Heavily crippled by the US sanctions, Huawei apparently still has not thrown the towel. After a (highly successful) launch in China, the flagship Pura 70 phone line was officially launched outside the Great Wall, with the new phones available for sale in Germany, France, and a few other European countries. Check the specs and more details below.
With many Western suppliers forbidden to deal with Huawei, the past few years have not been easy for the Chinese company. With access blocked not only to Google apps but also some key components, Huawei had to get creative, even launching the P60 Pro model with a Snapdragon chip without 5G support.
Chinese pride
Roughly a year later, the flagship “P” range was renamed “Pura”, with three new models: Pura 70, Pura 70 Pro, and Pura 70 Ultra. All three models are powered by Huawei’s in-house designed Kirin chips, fabbed at SMIC factories in China on a 7nm-class node, which means they do not rely on TSMC services like the original Kirin 9000 chip from 2020 which was made using the N5 process (5nm-class).
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Curiously, though, the specifications on the phone pages only list 4G support, and only the Pura 70 Pro lists eSIM support. A quick look at the specs table reveals a few other oddities such as only Bluetooth 5.2 and dual-band Wi-Fi 6 support, which suggests the chip designs are still heavily based on the 4-year-old Kirin 9000 features.
A new breed of flagship
Legacy features aside, Huawei equipped the phones as true flagships, with all three models featuring big LTPO OLED screens, which not only offer smooth 120 Hz animations but also can throttle refreshes down to 1 Hz to save battery.
Speaking of batteries, Huawei brought back its SuperCharge tech to the Pura 70 line, with the Pro and Ultra models topping at 100 W wired charging and 80 W wirelessly. The base Pura 70 tops at 66 and 50 W, respectively. And different from (former) subsidiary Honor, the wired chargers are still included in the box.
Rounding up the specifications, the Pura 70 models are equipped with either 12 or 16 GB of RAM, and 256 or 512 GB of storage. The latter is not expandable, with no support for microSD cards of Huawei’s proprietary NM cards. And all three Pura 70 models are IP68 water and dust resistant.
Camera highlights
Despite losing its partnership with the German optics experts at Leica, Huawei didn’t stop its investments in the camera department. For the Pura 70 family, the highlight is clearly on the Ultra model, which features a retractable lens mechanism for the main 1-inch sensor camera.
When the camera is activated, the lens protrudes outwards, like in the old point-and-shoot cameras. The mechanism doesn’t serve as a zoom, which is a missed opportunity. On the other hand, all three models feature a variable aperture for the main camera lens, between f/1.4 and f/4.0, with optical image stabilization (OIS).
OIS is also available on the telephoto camera, which offers a 5x magnification on the base model, and 3.5x on the Pro and Ultra. At first glance, it looks like the more expensive models have less capable telephoto cameras, but both the Pro and Ultra zoom lenses have a fast aperture of f/2.1, whereas the base model is specced at “only” f/3.4. Oh, and the zoom camera also serves as a macro on the Pro and Ultra.
Software and price
Still prohibited from using Google’s apps, the new Huawei flagships come with the in-house EMUI 14.2—still no signs of Harmony OS here. Huawei’s software support is very vague, promising “at least” two years of system upgrades and three years of security updates, which is not competitive in 2024.
Another point that will test Huawei’s fans is the price, with the Pura 70 range still priced in the upper flagship range. The base Pura 70 has a suggested price of 999€, with the Pro at 1199€, and the Ultra at 1499€.
The phones are already available for sale in Germany, France, and a few other European countries, and Huawei is offering its die-hard fans a free FreeBuds Pro 3 and Watch GT3 during the pre-order. Shipments are scheduled for May 22nd. As usual, the Pura 70 phones are not planned to be sold in North America.
