Huawei unveils new P60 and Mate X3 phones in China

Huawei has unveiled its new Huawei P60 and P60 Pro flagship phones, announcing their availability for the Chinese market alongside the company’s latest foldable Mate X3.

In addition to these expected devices, Huawei also introduced the remarkable P60 Art (see image above), a smartphone with an asymmetrical camera array and a pearl blue finish.

While these phones are currently only available in China, available for purchase in early April, a Huawei spokesperson confirmed to Tech Advisor that “overseas versions will be announced on May 9 in Munich.” Which devices specifically have not been disclosed.

It’s been a while since the Huawei P50 Pro launched in August 2021, and Huawei’s shift to an irregular release pattern mirrors that of the Mate 50 Pro, which came about two years after the Mate 40 Pro.

That’s not a bad thing – I argued for the death of the annual update cycle. The wait allowed Huawei’s designers to get very creative.

These phones might not have Google services, but in China that doesn’t matter, and Huawei is swinging here for the fences.

The P60 Pro has a distinctive camera design which, like many P-series phones before it, is meant to be held in landscape orientation, emphasizing the camera-first nature of the device. It also comes in a Rococo White finish, which has a marbled look that Huawei says is unique and different on every device.

Companion X3

Foldable and the rival to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4, the Mate X3 is also incredibly premium with a huge foldable 7.85-inch internal display and a 6.4-inch external display with hardly any bezels. Both have a 120Hz refresh rate, and like the Honor Magic Vs and Oppo Find N2 Flip, the Mate X3 shuts completely flat.

The classic Mate X3, P60, P60 Pro and P60 Art all run on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, a chip launched in 2022. Due to Huawei’s ongoing trade ban with the United States, this chip is limited to 4G only – no 5G here.

The P60 Art is the highest-end P60 model with the same 48Mp main and telephoto sensors as the P60 Pro, but with a higher 40Mp ultra-wide lens compared to the Pro’s 13Mp.

This is reflected in the price, with the P60 Art starting at ¥8,988 ($1,320/£1,070) for 512GB of storage and going up to ¥10,988 ($1,600/£1,300) for 1TB. The foldable Mate X3 starts at ¥12,999 ($1,900/£1,550).

Like the Mate 50 Pro before it, the main 48Mp sensor has a variable physical aperture, with moving parts allowing you to choose from f/1.4 to f/4.0 in ten different steps.

All three P60s have the same 6.67-inch 120Hz OLED panel, but the regular P60 is reminiscent of the cameras with the same 48MP variable aperture primary lens flanked by a 12MP telephoto and ultra-wide. of 13 Mp.

But although this telephoto lens has a lower resolution sensor, oddly the P60 has 5x optical zoom while the P60 Pro and P60 Art only offer 3.5x. The latter two can zoom further digitally though, up to 200x with Huawei’s new ‘super projector night vision telephoto lens’.

These small details show how much incremental updates and differences between the best smartphones in 2023 have had. All of these new Huawei phones seem like solid choices for the Chinese market, especially given the P60’s regular ¥4,488 ($650/£530) starting price.

The larger 5,100mAh battery in the P60 Art is notably a silicon-carbon cell rather than the traditional lithium-ion batteries used in other P60s and all other smartphones. The technology is said to have a higher energy density for better longevity.

It’s creeping into phones in Asia, including the recent Chinese-only version of the Honor Magic 5 Pro.