Huawei P50 Pocket, analysis: Huawei’s most ambitious folding is very expensive (and not only for its price)

We are in the era of folding phones and after Samsung and Oppo have jumped on the bandwagon, Huawei didn’t want to miss out on the party. After its first folding proposal, the Huawei Mate XS, the company has another bullet in this market with the new Huawei P50 Pocket, a phone that visually looks like a carbon copy of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3.

Will Huawei manage to improve Samsung’s folding proposal? To what extent does the absence of Google services affect to the experience with this device? Is your price adjusted to everything you offer? Well, to answer these questions we have been accompanied in our day to day by this phone, and after reading this analysis you will know everything about it.

Huawei P50 Pocket data sheet

	Huawei P50 Pocket
indoor display	6.9-inch foldable OLEDRatio 21:9FullHD+ at 2,790 x 1,188 pixels120Hz refresh300Hz touch refreshDCI-P3
outer screen	1.04-inch OLED340 x 340 pixel resolution60Hz refresh120Hz touch refresh
Processor	Snapdragon 888 4G 2.84GHzAdreno 660 GPU
Versions	8GB/256GB12GB/512GBTray for NMCard up to 256GBLPDDR5 / UFS 3.1
rear cameras	Main: 40 megapixels f/1.8 PDAFWide: 13 megapixels f / 2.2Hyperspectral: 32 megapixels f / 1.8
Frontal camera	10.7 megapixel f/2.2
Battery	4,000mAh40W fast charge
System	Harmony OS 2.0
connectivity	4GWiFi 6Bluetooth 5.2 LEGPS/GLONASS/Galileo/BDSUSB Type-C 2.0
Dimensions and weight	Unfolded: 170 x 75.5 x 7.2 millimetersFolded: 87.3 x 75.5 x 15.2 millimeters190 grams of weight
Others	side fingerprint readerstereo speakers
Price	€1,599

Design

We take the Huawei P50 Pocket out of its box, and inevitably our head thinks of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip3. Huawei has chosen to bring a clamshell format to its new folding phone, following design lines and details incredibly similar to those of Samsung’s Z Flip.

We notice this mainly in the placement of the buttons and connections, the brand logo engraved in the hinge space, the screen frames once unfolded, the hole for the front camera, and even the dimensions of the phone itself. , although it is a few millimeters larger than Samsung’s proposal.

But this does not seem like bad news to us, since we think that this clamshell-type folding format get more attention from the general public. In addition to its folding condition, due to the small size of the device once it is folded. This condition makes it much easier for us to store the phone in any pocket, although it can be more complicated if we talk about narrow pockets.

If we see a difference in the design section between the Huawei P50 Pocket and the Galaxy ZFlip, it is found in the construction materials. Huawei’s new folding proposal has a reflective plastic casing that gets dirty with fingerprints just by looking at it. It’s relatively easy to clean, but it’s a pretty dirty phone overall, which sullies (pun intended) its bombastic appeal.

The two models that have reached the market have a rather garish design, accompanied by some textured engravings that occupy the entire back surface of the telephone. The unit we’ve been testing features a very subtle gold tone, which makes the phone literally shine in most situations.

In this back part, two large circles stand out, which Huawei seems to have adopted as an identifying symbol in its new high-end phones. We have already seen it in the Huawei P50 Pro, with the two circumferences dedicated to the camera module, and in the case of the Huawei P50 Pocket, the upper circumference houses three sensors that make up the main camera module, and a lower circumference that integrates a small circular OLED screen which we will talk about later.

We unfold the Huawei P50 Pocket to discover a large screen, in this case of 6.9 inches, with a vertically stretched format of 21:9. As with the Samsung Z Flip, this type of format, longer than normal, prevents reaching the entire surface with one hand, making it more comfortable to use this Huawei phone with both hands. Despite this, the P50 Pocket does not turn out to be a very heavy phone and its 190 grams make it easy to handle.

Regarding the fold of the screen, it should be noted that it is not appreciated when we look at the phone from the front, but it is we will notice that it is there when we pass our finger over it, or when light falls directly on the screen. Regarding this detail, it should be noted that, after having used it, the fold is not annoying at all, and it is something that you end up getting used to.

We are going to talk about the hinge of the Huawei P50 Pocket and here we want to emphasize that the first unit we received seemed less solid than usual to the point that we thought it was faulty. However, upon receiving the second unit we saw that the hinge was the same and from Huawei they confirmed that it is normal operation.

The thing about the hinge is that it does not allow the mobile to be left at a specific angle. As seen in the video, when trying to leave it at 90º, the hinge opens completely, almost as if it had a spring. This can come in handy when opening and closing the mobile with one hand, but we cannot leave it supported at 90º to, for example, take a photo.

