Huawei quietly launches new flagship Pura 70 handsets

Pro and Ultra versions of the Pura 70 became available on Thursday in China. The product sites seem to be placing the phone’s camera functionality front and centre of the listed specs, hailing the ‘ultra-concentrated retractable’ camera, large inner mirror space, 1-inch outsole sensor, and the F1.6 ultra-large aperture as key selling points.

It was a soft launch, so there is no official press release on the new handset, but a ‘letter to customers’ was sent out by Huawei via Beidou, which Telecoms.com has seen a machine translation of. Here is a snippet:

The Pura 70 series challenges the limits of moving imaging. The industry's first super-concentrated retractable camera brings out the spotlight and creates a sense of exclusive ritual when taking photos. Super high-speed flash shooting, setting a new speed record. Super light-gathering macro telephoto, explore the big wonders of the small world. Portrait, night scene, telephoto, and video capabilities have been further improved to bring consumers a better shooting experience.

The Pura 70 series is equipped with the new Harmony OS 4.2, bringing a more fun, smarter and smoother flagship experience. Beidou satellite messaging has been upgraded to support sending picture messages, a picture is worth a thousand words. The entire series supports AI air-to-air control, smart payment, and is also connected to the Pangu AI models, bringing more smart applications such as AI elimination and AI cloud enhancement.

But as with the Huawei Mate 60 Pro, most of the interest has centred around what chips the new handsets are using since US led bans prohibit it from procuring them from the leading global manufacturers.

According to Reuters, multiple teardown reviews reveal that the Pura 70 features the Kirin 9010 chip, which ‘appears to be a slight upgrade’ from the Kirin 9000s in the previous Mate 60 Pro.

In September last year, teardowns of the Huawei Mate 60 Pro appeared to confirm greater Chinese domestic chipmaking capability than previously thought. TechInsight’s blog on the matter meanshile seemed to confirm that the Mate 60 Pro’s application processor was manufactured by China’s main chip-maker, SMIC, using the 7nm process.

Meanwhile, Huawei says it is looking to build up its HarmonyOS app ecosystem into ‘a third mobile operating system for the world’.

Eric Xu, Huawei's Rotating Chairman said at an analyst summit this week: “We call on all app developers and owners in China to join our HarmonyOS-native app ecosystem as soon as possible, and work together to deliver a better experience to consumers. In 2024, one of our key objectives is to build up the HarmonyOS-native app ecosystem.”

“In the China market, Huawei smartphone users spend 99% of their time on about 5,000 apps. So we decided to spend 2024 porting these apps over to HarmonyOS first in our drive to truly unify the OS and the app ecosystem. We are also encouraging other apps to be ported over to HarmonyOS. More than 4,000 of these 5,000 apps are already in the process of moving over. And we're still communicating with developers on the 1,000 or so apps that remain. This is a massive undertaking, but we have broad support in the industry and from many app developers.”

“Once we have these first 5,000 Android apps – and thousands of other apps – up and running on HarmonyOS, we will have a real HarmonyOS: a third mobile operating system for the world. We will work hard to build up the HarmonyOS app ecosystem in the China market first, then, from country to country, we will start gradually pushing it out to other parts of the world.”

US led sanctions against Huawei on key areas central to producing cutting edge handsets practically crippled its smartphone business when they initially came into effect. However while we know little of what is going on behind the scenes, more recently the firm seems to have come some way in overcoming the obstacles in front of it.

In October last year shortly after the Mate 60 emerged, Canalys pointed out when talking about the state of the Chinese smartphone market: “The Huawei Mate 60 series launch sparked the market. If Huawei expands the new Kirin chipset into its low-to-mid-range portfolio in the future, it has the potential to disrupt the competitive dynamic among leading vendors.”