A Few years ago Huawei and Samsung were pushing the envelope as far as foldable phones were concerned, with both outfits aiming for superiority in this burgeoning field within the mobile landscape.

Fast forward a couple of years and Samsung has launched several foldable phones in South Africa, while Huawei has only been able to debut its first official one with the P50 Pocket last month.

Much of this has to do with the company being placed on the entity list and turning to its own software to deliver mobile applications on devices, but it would be a fair assessment to say the P50 Pocket has landed locally with some catching up to do.

To find out whether it can indeed compete with Samsung’s offerings, we spent the past two weeks with the P50 Pocket to see how it measures up.

Attention grabber

First let’s touch on design and much like the Galaxy ZFlip 3, Huawei has opted for a compact-esque look for its foldable, opting for a device that gets smaller as opposed to larger.

It is a direction we are quite keen on, with a lot of emphasis on foldables at the moment focusing on delivering a tablet experience. Instead, the P50 Pocket delivers the smartphone look and feel people know when unfolded, but a relatively small form factor when folded.

We also need to talk about the styling on this device, which again reinforces the compact design and something you might think to see housing makeup instead of a R30k foldable phone.

Huawei tapped Dutch haute couture designer Iris van Herpen for the gilded look of the foldable and while we know next to nothing about haute couture, this is certainly one of the most eye catching phones we have reviewed to date.

Often when using phones out and about, they very rarely turn heads, but this is not the case here, with the P50 Pocket on more than one occasion getting the question, “what is that?” As such, if you want something that attract attention, Huawei seems to have hit the nail on the head.

That said, it is definitely a design that can prove polarising, especially if you are not keen on a haute couture inspired foldable phone. As such, it may not be to everyone’s taste and we would have appreciated if Huawei planned to add a paired down or simply designed option in black to the country.

Given that this foldable costs R28 999 (RRP), the chances of that happening are slim, so this is the eye catching design you will have to get use to.

We should also note that the we were expecting something a little less plastic-y feeling in-hand, with there being a distinct lack of glass and metal throughout the entire device. It does detract from the premium feel of the device given the stylings, but the upshot is the fact that the P50 Pocket is quite lightweight by foldable standards at 190 grams.

Something missing

As for the folding and unfolding, the mechanism works solidly enough and we do appreciate the fact that the Pocket folds flat without any gaps, the upshot of which means less dust and debris can get in or under the foldable screen.

Speaking of which, the 6.9″ OLED screen (2790×1188) serves up a good amount of real estate, but the folded portion and overall feel of the display does take some getting use to, especially for first timers. There is therefore a more delicate touch needed, as this is not as robust as some of the Gorilla Glass coated phones people are use to.

And before you ask, yes, there is a crease and this is simply something that will plague most if not all foldable phones until a new type of OLED is developed. Luckily though, this crease does not impede the viewing or swiping experience of the phone.

Where other foldables try to deliver a tablet experience where unfolded, the P50 Pocket simply tries to deliver a good flagship phone one and for the most part, it achieves precisely that.

We say this as although there are some enviable components at work here and the overall performance is impressive, there are a few missing elements. The first is a lack of support for 5G, with an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 4G chipset is present.

This processor is by no means under changed in terms of performance, scoring a respectable 924 and 2 949 on GeekBench’s single-core and multi-core tests, but given that its most immediate competition features newer processors and 5G support, the P50 Pocket feels a little outgunned.

This is not a problem on the Pocket solely though, as the Huawei P50 Pro also sports similar components and a lack of 5G, which again is odd as Huawei was one of the first manufacturers to introduce 5G to a foldable globally, as well as on flagship phones in SA.

Looking at some of the other elements, such as the camera array, a trio of high-spec lenses are found (40MP True Chroma, 32MP Ultra Spectrum and 13MP ultra-wide). This mix yields a good all-around photography performance and should stand you in good stead in a variety of scenarios and environments.

Added to this are a few nifty features, with the front circular screen working quite similarly to a smartwatch face, allowing you to swipe through multiple apps and read notifications, as well as use it as a mirror or selfie camera (10.7MP wide-angle).

There is, however, an asterisks, which has been there ever since Huawei decided to go the HMS and App Gallery route in order to serve up its mobile ecosystem. Sure you can get by without access to a handful of Google-specific applications, but the entire setup does still feel like a workaround that is still trying to find its feet.

If you just spent R28 999 on a foldable phone, it may not be the kind of experience you were betting on or indeed have been use to with previous iterations of Huawei flagship.

Final verdict 

Serving as Huawei’s first official foldable phone in South Africa, the P50 Pocket is indeed an impressive debut outing, with its eye catching design, solid folding mechanism and overall performance all worthy of being a flagship phone.

There still remains some issues though, with the lack of 5G support and slightly older processor compared to what is on the market currently raising some questions.

Add to this the divisive HMS and App Gallery experience and the Huawei P50 Pocket looks great, but may not be able to fully deliver the premium foldable experience that consumers are hoping for.

It is another example, much like the Mate 40 Pro, of Huawei having to deal with elements that are outside of its control, but ultimately impact the quality of the device that ends up in customer’s hands.