We’ve been waiting for Huawei’s P50 lineup of phones since July last year. The P50 Pocket, a folding phone in the vein of Samsung’s Flip series, has been on our radar for months as well. Last night, the Chinese tech maker finally made both phones official for South Africa.
Pre-orders for both handsets start next week, on 22 March. They’ll turn up in retail stores from 1 April. The only item missing from the list of info we had on the P50 Pocket and Pro was pricing. Well, that’s been sorted out. More or less.
Want to pocket a P50 Pocket?
If you want to stick a Huawei P50 Pro in your shopping cart, you can expect to pay at least R20,000. The company will throw in a bunch of extras when you order, just to sweeten the deal. They’re not saying what these extras are, just yet, but the P50 Pro gets R9k worth of free bits.
The P50 Pocket starts at R29,000 (it’s a folding phone, what did you expect?) and comes with R4,000 worth of extras.
You’re getting more or less the same phone, no matter which you opt for. Both sport last year’s Snapdragon 888 chipset. But both also lack 5G. It’s the 4G version of Qualcomm’s hardware inside the pair. Camera specs are the major differentiator. Leica handles the lenses once again. The Pro offers a 50MP main, 13MP ultrawide, 64MP telephoto, and a 40MP monochrome sensor. If you’re counting megapixels, this is your phone right here.
The P50 Pocket goes a little smaller. Expect a 40MP main sensor, a 13MP ultrawide, and a 32MP wide-angle lens, with no periscope telephoto lens to play with at all. Still, it’s the first folding smartphone that Huawei has launched in South Africa. That’s got to be worth something.