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With the timer counting down to the March 27th launch event in Paris, Huawei’s new assortment of P20-series smartphones have been seeing almost daily leaks, with the latest coming from Evan Blass (@evleaks) who Tweeted a picture of the Chinese-variant Nova 3e, which will be rebranded internationally as the Huawei P20 Lite. The image confirms and complements earlier leaks and this weeks “silent” debut, showcasing the three more staid color options (Black, Pink, and Gold) as well as what appears to be the main focus of the bunch, a shimmering Blue hue. Also visible is the vertically-aligned dual rear camera unit, the rear-mounted fingerprint sensor, and the now infamous have-it-or-hate-it front notch that allows for a display that sees much of its borderline bezels reduced. Huawei has still managed to fit its name onto the front, not unlike what Sony has done with the recently revealed Xperia XZ2.
While there may be slight regional variations between the Nova 3e and the P20 Lite, specs for the latter include a 5.84-inch Full HD+ display at 1080 X 2280 pixels and with a 19:9 aspect ratio, a HiSilicon Kirin Octa-Core 659 SoC, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of onboard storage, a dual-rear camera combo (16MP and 2MP), a 16MP front-facing camera, a 3000mAh battery, NFC, facial unlocking, and Huawei’s EMUI 8.0 layered on Android 8.0 Oreo. Many have commented that the phone looks like it could be a flagship in and of itself, despite it being at the bottom of the P20 series.
Huawei’s decision to switch from the “Samsung-esque” bezel-less design used in last year’s Mate 10 Pro and instead make use of a notch will likely be met with an intense debate among fans and critics alike. Despite not even having been announced yet, LG’s own G7 smartphone is also said to be making use of an iPhone X-style cut out and that too has begun to severely polarize. Indeed Google itself has decided to embrace the notch-design in full force given that the first Developer Preview of Android P 9.0 includes native support for cutouts and three different size options at that. Expect more leaks and coverage of Huawei’s new flagship P20 series in the coming weeks.