Huawei have recently been in the news because of their Mobile World Congress 2015 devices, culminating in the Android Wear powered smartwatch, simply called the Huawei Watch. The Chinese manufacturer have also been linked Google’s Nexus project and have shown us a number of new smartphones. However, the latest in the manufacturer’s P-range of devices, the P8, has been absent from the show. This is because the device is due to be officially revealed and announced in London on the 15 April. Huawei have teased customers about the P8 and now Chinese website cnmo.com appear to have come by a model from the P8 range. However, this particular P8 device does not appear to be the normal, regular P8.
First, there have been a number of rumors and purported specifications for the mainstay P8 model. We believe it will be based around a 5.2-inch, 1080p display panel and be powered by Huawei’s own Kirin 920 processor, which is a modern, 64-bit System-on-Chip (SoC) with a clock speed of 2.0 GHz. It’ll likely ship with 3 GB of RAM and a choice of internal capacities, which we hope will extend up to at least 64 GB. The rear camera is likely to be a 13MP unit with an 8MP front-facing sensor. The new P8 devices will be running Android 5.0 Lollipop under Huawei’s customized Emotion user interface, version 3. We don’t know the battery size or other features apart from it will support 4G LTE radio, but it’s believed to be thin. Very thin, actually: 6mm, which is 0.5mm thinner than the existing Huawei P7 model.
We have also seen rumors that Huawei will release a P8 Lite model, which will substitute a 720p display panel in place of the 1080p one. Other details remain sketchy: Huawei may release a P8 Lite model with a smaller screen but similar internals, similar to how Sony have their Z3 and Z3 Compact devices. Or they may release a P8 Lite with lesser internals and a smaller size, similar to Samsung’s Galaxy S and HTC One’s “Mini” versions of their flagship devices. And the last model in the P8 family may be a Max version, featuring a larger screen or perhaps 6.8-inch but an unknown resolution. Given Huawei’s recent remarks about screen resolution, battery life and performance, the larger version of the P8 may well stick with the same 1080p resolution of the normal version in order to maintain good battery life.
We still have six weeks to wait until Huawei officially unveil the P8 device and we’ll see more rumors and leaked photographs, that’s for sure. Huawei’s Kirin processor has been respectable and the rest of the rumored P8 specifications put it on a parity with the HTC One M9. What do you think? Would you be interested in buying a flagship device from Huawei? Let us know in the comments below.