A mobile phone maker you likely think you haven't heard of is launching two flagship phones in Canada later this year. Huawei, the world's third largest mobile phone vendor, hasn't had much of a presence in the North American mobility market under its own brand, though it built the immensely popular Nexus 6P for Google. Now it's aiming to remedy that situation with the Huawei P10 and the P10 Plus.
Both phones will be available later this spring (the exact date has not yet been revealed); announced carriers for the P10 are currently Rogers, Fido, Bell, and Videotron, while Rogers will have an exclusive on the P10 Plus. This is the first time Huawei's flagships have been sold in Canada.
Part of the problem was the fact that earlier versions of the Huawei Kirin chipset didn't support CRTC regulatory requirements for 911 service, an issue that the company corrected with its Kirin 950 chipset last June, according to Scott Bradley, VP corporate affairs at Huawei Canada. He said that despite its relative absence from public awareness, Huawei actually has a significant presence here – 700 employees – thanks in large part to its 5G wireless research and development centre. 5G is the next generation of cellular, designed for the world of the Internet of Things, and is expected to be commercially available in 2020; Huawei is a major contributor to the developing technology. In fact, he said, Canada is the only country in which the company spends more than it earns.
At the launch event at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei's consumer business group, said that with the new phones the company wanted to cater to what he called the new cosmopolitan lifestyle. The devices were co-engineered with camera-maker Leica to, as the promotional tagline put it, "Make every shot a cover shot".
To that end, both devices sport dual rear cameras – a 20 MP monochrome and 12 MP RGB colour that work together to produce images. There's a dual-tone flash, optical image stabilization, laser autofocus, 2X hybrid zoom, and 4K video recording. The front camera is an 8 MP autofocus shooter, with flash, and smarts in its software to automatically accommodate single person or group selfies. To illustrate the cameras' capabilities, Huawei commissioned professional photographer Manfred Baumann to do a fashion shoot with the P10, and staged an exhibition in a Barcelona gallery.
Spec-wise, the phones stack up like this:
The P10 has a 5.1 inch FHD display with 1920 x 1080 resolution (432 pixels per inch), while the P10 Plus's screen is 5.5 inches, FHD, with 2560 x 1440 resolution (2K, if you're counting), and 540 ppi. The P10 measures 5.7 x 2.7 x 0.27 inches (145.3 x 69.3 x 6.98 mm) and weighs 5.1 oz (145g), while the P10 Plus is 6.04 x 2.9 x 0.27 inches (153.5 x 74.2 x 6.98 mm) and 5.8 oz (165g). Both phones run Android 7.0 (Nougat), and have octa-core Huawei Kirin 960 processors.
Huawei claims that the P10/P10 Plus are the world's first 4.5G LTE phones, with quad antennae that could get up to 2x faster downloads and up to 28 percent wider coverage area. It said that there are 60 percent fewer dropped calls in low signal areas compared to the iPhone 7.
Some models support dual SIMs; Huawei has not yet published which models will be available in Canada. The phones all support up to a 256 GB micro SD card.
With 3200 (P10)/3750 (P10 Plus) mAh batteries, both devices are engineered to get well over a day of battery life. Huawei says that the P10 could get 1.8 days under normal use, or 1.31 days of heavy use out of a charge. The P10 Plus is rated for 2.1 days, or 1.4 days under heavy use. The company says that its SuperCharge technology allows 30 minutes of charging to power the phone for a day, without the overheating that plagued Samsung's ill-fated Note 7.
Watch for a full review once final devices are available.
Source: Huawei announces flagship phones for Canada
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