Huawei P50 Pocket preview: first impressions

The Huawei P50 Pocket: a gorgeous clamshell foldable phone with Huawei’s camera prowess, promising the perfect combination between form and function. This is our hands-on first experience with the clamshell foldable from Huawei.

The phone’s eye-catching design is the first thing that attracts our attention, and so is the circular camera module, and of course: it flips. And from what we have seen so far, the Huawei P50 Pocket is one mighty camera phone, probably could make it into the best camera phones category. Now, let’s check out what our first impressions of the foldable phone are!

Design & Display

Clamshell foldable phones have arguably the best folding factor — at least very comfortable for carrying around in a folded variant. The double ring design is one of the first things to catch our attention. One ring houses the camera module, while the other one the customizable smart Cover Screen. This way the phone is instantly recognizable. The Huawei P50 Pocket is available in two distinct color variants: White and Premium Gold. The white variant is the one we have here, and it features a beautiful pattern that reflects light, giving it quite a premium look and feel. Huawei says this color is inspired by diamonds, and it definitely gives this impression, from the second your eyes land on it.

On top of that, this phone is not only beautiful, it has also been made using materials like Zirconium-based liquid metal, while the hinge is also improved in strength. The hinge is indeed quite comfortable to fold and unfold (however, opening it with one hand is not that easy, so two hands are required to flip open the phone) and feels sturdy.

Now, let’s talk a bit about the beautiful 6.9-inch flexible OLED panel. It features a 21:9 aspect ratio and therefore, the phone is very comfortable to hold and interact with, both folded and unfolded. Featuring a pixel density of 442 PPI and support for the P3 wide color gamut, the display looks stunning, colors look lively and vivid, and it is also sufficiently bright. And let’s not forget the 120Hz dynamic refresh rate and 300Hz touch sampling rate, ensuring the fluidity and smoothness of the viewing experience.

Overall, the Huawei P50 Pocket’s display is really good. Now, let’s talk about the hinge crease, as a smartphone that folds and flips will definitely have one: and it is present here as well. It can be felt when scrolling through websites, but it doesn’t bother the viewing experience as much as one might assume. After just five minutes with the phone, I forgot the crease was even there and was reminded of it a tiny bit just when scrolling.

Camera & Audio

The camera of the P50 Pocket is something Huawei has put a lot of effort in. The True Chroma sensor, available in the P50 series, is present here as well. First, let’s see what the camera specs of this phone are: a 40MP True-Chroma camera is the main one, complemented by a 13MP ultra-wide camera, a 32MP ultra spectrum camera, an Ultra Spectrum Illuminator, and an AF laser.

The main camera produces true-to-life photos with no annoying oversharpening or crazy smartphone-like vibrance levels. The images look faithful to whatever you are shooting, with good dynamic range and liveliness to them. The ultra-wide camera maintains the gorgeous colors and clarity of the main camera.

Keep in mind that these photo samples are preliminary ones, and in the coming days we will add more so you can get a better sense of what the P50 Pocket’s camera can produce. We will add nighttime samples here as well soon, so stay tuned!

Zooming in, though, changes the colors a bit, making them a little bit duller than real life. However, the quality of the zoomed-in images is still quite good, except for the 10x pictures, which seem to have lost a bit of clarity and detail.

A good thing if you like shooting stuff from up close is that the Huawei P50 Pocket’s Ultra Spectrum Camera supports Macro shots. When you get close to a little flower or object, the phone automatically switches to a macro mode for you to take a clear image of your object.

And if you’re a photographer, you will be happy to discover Huawei P50 Pocket’s Pro mode, which allows you some more creative control over the images and setting such as ISO and Shutter Speed. Increasing the shutter speed will help you freeze a moving object (such as my parents’ young dog who can’t help but jump around all the time); however, keep in mind that the photo quality of some of these images drops a bit.

Software & Performance

The Huawei P50 Pocket comes with EMUI 12 out of the box. Under the hood, the phone features Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 (which supports 4G and doesn’t have 5G support, unfortunately), 8GB of RAM for hiccup-free multitasking, and 256GB of storage (the Gold variant has 512GB of storage).

EMUI 12 looks clean and bloatware-free, with smart folders for the home screen to keep everything organized. The phone runs smoothly with no issues so far (we’ll keep you updated on this as we continue to tinker with it for our full review).

However, we cannot ignore the elephant in the room (and a very sad elephant, mind you): the lack of Google Services. Huawei’s own app store, the App Gallery, has grown since it started; but mainstream apps cannot be installed from it: you need to download their APKs through the internet, and for some, this may be a hassle.

There are some alternatives for most popular apps such as Google Maps and YouTube, but if you come from a phone that supports Google Services, you may need a bit more time to get used to not having them at hand.

We certainly do hope Huawei and Google will be able to work together again in the future.

Battery life

Now, let’s talk a bit about the battery of this beautiful clamshell foldable. The Huawei P50 Pocket has a 4,000mAh battery and it ships with a 40W Huawei SuperCharge charger.Although the phone doesn’t support wireless charging, wired charging on the P50 Pocket is indeed quite fast. It took just half an hour for it to jump from 26% to 88%. We will provide the extensive battery life tests for this phone soon enough, but for now, rest assured that a quick top-up of the battery will deliver quite good results for when you’re in a hurry.

In terms of battery life, understandably the phone drains more battery when shooting photos or videos, but otherwise, battery life feels pretty stable. You could probably go a day on a single charge (with light to moderate usage).

Soon, we will be adding more impressions for our full review of the Huawei P50 Pocket, so stay tuned!