It’s releasing in China this month, but there’s no word yet on a global launch.
Almost a year after Huawei announced its first clamshell foldable in the form of the P50 Pocket, it’s back with a followup. The new device is called the Huawei Pocket S, and it maintains the same foldable formfactor as the P50 with circular notification display and camera bumps on its outside. But the new phone comes with one fewer external cameras, a lower-end processor, and a lower starting price of ¥5,988 (around $818) versus ¥8,988 (around $1,228) for the P50 Pocket.
That price means the Pocket S neatly undercuts its main foldable clamshell competitor, Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 4 (which was priced at around ¥7,499, or $1,025, in China, according to Gizmochina). But continuing US sanctions against Huawei mean the Pocket S faces technical limitations including a lack of support for 5G networks. And if it ever gets a release outside China, don’t expect any Google apps or services to be natively available.
Otherwise, the basics of the Pocket S are the same as the P50 Pocket. There’s a 6.9-inch internal foldable display with a 120Hz refresh rate and a resolution of 2790 x 1188. Huawei says this can survive 400,000 folds. It’s paired with a small circular 1.04-inch external display that can act as a camera viewfinder, show notifications, and more. But you only get two rear cameras this time around (a 40-megapixel main and 13-megapixel ultrawide) with the P50 Pocket’s gimmicky 32-megapixel ultra-spectrum camera absent. The Pocket S also features a step-down midrange Snapdragon 778G processor this time around, versus the flagship Snapdragon 888 found in the P50 Pocket.
The P50 Pocket saw a global release announced a little over a month after its original launch in China last year, so it’s reasonably safe to assume that the Pocket S will do the same eventually. In China, GSMArena reports it’ll go on sale from November 10th.