Skip to main content

Huawei P50 Pocket: Everything to know about Huawei’s Galaxy Z Flip 3 rival

Huawei today launched the P50 Pocket, its newest foldable smartphone, a week after its first appearance in a leaked image. The device is Huawei’s third foldable smartphone after two Mate X models, but is the first one to boast a clamshell design. Although it ostensibly competes against the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 and the Moto Razr, the trade ban on Huawei ensures that these devices may never be sold alongside each other in the West.

Nevertheless, if you’re interested in what the Huawei P50 Pocket has on offer, here’s everything you need to know.

Pricing, release date, and availability

The Huawei P50 Pocket in its folded form showing the cover display and the triple camera array.
Huawei

The Huawei P50 Pocket goes on sale in China starting December 23, 2021, and comes in two variants: The standard Huawei P50 Pocket in an 8GB + 256GB configuration and a pricier Huawei P50 Premium Premium Edition that comes in a 12GB + 512GB option. Both variants — at least for the time being — will be exclusively sold in China, with Huawei announcing no plans for an international launch. Here are the pricing details with their approximate prices in U.S. dollars.

  • Huawei P50 Pocket – 8GB + 256 GB: 8,988 yuan ($1,400)
  • Huawei P50 Pocket – 12GB + 512 GB: 10,988 yuan ($1,700)

The Huawei P50 Pocket is significantly pricier than the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3, which starts at $999 in the U.S.

Design and display

The Huawei P50 Pocket Premium Edition in the golden color option showing its camera setup and the cover display.
Huawei

While sharing its form factor with the Galaxy Z Flip 3 and the Moto Razr (2020), the positioning of these devices couldn’t be more dissimilar. While the Galaxy Z Flip 3 has fairly succeeded in being a premium, feature-rich smartphone that also happens to fold, the Huawei P50 Pocket is almost being marketed like a piece of jewelry, an accessory to your lifestyle.

The standard variant of the phone gets what Huawei calls a 3D micro-sculpture design that helps the phone set itself apart from anything else on the market. The premium variant goes a step further and comes in a golden color option and has been designed in collaboration with haute couture designer Iris van Herpen. It also features feather-like patterns, which Huawei refers to as “organically flowing patterns.”

Close up showing an unfolded Huawei P50 Pocket with its cover display and rear camera setup.
Huawei

The Huawei P50 Pocket weighs 190 grams and is just 7.2mm thick, making it even thinner than the iPhone 13 Pro Max. Huawei also debuts a new hinge design with the P50 Pocket that it says has improved upon existing offerings in the market and leaves no gap between the screens when folded.

Like most other flip phones, the Huawei P50 Pocket gets a twin display setup. The foldable main screen is an OLED that measures 6.9 inches across when unfolded and has a resolution of 2790 x 1188 pixels in the 21:9 aspect ratio. It supports a 120Hz refresh rate and 300 Hz touch sampling rate. There is a small hole-punch cutout on the main display for the selfie camera.

Huawei calls the secondary external display on the P50 Pocket the cover display. This panel is also an OLED that measures 1.04 inches across and boasts a resolution of 340 x 340 pixels. The cover display gives you quick access to notifications, call details, and even doubles up as a viewfinder while taking selfies. It also supports widgets that let you control music playback and receive navigation information without having to flip open the main screen.

Hardware and software

With Huawei not in a position to make its own Kirin processors in the wake of the ongoing trade restrictions, the company had no option but to equip the P50 Pocket with the Snapdragon 888 chip from Qualcomm. Unfortunately, the restrictions also mean that this premium 2021 smartphone does not offer 5G support. In fact, the official spec sheet of the phone refers to this edition of the 888 as the Snapdragon 888 4G.

Huawei P50 Pocket and its accessory covers in various colors.
Huawei

The device comes in 8GB and 12GB RAM options with 256GB and 512GB storage, respectively. The Huawei P50 Pocket boasts a 4,000 mAh battery that supports 40-watt fast charging using the company’s proprietary SuperCharge technology. The quick charger and the cable need to be purchased separately and are not part of the package.

