The Huawei P50 Pocket is the Galaxy Z Flip 3 rival you can’t buy

By Rahul Srinivas December 14, 2021

Huawei’s smartphone business may be in tatters, but the company still launches new phones periodically. Nearly a year after the Huawei Mate X2 arrived, the company is readying the launch of another foldable smartphone called the Huawei P50 Pocket.

Huawei’s official Weibo account recently posted an invite for the launch of the P50 Pocket. This device — as evident from the name — appears to be a part of Huawei’s P50 series lineup, which has diverged from Huawei’s original Mate series foldable phones. The accompanying text says that the new device is the company’s Winter Flagship and that it will be unveiled on December 23. The post also includes a teaser image that highlights a vertical folding design — similar to that of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 and the Moto Razr. The image also hints at two possible color options: White and gold.

The launch invite for the Huawei P50 Pocket. — Huawei/ Weibo

Initial indications are that the Huawei P50 Pocket is the same foldable smartphone that was earlier leaked under the name Huawei Mate V. These leaks indicated that the Huawei P50 Pocket would feature twin circular modules on the rear panel for the camera setup — quite similar to the one we saw on the P50 series devices announced a few months ago.

This time around, Huawei seems to have done a pretty good job at keeping the tech specs and other details of the phone under wraps, so we don’t know much about the Huawei P50 Pocket so far. It remains to be seen if Huawei uses its own flagship-grade Kirin 9000 chipset on the P50 Pocket — or if it is depending on some other vendor for sourcing a flagship-grade system on a chip for this device.

Apart from the P50 Pocket, Huawei is likely to launch a bunch of new products at its December 23 event in China, including a new smartwatch called the Huawei Watch D. With Huawei still barred from using Google Services, the P50 Pocket is unlikely to go on sale in the U.S., but there is a chance we could see a limited release in certain European markets.

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Rahul is a smartphone buff turned tech journalist who has been tinkering with all things mobile since the early 2000s. He has…

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