Huawei is rumored to be preparing a smartphone with a display camera hole, and that phone has just been shown online, though it hasn’t been announced just yet. If you take a look at the gallery down below, you will see a number of images of the device, and according to the source, the device got shown during the 18th birthday of a well-known Chinese singer, Jackson Yee. It is quite possible that Huawei did this on purpose, as it’s not that unusual for Chinese companies to tease their smartphone in this manner, even before they get announced. Chinese companies do give out such phones to brand ambassadors, and basically agree with them to show them to the public at agreed times. We cannot know for sure what happened here exactly, but that’s probably it. In any case, there were a ton of guests at Mr. Yee’s birthday, and his birthday was also live-streamed online, so a ton of people noticed the device, not to mention that news sites will relay this news as well. Having said that, the device in question is quite probably the Huawei Nova 4, which has been rumored for quite some time now.
Now, if we take a closer look at the phone, you’ll notice that the device has a display camera hole in the upper-left corner of the display, and this phone seems to be in some sort of a case, not a case that would completely obstruct its design, but your regular case which doesn’t even cover the bottom of the phone fully. As you can see, a display notch is not included here at all, and the bezels on this phone are extremely thin. It seems like the bottom bezel will be slightly thicker than the top and side ones, while the phone’s earpiece will be implemented at the very top of the device’s front side. This handset will reportedly use a BOE-made LCD display, in case you were wondering. This phone is actually rumored to arrive in early December, though Huawei still did not confirm its exact launch date.
Background: A teaser for this smartphone surfaced online a couple of days ago, and the company has confirmed that the poster is real, which more or less confirms that the phone that leaked today is the phone that was teased in that image. Now, we do know anything about the Huawei Nova 4’s spec sheet, as it did not leak just yet, but considering that this phone will be a part of Huawei’s “Nova” smartphone lineup, you can expect to see mid-range specs inside of the device. Interestingly enough, the Huawei Nova 3 was announced back in July this year, so if this phone actually ends up being called the Huawei Nova 4, it will be a successor that arrived only a couple of months after the Nova 3, and that’s a bit odd. In any case, the Huawei Nova 3 is made out of metal and glass, it sports really thin bezels, but it also comes with a display notch, which will not be a part of the Huawei Nova 4. The Huawei Nova 4 will probably be made out of metal and glass as well, though, and it is expected to ship with a rear-facing fingerprint scanner as well, just like the Huawei Nova 3.
The Huawei Nova 4 is expected to ship with two cameras on the back, and the setup will quite probably be similar as on the Nova 3. It’s actually even possible that Huawei may use the same 16 and 24-megapixel cameras on the back of the device, both of which are wide-angle cameras. The device will probably ship with Android 9 Pie out of the box, and Huawei’s Emotion UI (EMUI) 9 on top of it. The phone’s display will be quite tall, if these images provided by the source are to be believed, so we’re either looking at a 19:9 or a 19.5:9 display aspect ratio here, and the phone’s display will probably be larger than 6 inches. The Huawei Nova 3 has a 6.3-inch display, so you can expect to see something similar in size on the Huawei Nova 4. The device will probably be fueled by the Kirin 970, just like the Huawei Nova 3, unless Huawei opts to move this phone to a flagship level, in which case we’ll see the Kirin 980 on the inside… but that probably won’t happen. The device’s battery will be larger than 3,500mAh, almost certainly, while the device will offer some sort of facial scanning features.
Impact: The Huawei Nova 4 will probably be a sort of a test device for Huawei, as it will become the company’s very first smartphone to sport a display camera hole. Huawei is actually expected to announce a number of additional phones with such a design, and even the company’s upcoming flagships, the Huawei P30, and P30 Plus are expected to ship with such a setup. The Huawei P30 and P30 Plus are not scheduled to arrive for 5 months or so, as the P20 and P20 Plus arrived back in March this year, and Huawei introduced the Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro flagships not long ago. The Huawei Nova 4 is not the only smartphone with a display camera hole that we’ll see announced in the near future, as Samsung is planning to introduce the Galaxy A8s next month, while some other companies are planning such devices as well. LG, for example, has already patented a new design with a display camera hole, though interestingly enough, in LG’s vision, two cameras will be implemented in the display, or a camera and an earpiece, as there are two cutouts included, one next to the other. The OnePlus 7 is also expected to adopt this design next year, and the same can be said for Samsung’s upcoming flagships, the Samsung Galaxy S10 lineup of smartphones. It seems like next year will be all about display camera holes, thin bezels, 5G, and foldable phones… at least judging by what we’ve seen thus far, of course, but we’ll see what will happen, whatever the case may be, it’ll be an interesting year for smartphones, that’s for sure.
