Skip to main content

Huawei Plans Android Handsets for 2009

Huawei Plans Android Handsets for 2009

Of all the manufacturers expected to debut Android handsets at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the Chinese manufacturer Huawei may have been one of the least expected. Nonetheless, the relatively little-known (but enormous) company worked its way to prominence on Monday by showing off a prototype of its upcoming Android handset.

The slate-like phone on display drew obvious inspiration from the iPhone in its external styling, but Huawei offered very few details on what’s inside. The company, which offers its handsets directly to cell carriers who often brand them as their own, says it plans to launch two to three Android handsets this year. The as-of-yet-unnamed one on display at MWC should be commercially available by the third quarter of 2009.

Supposedly, the company has also partnered with an “established design consultancy” to tweak and refine the Android interface. No details on pricing, or which carriers will be carrying the handsets, have yet been announced.

Editors' Recommendations

Nick Mokey
As Digital Trends’ Managing Editor, Nick Mokey oversees an editorial team delivering definitive reviews, enlightening…
I wish I could buy Huawei’s new Pura 70 phones
Huawei Pura 70 Ultra green leather and gold metal finish.

Huawei has pretty much been removed from the U.S. smartphone market after being sanctioned by the former Trump administration nearly five years ago. But in its home country of China, it has frequent run-ins with Apple for the top spot. Besides a sense of nationalism, Huawei's success is backed by phones that offer top-notch design, exceptional cameras, and extremely unique features. We see these traits once again on the latest Huawei Pura 70 series that launched in China today as a successor to the photography-centric P60 lineup from last year.

Huawei's Pura 70 series has four phones: the regular Pura 70, the Pura 70 Pro, the Pura 70 Pro+, and the Pura 70 Ultra. Being a camera-centric series, the phones feature a distinct triangular camera arrangement, while the Ultra -- the top-of-the-line model -- also comes with a retractable lens similar to digital cameras for finer focus.

Read more
The camera on this Android phone is confusing, but I love it
The back of the Tecno Camon 30 Premier.

I’m all for a lot of detail, and love to hear about the new technology that’s inside a smartphone I’m about to test, but when I have to search for an explanation of what something means, it’s not a good start. The Tecno Camon 30 Premier suffers from this problem, as it has a lot of cool camera tech that is explained in a mystifying way.

So, I thought the best thing to do was to just ignore the tech speak and find out if it takes great photos the old-fashioned way.
What's the problem?

Read more
Android 15 might add a new way to charge your gadgets
The Android 15 logo on a smartphone.

Wireless charging has been a fringe feature for over a decade, despite Apple's push into the ecosystem with the iPhone X and its later adoption of MagSafe. It has been limited to flagship phones, save for a few exceptions, mostly due to the painfully slow charging speeds. But with Android 15, Google now seems to offer phone makers additional reasons to adopt wireless charging even without dedicated hardware.

Instead of relying on a dedicated charging coil, Android 15 could enable wireless charging on phones with Near Field Communications (or NFC) tech. Android Authority dug up instances from the source code of Android 15's first user beta, which arrived last week, that suggests the implementation.
Not new, but definitely noteworthy
Samsung Galaxy S23 FE Tushar Mehta / Digital Trends

Read more