The process of folding and unfolding the Huawei P50 Pocket is done without much problem, but we believe that the hinge lacks the strength to hold at different angles. In general, we thought more fragile than we could expect.

The design is very striking, but the finishes and a weak hinge do not manage to give off that premium feeling that we expect from a phone of 1,600 euros

The design section of the Huawei P50 Pocket leaves us with a half gas feeling. We are facing a folding phone, very striking on the outside, whose construction materials do not finish giving off that premium feeling that we expect in a phone of 1,600 euros.

Screen(s)

The main screen of the Huawei P50 Pocket has everything we can expect from a high-end phone in this section. Integrate a 6.9-inch OLED panel that provides a FULL HD + resolution of 2790×1188 pixels. It also has a dynamic refresh rate of up to 120Hz, which adapts the fluidity of the screen depending on the content it is showing.

At the settings level, the screen of the Huawei P50 Pocket offers excellent quality and performance, with very generous brightness levels and with a good treatment and care of the colors. Through the settings we can configure various parameters, from different display modes, as well as the temperature and color mode. By default, we have the normal color mode that automatically adjusts the standard color space, but if we miss more vivid tones, we can also choose it, although we did not find it necessary in our tests.

The screen of the P50 Pocket proves to be worthy of a high-end phone, and despite its elongated format, it adapts well to most of the content we play, be it videos, movies, series or video games. In addition, browsing the internet or moving through the menus are tasks that are carried out very smoothly and without much problem. For its part, the front camera hole does not bother too much, and we have not noticed shadow areas around the wrinkle of the screen either. Good work from Huawei in this regard.

If we turn the phone over, we find a small outer screen, which seems to be the norm for clamshell phones. In this case, we have a 1.04-inch circular OLED panel that allows us to access different phone services without having to deploy it in its entirety. In this way, we can take a look at our notifications, control music playback, check the weather or the calendar, and of course, the possibility of taking selfies using the main camera with just two touches. As you can see, we are talking about very simple and sporadic uses of the phone, which can come in handy on occasion, if we do not want to unfold the phone.

Performance

At the performance level, the Huawei P50 Pocket arrives with the same specification sheet as the Huawei P50 Pro. In this way, we can once again enjoy the Snapdragon 888 processoraccompanied, in this case, by an Adreno 660 GPU. The model that we have been using, and which is also marketed in Spain, comes accompanied by a generous 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, more than enough values, which enhance the performance of this phone.

After several days of use, we have not missed more power at any time, nor have we encountered failures, lags or jerks that have hindered our experience. Everything works as it always has on this Qualcomm processor, which despite being from last year, it still offers great performance in Huawei’s new high-end proposal.

We have not missed more power at any time, nor have we encountered failures, lags or jerks that have hindered our experience.

	HUAWEI P50 POCKET	SAMSUNG GALAXY Z FLIP3	IPHONE 13 PRO	GOOGLE PIXEL 6 PRO	HUAWEI P50 PRO	ONEPLUS 9 PRO
PROCESSOR	Snapdragon 888	Snapdragon 888	Apple A15 Bionic	google tensor	Snapdragon 888	Snapdragon 888
RAM	12GB	8GB	6GB	12GB	8GB	12GB
GEEKBENCH 5	866 / 2,667	1,106 / 2,678	1,736 / 4,518	1,003 / 2,859	1,107 / 3,144	1,105 / 3,603
PCMARK WORK	10,428	12,928	–	10,697	12,897	11,919

In this section, the surprise comes when we discover that the new Huawei P50 Pocket suffers from the same as the Huawei P50 Pro: it does not have 5G connectivity. This is surprising to us especially when this phone reaches our hands in the year 2022 and when it is a device that falls within the high range. Most competitors in this price range are already prepared to support the new high-speed networks, and even if you use many of the brand’s apps, but if that’s not your case, you can live without them.

It’s a problem? It depends on the apps you use. Many can be downloaded in APKs and they work, although others will need Google services (even if they are not from Google) There are many applications that you can search and find through the Huawei App Gallery, thanks to Petal Search, despite not being in its catalog.

Google Services aside, EMUI is a well-optimized layer, with plenty of customization options and more bloatware than we’d like. Of course, at the moment no sign of HarmonyOS in the West.

EMUI is a solid customization layer and loaded with customization tweaks. In the case of the Huawei P50 Pocket, it comes with more bloatware pre-installed from the factory than we would like, made up of a large catalog of the company’s own applications, and even third-party ones. Despite this, the performance of EMUI 12 continues to develop as in the past, and its optimization has seemed more than correct to us. This new version of the customization layer devotes much of its efforts to promote better control of our devices (mainly from the Huawei ecosystem).

We are happy with EMUI, there is no doubt about its great capacity as a customization layer… But at the same time we can’t take a look at Harmony OS, the operating system in which Huawei has been working for years, and that all. Can inquire our policy of relationships with enterprises.