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LG, Huawei unwrap 'Samsung Galaxy-killers'

While Samsung’s away, rivals try and sit in the Android King’s Chair

Huawei’s incremental improvement

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Huawei’s relentless rise over the past three years – remember, it didn’t even have an LTE phone three years ago today, when it was unknown as a phone maker in Western markets – is emphasised by incremental improvements to its new P series.

There is no single headline-grabbing new feature (like 18:9) in Huawei’s P10 and P10 Plus, unveiled today, with shipments starting by the end of March. But almost every aspect has been tuned and tweaked. The Leica-branded dual imaging unit now has wider aperture sensors: f/1.8. It’s more drop resistant. The Kirin 960 processor, already seen in the Mate 9, packs in more horsepower. The battery is larger: 3,750mAh larger on the Plus model.

The Plus also has swankier lenses. As a byproduct of all that CPU and GPU power, the phones now detect 100 points on a face and allow the lighting on a subject’s face to be tinkered with after shooting. The spare CPU cycles are also being used for defragmentation and memory optimisation, using machine learning algorithms, Huawei says, so the phone should run faster ("20 per cent") and not slow down as dramatically because of cruft.

As a quick rundown, the P10 has a 3,200mAh non-removable battery, 64GB of storage, 4GB of RAM, a microSD slot that supports up to 256GB of storage, single or dual nanoSIM, a 5.1" 1080-by-1920-pixel screen, and an octocore HiSilicon Kirin 960 chipset, all in a 145.3 x 69.3 x 7mm (5.72 x 2.73 x 0.28") 145g package.

Meanwhile, the P10 Plus has a 3,750mAh non-removable battery, 64 or 128GB of storage, 4 or 6GB of RAM, a microSD slot that supports up to 256GB of storage, single or dual nanoSIM, a 5.5" 1440-by-2560-pixel screen, and an octocore HiSilicon Kirin 960 chipset, all in a 153.5 x 74.2 x 7mm (6.04 x 2.92 x 0.28") 165g case.

As you expect from Huawei, with its 70,000 engineering graduates, there are real radio engineering claims here. Not only does Huawei call the P10 is the "world's first 4.5G phone," with quad antennae, but it makes bold claims for network reliability.

Amazing... IF TRUE

Huawei says that can translate to 60 per cent fewer dropped calls in weak signal areas. And it has some tweaks to its GPS, with "50 per cent less drift" while navigating than an iPhone.

Design wise the P10s are very similar to the P9s, but the fingerprint sensor has been moved to the front. As well as the usual black white and silver, the P10s come in two lovely colours, a green and a blue. It's the result of a new partnership with Pantone announced today, which got very Perfect Curve about the meaning of colour. Much like this, in fact.

And it won’t be cheap: no UK pricing has been disclosed yet; the regular P10 will ship for €649. Both the P10 and the P10 Plus are due to go on sale in March.

And Huawei’s won’t explode in your pocket, because Huawei are so very, very careful with their batteries. They just want you to know that, apropos of nothing, really.

BlackBerry relaunched with a QWERTY yesterday, Nokia's revived a classic, and more companies will try to breathe life into a tired market tonight and tomorrow. ®

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