Huawei has had some tough times lately, with the US government seemingly out to get it. But the Chinese company is hanging tough and still releasing some high-quality smartphones. Here’s all the latest news and rumours about its upcoming next generation – the Huawei P60 series.
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When will the Huawei P60 series be released?
There’s no official word from Huawei about a release date, but we’ve already seen reports that the P60 range could make its debut in March 2023. The rumours comes from the wonderfully named ‘The factory manager is classmate Guan’ [translation from Google] who posted on Weibo that, ‘It is tentatively scheduled to be released at the end of the Q1 quarter’.
Looking back, the P50 series made its debut in China in August 2021, so we’re long overdue a successor, though Huawei no longer follows a strict annual timetable.
As for an international launch, there could be even longer to wait. The P50 never launched outside China at all, while the P50 Pro only launched internationally in January 2022, half a year after its Chinese debut, and didn’t arrive in Europe until March. It was eventually joined by the foldable P50 Pocket in global markets at least.
A recent article by Politico on the company’s restructuring in Europe sparked speculation that Huawei may give up trying to sell phone hardware in the region, but for the moment little is certain, and Huawei is maintaining a European presence and office, so there’s no reason yet to think we won’t see the phones launch there too.
So, while the P60 range may be announced in March 2023, we can’t say with confidence which of the range will be available in different regions and when they may arrive.
How much will the Huawei P60 series cost?
As Huawei has yet to confirm the P60 series at all, we don’t have any set prices for the upcoming models. With that in mind, we can look at the previous couple of generations to see how they lined up.
Obviously, the Pro model is quite a bit more expensive than the standard version, but that’s quite consistent with current flagships, as we’ve seen similar prices from Apple and Samsung. We don’t expect those numbers to drop much in the near future, so if you want the P60 Pro then you’ll probably be looking at a figure over a grand.
Going by last year, it’s likely that we’ll see international launches for the Pro and Pocket, but probably not for the standard model.
What will the P60 specs and design be?
There’s been a flurry of rumours around the upcoming P60 series in the past few months, which is a sign that the devices could arrive in the not too distant future. Originally, we heard reports that Huawei was intending to use its proprietary Kirin series of processors this time around, though this would have required the company to find a new manufacturing partner to get around its US trade restrictions.
Huawei stated to a Chinese reporter that this wouldn’t be the case, so it’s now expected that the P60 range will feature the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, albeit probably only with 4G network support as the sanctions stop Huawei from accessing 5G components.
It’s been reported that the new P60 has been given the rather unusual code name of Mona Lisa, and while her enigmatic smile is unlikely to appear on the new device, we have seen rumours that the artistic capabilities of the P60 range will be interesting thanks to its upgraded cameras.
Huawei’s own XMAGE imaging technology is rumoured to feature on the new device to bolster camera capabilities now that the long-running Leica partnership has ended. XMAGE was launched by the company in July 2022 and made its debut on the Huawei Mate 50 Pro. Now it’s expected to come as standard on the P60 range, bringing with it all kinds of computational improvements to photos and videos.
He Gang, Hauwei’s President of Handset Business, announced at the Huawei Community Week last July that, “XMAGE brings a breakthrough for a mobile imaging system. HUAWEI has developed into a leader in the field of mobile camera technologies thanks to its earlier inventions and innovations, which helped to pioneer the industry…This is the condensation of our past innovations in the field of imaging and our commitment to the exploration of the field of imaging in the future. Breaking through new heights of moving images, so stay tuned.”
Another interesting rumour is that the P60 or P60 Pro main camera will have a variable aperture to give it more flexibility. That’s another piece of tech we’ve already seen debut in the Mate 50 Pro, so it would make sense to see it appear in the P-series next.
Some rumours suggest that the main camera could be upgraded to a 64Mp sensor, which should be able to take better advantage of the XMAGE technology.
Naturally we’re also expecting to see a P60 Pocket foldable in the series
There’s not much else to go on at the moment, but we’ll be updating this article as soon as more details become available. In the meantime, take a look at our current recommendations for the best smartphones and the best new phones coming in 2022/2023 to see what Huawei has to beat.
