Huawei is apparently gearing up to release its flagship smartphones for 2021 — the P50 and P50 Pro — and pair of leaks from well-known leaker Onleaks has shown us what to expect. The camera module design leaps out at you straight away, due to its size and shape, which breaks away from the current trend for squared-off modules. Love it or hate it, it can’t be ignored.
What about the rest? The Huawei P50 Pro will likely be the flagship of this line, unless there is a Pro Plus version. The leaks suggest it will have a 6.6-inch screen with a single-hole punch camera, which blends into a metallic chassis, giving the illusion of a nearly full-screen display. On the back, Huawei is presumably eyeing more than one camera, but the render obscures the precise number of lenses. What we do see are two large ovals, which is a unique and distinct shape for a camera bump in an age when phones from Google, Oppo, and Apple all have similar-looking squared-off modules.
The same look is repeated for the P50. The leaks state it will have a smaller and more compact 6.1-inch screen while keeping the same rear camera layout. The bezels may be thicker due to a flat display, and the leak shows a single hole-punch camera on the front. It’s likely to be a glass and metal body, unlike Samsung’s base Galaxy S21, which has a plastic construction. Both phones are expected to have an in-display fingerprint sensor and dual-speakers.
Huawei has been going all out in making its phones distinctive, and the P50 leak shows the trend may continue, helping it stand out while it remains cut off from the Google ecosystem, due to restrictions placed on it by the U.S. government. When the P50 is released, it will use Huawei’s AppGallery, which has seen growth over the past year, but is still not a complete competitor to Google Play. The company is also said to be debuting HarmonyOS on these phones, at least in China.
The P50 series is still unofficial, and the leaks may not represent the final version of the phone, so take what you see as speculation for now. There is no official release date for the phone either, but the P40 was announced at the end of March last year.
