The Huawei P50 Pocket is a stunning clamshell folding phone that boasts Huawei’s photographic skills, promising the ideal balance of form and function. This phone can easily make it into the top camera phones category, with excellent image quality and a versatile camera system. The phone is readily recognizable thanks to its eye-catching design and intriguing camera bump and cover screen.
However, for some people, the lack of Google Services may be a deal breaker. You will like this phone if you think you can live without Google Maps and YouTube (there are alternatives in the App Gallery) and want a clamshell folding with a good camera.
Let’s go into our complete Huawei P50 Pocket review now.
Design & Display
Clamshell foldable phones offer the best folding factor — at the very least, they’re incredibly pleasant to carry around folded. One of the first things that caught our eye was the double ring design. The camera module is housed in one ring, while the customisable smart Cover Screen is housed in the other. As a result, the phone is instantly identifiable.
White and Premium Gold are the two color options offered for the Huawei P50 Pocket. The white version is the one we have here, and it has a lovely light-reflecting design that gives it a quality look and feel. Huawei claims that this color is inspired by diamonds, and it certainly does so from the moment your gaze lands on it.
Furthermore, this phone is not only attractive, but it was also created with materials such as zirconium-based liquid metal, and the hinge has been strengthened. The hinge is comfortable to fold and unfold (albeit opening it with one hand is difficult, requiring two hands to flick open the phone) and feels solid.
Let’s discuss about the stunning 6.9-inch flexible OLED panel now. The phone has a 21:9 aspect ratio, making it exceptionally pleasant to carry and engage with while folded and unfolded. The display looks beautiful, with a pixel density of 442 PPI and support for the P3 wide color gamut. Colors are vibrant and dynamic, and the display is bright enough. Not to mention the 120Hz dynamic refresh rate and 300Hz touch sampling rate, which ensures the viewing experience is fluid and seamless.
Display measurements and quality
Overall, the display on the Huawei P50 Pocket is excellent, with excellent color accuracy. It has two modes: Normal, which applies the standard color space (sRGB or P3) that is best suited for the content you’re viewing, and Vivid, which, as the name implies, displays more vibrant colors.
You also receive another display customization option: you may control the color temperature. Colors can be made warmer or cooler, and you can even move a point on the color wheel to suit your preferences.
Now, let’s speak about the hinge crease, which is found on any smartphone that folds and flips, and is also present here. When scrolling across websites, it is noticeable, but it does not detract from the viewing experience as much as one might expect. After only five minutes with the phone, I had forgotten about the crease and was only reminded of it when scrolling.
Camera & Audio
Huawei has put a lot of effort into the camera of the P50 Pocket. The True Chroma sensor, which is also found in the P50 series, is present here. Let’s start with the phone’s camera specifications: The main camera is a 40MP True-Chroma sensor, which is supplemented by a 13MP ultra-wide sensor, a 32MP ultra-spectrum sensor, an Ultra Spectrum Illuminator, and an AF laser.
The main camera takes photos that are true to life, with no unpleasant oversharpening or ridiculous vibrance levels like on a smartphone. The photographs appear to be true to what you’re capturing, with good dynamic range and vibrancy. The main camera’s stunning colors and clarity are maintained by the ultra-wide camera.
Zooming closer, on the other hand, alters the colors slightly, making them slightly duller than in real life. Except for the 10x photographs, which appear to have lost some clarity and detail, the quality of the zoomed-in shots is still quite good.
The Huawei P50 Pocket’s Ultra Spectrum Camera supports Macro photos, which is great if you prefer capturing things up close. When you go close to a little flower or object, the phone turns to macro mode, allowing you to take a clear picture of it.
Now for the night-time samples: the main camera performs admirably in low-light circumstances, details are visible, and the overall image quality is excellent with minimal noise. The ultra-wide shots are darker in general than the ones taken with the primary camera. One of the benefits of this folding phone is that you can shoot a selfie using the main camera, ensuring that your nighttime selfies are crisp and detailed:
If you’re a photographer, you’ll be pleased to learn about Huawei P50 Pocket’s Pro mode, which gives you more creative control over photographs and settings like ISO and shutter speed. Increase the shutter speed to help freeze a moving object (like my parents’ young puppy that can’t stop jumping about); but, keep in mind that the photo quality of some of these images will suffer.
Slowing down the shutter speed using Pro mode is an interesting thing to try. A shutter speed of 2.4 to 3 seconds was utilized in the photographs below, which might result in smeared light:
The phone must be quite stable for these types of shots, therefore you may need to use a tripod. The phone, on the other hand, may fold in half and stay on a table or flat surface for the duration of the photo, which is a feature only foldable phones have.
Additionally, the Huawei P50 Pocket can snap photographs with aperture control, which is a function that allows you to blur your background to make your object stand out (similar to a portrait mode, but not limited to humans), and is ideal for photographers. The Salt Lamp is the focus of our sample photographs, while the books and the rest of the closet are beautifully blurred:
For those who don’t know, aperture determines the depth of field in a photograph. In general, the smaller the aperture number, the blurrier the background will be.
The Huawei P50 Pocket can shoot 4K video at 60 frames per second.
The Huawei P50 Pocket’s two speakers generated clean and strong sound, which was ideal for listening to podcasts or listening to music. The bass is very excellent, giving the song a full sound.
Battery life
Let’s talk about the battery in this lovely clamshell foldable now. The Huawei P50 Pocket comes with a 40W Huawei SuperCharge charger and a 4,000mAh battery.
Although the phone does not allow wireless charging, the P50 Pocket’s cable charging is extremely quick. It only took half an hour for it to increase from 26% to 88 percent. You can be confident that a quick charge of the battery will provide satisfactory results when you’re in a hurry.
When it comes to battery life, it’s understandable that the phone uses more when taking photos or movies, but otherwise, it’s quite consistent. On a single charge, you could potentially go for a day (or perhaps longer) (with light to moderate usage).