Huawei still makes phones, even though it has been shunned by the US government and US-aligned tech ecosystem. The latest phone has a new name: “Huawei Pura 70”. While you’d never want to deal with the tinkered SoC or whatever else is going on with Huawei’s software, the “Ultra” model has a cool trick up its sleeve: a detachable main camera lens.
In the years before the smartphone came into entry-level photography, there was a device called a “compact camera.” It was a specially designed device that only took photos, couldn’t access the internet, and didn’t let you watch the latest TikTok videos. The distinguishing feature of these devices was a retractable camera lens, whose front lens (there was only one!) popped out of the front of the camera when you turned it on. This would give your camera better and longer lens geometry to work with when the camera was on, and would collapse for easier storage when it was off.
Huawei’s latest phone replicates this. The giant rear camera lens extends out of the phone somewhat, thanks to a complicated gear inside the phone. It’s only a few millimeters, but it’s a start. Smartphone manufacturers are often hesitant to add larger lenses to their devices because they still want to have pocket-sized devices. A pop-up lens would give camera engineers more workspace while still being pocketable.
The pop-up camera lens uses a 50 MP 1-inch sensor and apparently also has an adjustable aperture from F1.6 to F4.0. There’s no optical zoom (which might justify the pop-out lens) – so it seems the lens movement is simply meant to accommodate the base lens setup. (We’re working from a machine-translated Chinese website, in our defense.) There are two more cameras in the triangle-shaped rear camera bump: a 40 MP ultra-wide and a 50 MP telephoto lens 3.5x.
Huawei’s technical sheet does zero mention of the SoC. There’s not even a name or model number – we just have to assume that there must be a SoC somewhere. According to Geekbench downloads, it’s called “Kirin 9010,” which looks like a minor upgrade over Huawei’s current chip. US sanctions mean Huawei is forced to attempt to make chips without the help of current cutting-edge chip production tools and facilities from US-aligned countries. There has been a lot of talk about these chips in the tech press: Huawei doesn’t have access to new chipmaking equipment, can’t get the latest designs from ARM, and can’t have its designs made in ARM’s factory. industry-leading chips. ,TSMC. The company relies on Chinese partner SMIC for manufacturing, using old machinery from the pre-sanctions era, and has continued to truck in less competitive chips that appear frozen in time.
Huawei, to its credit, has not put much emphasis on its post-sanctions chips (we’re not even talking about this one!). In November 2020, before US sanctions actually took effect, the company worked with Arm to create the Kirin 9000, a 5nm SoC with four Cortex A77 processors and four Cortex A55 processors. Three years later, Huawei’s first post-sanction chip was the modestly named “Kirin 9000s”, a 7nm chip that was reportedly salvaged with whatever technology Huawei could find. The overall vibe you get from the model number change from 9000 to 9000 is “not really an improvement,” and benchmark testing has proven that to be true. The new chip in the Pura 70 is a “Kirin 9010” and is probably still 7nm. So even Huawei admits that it’s not making much progress without the US-aligned chip ecosystem.
Other specs include 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage on the “Ultra” model. There is a 6.8-inch 120Hz OLED with a resolution of 2844×1260 and the battery is 5200mAh. The phone only has Wi-Fi 6e, not Wi-Fi 7, probably thanks to Uncle Sam. All of these components will come from random, off-the-beaten-path manufacturers brave enough to go against the will from the US government, so who knows how well everything works.
Anyway, we just wanted to talk about the camera’s neat lens. It is only on sale in China from today, with the Ultra model at €9,999. Yuanor approximately $1,380.
Correction: We updated this at 5:41 p.m. to move the Kirin 9000 from 5nm to 7nm, so the move to minimum wage has moved back a generation.