Huawei Pura 70 Ultra reaches Europe – but the firm won’t say what’s inside

The ‘P’ in Huawei’s P series flagship smartphone line was always a bit nebulous; did it stand for Photography? Professional? Premium? Whatever it represented, it’s all redundant now; the firm phased out that naming convention in April with the launch of the Pura 70 series. A month later, the trio is officially heading to markets outside of Huawei’s native China, with some of the hottest camera hardware you’ll find on any phone.

The headline act is the Pura 70 Ultra, which takes its photography focus a step further than the already stellar Huawei P60 Pro by adding a retractable lens to its lead snapper. It pairs a huge 1in sensor to an adjustable f/1.6-4.0 aperture lens, and adds sensor shift optical image stabilisation. Putting more distance between the sensor and the lens using a retractable lens should give it an edge on 1in rivals in terms of sharpness and clarity. Aside from its disappearing act, the camera’s robust sensor is engineered to masterfully capture high-speed scenes, claiming the ability to crisply capture cars whizzing by at a blistering 185mph.

It’s joined by a 50MP telephoto with f/2.1 aperture and 3.5x optical zoom, with optical image stabilisation and macro focus for taking close-up shots from just 5cm away. There’s also a 40MP, f/2.2 ultrawide to complete the set. All three get Huawei’s XMAGE image processing, which put the outgoing P60 Pro up there with the best phones for photography – especially in low light.

The P70 Ultra stands out from its Pura series stablemates with a vegan leather rear panel, in green, brown and black colours. The whole thing is IP68 water resistant, with Huawei testing down to 2m instead of the IP rating test’s usual 1m. Expect a sizeable 5200mAh battery, 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.

The chipset, though? That’s something of a mystery. Huawei wouldn’t tell me what European handsets would be using during a briefing call, and the info still wasn’t available ahead of this morning’s announcement. China-market handsets use the firm’s home-grown Kirin 9010 CPUs. The assumption is the worldwide handset will have the same.

A quick scroll through the spec sheet on Huawei’s web page reveals a glaring hole where CPU details would normally be – although it does confirm this is a 4G-only handset. Given Huawei is asking a significant €1499 for a Pura 70 Ultra, those details feel like an absolutely baffling omission.

The rest of the range is comprised of the Pura 70 and Pura 70 Pro.

The former is a 6.6in handset with a flat OLED display; it has a 4900mAh battery and 66W fast charging. There’s a 50MP main camera at the rear, with f/1.4-4.0 mechanical aperture and OIS, plus a 12MP, periscope telephoto good for 5x zoom (also with OIS) and a 13MP, f/2.2 ultrawide. They’re all supported by a 10-channel multi-spectrum sensor. Expect to pay €999 for one with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

The Pura 70 Pro steps up to a 6.8in screen with curved-edge glass on all four sides. Its OLED panel has a 2844×1260 resolution, 1-120Hz adaptive refresh rate, and HDR support. There’s a 5050mAh battery inside good for 100W wired charging. It has the same 50MP, f/1.4-4.0 mechanical aperture lead lens, but swaps to a 12.5MP ultrawide and a 48MP, f/2.1 telephoto with 3.5x optical zoom and OIS. The 10-channel multi-spectrum sensor returns, and a laser assists with autofocus. It’s set to retail for €1199, with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. Huawei has ditched NM card expandable storage across the board.

All three phones will run Huawei’s MIUI 14.2 operating system, which is based on the Android Open Source Project. That means, as usual for Huawei devices, it won’t have access to the Google Play Store or Google services. They’ll be available to order directly from Huawei very soon.

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