In the last couple of years, Huawei’s smartphone releases have fallen into the two flagships a year pattern, with the Mate series released in the latter half of the year showcasing the technology, and the P-series released in the first half of the following year bringing that technology into a sublime, consumer-friendly handset.
After seeing what the Mate 10 offered us just recently, we can’t wait to see what’s coming in Huawei’s next P-series phone, which is widely rumoured to be the P20 (rather than the P11, though frankly it could be either).
The name
First up in today’s rumour file is that name – the Huawei P20. We suspect this could be used because the name was trademarked earlier this year (according to Android Central), and when spoken, P20 is much easier and quicker to say than P11. It is worth noting, though, that P20 isn’t trademarked in Australia, but Huawei P11 most definitely is (according to a search on IP Australia’s ATMOSS system this morning).
Whether it becomes a P11 or P20, one thing is for sure; Huawei has established a pattern of releasing a standard size and a plus size, so expect a P11/P11 Plus or P20/P20 Plus come February 2018.
Will the Huawei P20 have three cameras?
Rumours are the P20 will follow the Mate 10’s lead; Huawei’s Kirin 970 processor with its neural processing smarts, and likely Android 8.1 out of the box (because it has the software to support said neural processing). In fact, there shouldn’t be significant differences, except for one – rumours of 3 rear-facing cameras.
Huawei have partnered with Leica for the last few years on its cameras, and the Mate 10 camera was simply fantastic and it compares favourably with the best on the market. Rumour has it this will continue, though this rumour is a bit strange. We’ll let Evan say it:
https://twitter.com/evleaks/status/938234050917134336?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
We know that photography is the focus of the P-series, and a 3-lens 40MP powerhouse is going to do something incredible, the likes of which we may not have seen on a smartphone camera before.
An iPhone X-style notch
The last rumour relates to the front screen. In its efforts to be rid of bezels, it seems Huawei may adopt an iPhone X-style notch to house sensors and so on. According to a report from XDA, someone’s done some digging around in pre-release software and found this overlay which gives some idea of how the front screen will be configured:
Though early information suggests the P20 series may continue with LCD-based displays, we remain hopeful that Huawei might be able to source AMOLED panels instead, which are significantly better (though slightly harder to obtain in large numbers).
While these rumours are interesting, there’s nothing set in stone yet… except that we’ll most certainly see the new Huawei P-series phone launched at MWC 2018 in a couple of months.
