A few days ago we reported on a leak from Evan Blass suggesting that the Huawei P11 with include all the hardware necessary to make it an imaging phenom. Today XDA Devleopers has gotten their hands on software that suggests that the P11 will also have an iPhone X/Essential PH-1 style notch.

The software obtained by XDA Developers comes from FunkyHuawei.club which hosts a lot of different pre-release Huawei firmware. Inside the software package is not just mentions of “ro.config.hw_notch_size” with specific values but also a picture of the notch.

The notch size can apparently be configured allowing the movement of content around the notch. Along with the notch size listed there are some different display resolutions mentioned — ro.config.hw_screen_aspect=2244:1996:1080 — with the discrepancies thought to be related to how an app interacts with the notch. Unless an app is optimised for the notch such as on the Essential phone using Essential’s API, the display has wasted space above the status bar.

So why is this the Huawei P11 and not one of their other myriad of devices they launch each year?

The timing and hardware: With the Huawei P11 set to be announced at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018 (The P10 was launched at MWC this year) and this firmware received has all the hallmarks of a flagship. It runs a Kirin 970, EMUI 8.0.1 (based on Android Oreo) and appears to have a USB-C port.

While all this is speculation inferred from some “evidence” it may also be a phone in testing that will never see the light of day. I am sure we will see more leaks in the upcoming months to MWC and it will be interesting to see how Huawei deal with the software and the notch.

Is Android ready for a notch? Does Google need to implement a special sdk for the notch rather than developers having to use the sdk for each notch manufacturer?

Source: XDA Developers.
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10001000101

I am disappoint huawei.

Grolt

Typical Huawei… no originality.

Oldmike

Not overly a fan of ” the notch ” !

Paul Miller

Well, this has just made me feel completely out of touch. What on earth is a ‘notch’?

chris

A full screen phone still needs the notch to house the front facing camera and other sensors. the black and white image is the top of the phone with the black part the notch.