The Huawei P50 Pocket gets a side-mounted fingerprint scanner and face unlock as biometric authentication options.

On the software front, the phone runs Harmony OS 2.0 — although the official spec sheet still has references to EMUI 12. Huwaei claims to have built in a lot of privacy-centric features on the P50 Pocket, including a super privacy mode that turns off the microphone, camera, and GPS when activated.

Cameras

The Huawei P50 Pocket Premium Edition showing its cover display and triple cameras.
Huawei

Being part of Huawei’s camera-centric P series, it did not come as a surprise to see the company promote the P50 Pocket as a competent camera phone. The camera setup on the device includes a 40MP primary camera, a 13MP ultra-wide-angle camera, and a 32MP “super spectrum” camera — which Huawei claims lets the phone capture a wider range of colors compared to your average smartphone.

The selfie camera — which uses a 10.7MP sensor — is housed within a hole-punch cutout on the main display. As mentioned earlier, the cover display serves as a viewfinder for the selfie camera and makes the process of capturing selfies a bit easier.

Even though it looks striking on paper, the Huawei P50 Pocket is unlikely to make a significant impact outside of China because of two crippling limitations: The lack of 5G and no Google Play Services.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
The Google Pixel Fold may not be as expensive as you thought
Alleged renders of the Google Pixel Fold in black.

Google’s long-in-development foldable phone — the Pixel Fold — is reportedly eyeing a late June launch. A recent leak predicted that the Pixel Fold will hit the European shelves priced at 1,700 Euros, which equates to roughly $1,800 based on current conversion rates. That’s not easy to digest, especially for a first-gen foldable phone and considering Google’s own shaky history with its Pixel hardware and software.
But it appears that the Pixel Fold’s price won’t be inexplicably exorbitant at all. Leaker Yogesh Bear shared on Twitter that the foldable phone could actually cost anywhere between $1,300 and $1,500. Assuming that turns out to be true, the Pixel Fold could undercut the Samsung Galaxy Fold 4 and its successor by a healthy $500.

In fact, such an asking price would put the Pixel Fold in roughly the same ballpark as the higher storage configurations of phones like the Galaxy S23 Ultra and Apple’s iPhone 14 Pro Max. Of course, Google won’t be able to match the asking price of foldables from Chinese brands, but it would at least look competitive in the Western markets.
Now, a price of around $1,300-1,500 makes a lot of sense. First, the biggest deterrent for foldable phones is their high asking price. There’s a reason Samsung managed to sell bucketloads of its flip-style foldable phones because they cost nearly half vis-a-vis the phone-tablet hybrids in the Galaxy Z Fold series.

Read more
Google Pixel 8: all the latest rumors and what we want to see
Google Pixel 8 leaked render.

The Google Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro are on their way. Google's fallen in a pretty reliable release pattern for Pixel phones, meaning we can safely expect a new lineup of flagship Pixels each year. In 2023, that means the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro.

The Google Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro are two excellent devices -- possibly two of the best smartphones Google has ever made. But while they have some serious strengths, a number of problems and missed opportunities drag both phones down. This wouldn't be a problem if the competition was standing still, but it's not. The Apple iPhone 14 Pro refreshed the iPhone design for the first time in years, and the recently released Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra is quite possibly one of the best smartphones ever created. So what's a humble Pixel to do?

Read more
Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 is big news for cheap phones
Hand holding up a smartphone against a city background with Qualcomm Snapdragon7+ Gen 2 logo.

Qualcomm has taken the wraps off its Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2, the next generation of its midrange mobile platform. The new chip is designed to deliver powerful entertainment experiences and performance gains to a broader range of smartphones.

The new platform is an evolution of last year’s Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, which was already a leap beyond the older Snapdragon 700 series it replaced. It began closing the gap with the premium Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 — a trend that continues with this year’s Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2.

Read more