Huawei’s mobile division has been having a stellar few quarters, with its sales growing by leaps and bounds, making it one of the largest Android manufacturers on the planet. The company’s Honor range of smartphones and its flagship Ascend Mate range of phablets have both made significant contributions to the company’s bottom line during the period, according to a recent report. With whatever its touching turning to gold in recent times, the company may now be looking to launch a smaller 4.7-inch flagship if reports are to be believed. While smartphone display sizes have been going northwards for a while now, there is a niche for smaller-screened smartphones with high-end hardware, and Huawei seems set to address that segment of the market with this upcoming smartphone.
According to the Chinese tech-media, a Huawei smartphone carrying the model number CRR-UL00 has allegedly been pictured with the AnTuTu benchmarking app running on it. The “info” tab gives out a few important specs, like the Android version, chipset, CPU, GPU, resolution etc. As for the hardware specifications of the rumored smartphone, the Huawei Mate 7 mini will reportedly come with a 4.7-inch display panel with a Full HD 1080p resolution. The device is said to be powered by Huawei’s premium Kirin 935 SoC, which are designed in-house by Huawei. The Mate 7 Mini will reportedly also pack in 3 GB of RAM and have Android 5.1 Lollipop pre-installed on it. The primary camera on the rear of the device will come with a 13-megapixel Sony IMX278 sensor, if reports are to be believed. Meanwhile, the handset is also believed to have a 1-touch fingerprint scanner not unlike the one present on its bigger sibling, the Mate 7.
It remains to be seen whether this niche corner of the market will be effectively addressed by companies, in an era of ever-increasing multimedia consumption on smartphones, which is encouraging OEMs to stretch the definition of large-screen, and blurring the lines between smartphones and tablets, as per mainstream market demand. As for now, amongst big-name manufacturers, only Sony seems genuinely interested in catering to this evolving niche. The company has diligently launched its Xperia Z Compact-series smartphones every year over the past few years. With Huawei too deciding to throw its hat in the ring, only time will tell if there will be enough traction for products such as the upcoming Huawei Mate 7 Mini, for companies to justify investing large sums of money in targeting such a small base to begin with.