The Huawei P10 is thought to be the Chinese telecom giant’s flagship follow-up for 2017. After last year’s impressive Huawei P9, alongside its phablet sibling the P9 Plus and budget counterpart the P9 Lite, people are looking to Huawei to deliver once more with the P10.
News around Huawei’s new flagship has been rather quiet, with many simply looking at what came before to help speculate on what’s to come in the P10. However, now it looks as if we may finally have had our first glimpse of Huawei’s new handset thanks to three new renders from China (via GSMArena.com).
The renders suggest that the P10 will come in two varieties: white with gold casing and an all-black model. It also looks as if the Leica-lensed rear dual cameras have made a return, while the rear fingerprint scanner has been abandoned in favour of a front-mounted home button/fingerprint reader. A closer look at the three renders also shows that the P10 will come with a curved touchscreen that mimics the one found on Samsung’s S7 Edge, along with a similarly curved rear and minimal bezels.
These renders definitely look legitimate enough, although past leaks have shown a similar-looking Huawei devices but with a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor instead of a front-mounted one.
Regardless of whether these renders actually turn out to be the Huawei P10 or not, we’re likely to find out exactly what Huawei has up its sleeve at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this February.
Everything we know about the Huawei P10:
1. The Huawei P10 release date is likely to be in March or April
With Mobile World Congress around the corner, it’s likely Huawei will use the show to help stage the launch of its new P10 flagship. Seeing as MWC takes place towards the end of February, it’s likely to see the phone officially launch shortly after, in March or April.
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This isn’t pure rumour or speculation, either: according to The Android Soul, Huawei chairman and CEO of the consumer division, Yu Chengdong, revealed the information rather freely in an interview. Still, we’ll have to wait to see just how accurate the claim is.
2. The Huawei P10 will come in two variants
Rumours around the P10 suggest that Huawei will be repeating its strategy of two devices by launching a separate Huawei P10 Plus to appease phablet fans.
Interestingly, GSMArena.com reports that the P10 will not have curved touchscreen edges like the P10 Plus – despite other phone renders and leaks suggesting it would. If this is the case, it looks as if Huawei are emulating the same approach to dual devices as Samsung does with its flagship Galaxy S smartphone range.
3. The Huawei P10 is no slouch
Huawei’s P10 looks to evolve on the P9 by equipping itself with a HiSilicon Kirin 960. Last year’s P9 make use of an octa-core Kirin 955, which ran on four cores at 2.5GHz and four at 1.8GHz. According to Android Authority, the 960 comes with four 2.4GHz cores, four 1.8GHz cores and an improved onboard 900MHz Mali-G71 MP8 GPU. You may have noticed the 960’s maximum clock speed is slightly slower than last year’s 955, but the difference is so minimal it’s likely to have little to no impact due to the P10’s other efficiencies.
Until we can benchmark the P10 ourselves, we can only say it’s likely to perform in a similar manner to that of the P9, albeit with better graphics performance and a beefy 6GB of RAM to back it up.
4. The Huawei P10 sees the return of its dual-camera setup
As with the P9 range and Mate 9, Huawei is expected to equip the P10 with dual Leica-branded cameras once more. It’s not yet known what megapixel or aperture they’ll be, but expect them to be the same, if not larger than the ones found in the P10.
Huawei’s dual-camera arrangement was a great addition to the P9, so it’s a welcome addition for this year’s P10.
5. Expect the Huawei P10 to have a similar price to the P9
Huawei phones have had something of a publicity boost in the past year or so. Since pairing with Google to produce the Nexus 6P, the Chinese smartphone manufacturer has proved it has what it takes to rise to the upper echelons of smartphone production. It may not quite be at the same level as the likes of Samsung, but its phones are also a darn sight cheaper.
You can currently pick up a Huawei P9 for around £400, with the initial launch price only slightly higher at around £450. For the cost-conscious, the Huawei P10 could be an absolute steal in comparison to the Samsung Galaxy S8 or LG G6.