in SA, with two previous devices failing to come to fruition.
In order to impress consumers, the company is leaning heavily on the design elements here, with the gilded gold look the only option right now. It is unclear if Huawei has managed to address creasing of the foldable screen, but it has been able to get the Pocket to fold flat thanks to a purpose-built hinge.
In terms of specifications the Huawei P50 Pocket has a 6.9″ UHD display when unfolded. The cover screen, which also doubles as a viewfinder for taking selfies when the phone is folded, as well as a second screen for app notifications, has a trio of lenses on offer – 40MP True Chroma, 32MP Spectrum and 13MP ultra wide-angle.
Like the P50 Pro, a Snapdragon 888 4G is present, which may count against this foldable when compared to Samsung’s Galaxy ZFlip3.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtVSM_JMy-A
With the P series having performed well in SA prior to the pandemic and Huawei issues with the US, it will be interesting to see what kind of appetite there is for this pair of new premium flagship phones, especially with HMS and the App Gallery powering the experience.
