Huawei has announced its new Pura 70 smartphone range, with an Ultra model that packs a retractable camera.
The Chinese manufacturer has just announced the Pura 70 smartphone range for its home market, made up of the Pura 70, the Pura 70 Pro, the Pura 70 Pro Plus, and the flagship Pura 70 Ultra.
It’s the Huawei Pura 70 Ultra in particular that marks a photographic first. Huawei might be severely hamstrung here in the West thanks to its inability to offer access to the usual Google Mobile Services, but it continues to double down on its camera offering.
Not only does the Ultra pack a huge 1-inch sensor, a variable aperture (f/1.6 to f/4.0), and sensor-shift stabilization, but also a retractable camera. This moving camera (which has been tested for 300,000 retractions) seemingly facilitates that large sensor, creating the necessary distance between lens and sensor without creating an excessively bulky camera module.
According to Huawei, this main camera is a specialist at capturing super-crisp shots in high speed scenarios. The other cameras incorporate a 50MP 3.5x macro telephoto and a 40MP ultra-wide.
Elsewhere the Pura 70 Ultra gets a 6.8-inch 2844 x 1260 120Hz LTPO OLED display. It also packs a large 5200mAh battery, along with 100W wired charging and 80W wireless charging.
While Huawei hasn’t provided the information itself, reports suggest that the Pura 70 Ultra runs on a new home-brewed 7nm Kirin 9010 processor. This will be paired with 16GB of RAM and either 512GB or 1TB of storage.
It’ll run on Harmony OS 4.2, Huawei’s custom UI that still technically runs on Android – for now at least.
The lesser Pura 70 models appear to have broadly similar specs, but with slightly smaller displays and batteries and, in the Pura 70’s case, slower 66W wired/50W wireless charging. They also, of course, omit that retractable main camera.
All four Pura 70 models will be on sale in China over the next few days, but we’ll have to wait and see about the company’s Western release plans. The Ultra is on sale from today, with pricing from CNY 9,999 (about £1,110).
While we couldn’t in good conscience recommend the Huawei P60 Pro to anyone last year, there was no denying that its camera was stupendous. In certain regards, it was ahead of anything else on the market.
We’d bet good money on the Pura 70 Ultra offering a brilliant photographic experience, even if it won’t be able to access many of your favourite apps.