Huawei P10 Release: 2017 Flagship Arriving With ‘Plus’ And ‘Lite’ Variants?

Huawei P10 is expected to get a grand reveal in time for Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2017. And based on the latest news surfacing online, three major variants of the flagship device could be set for market release.

Aside from the standard Huawei P10, a bigger model called P10 Plus is also slated to hit the shelves this year, as previously confirmed by the CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group, Yu Chengdong, who also mentioned March or April 2017 as release timeframe for the forthcoming phones, Android Soul reported. But in addition to the Huawei P10 and P10 Plus, it looks like the third-biggest smartphone maker is also planning to release a “Lite” version of its 2017 flag bearer.

A fresh report from GSM Arena explained that there’s a new Huawei device that showed up online and it is being speculated to be the Huawei P10 Lite. The device in question, identified as the Huawei WAS-LX1A, recently paid a visit to a popular benchmarking site, Geekbench. The listing for the alleged Huawei P10 Lite noted a few specs including Kirin 655 SoC with octa-core 1.71Ghz processor paired with 4GB of RAM.

Huawei WAS-LX1 (possibly Huawei P10 Lite?) on Geekbench: https://t.co/HkO17FoEd9 running Kirin 655, 4GB RAM and Android 7.0.

— Roland Quandt (@rquandt) January 31, 2017

Huawei P10 and P10 Plus’ debut, if speculations pan out, will happen during the company’s MWC press conference. Now, the question is could there be a Huawei P10 Lite version arriving at MWC alongside these two confirmed P10 models?

In early January, Huawei sent out an invite for a press conference it will hold on February 26, a day before MWC 2017 officially begins. Details about what to expect from the press conference are, of course, still being kept under wraps but most speculations point to Huawei P10 as the star of the event. The feasibility of Huawei P10 launching during the tech show became clearer as well when Yu shared that they will be unveiling a “flagship device,” although it is uncertain if he was referring to a smartphone.

“Of course there are many interpretations possible for ‘flagship device’, but it could well be the Huawei P10,” a report from Pocket Lint noted.

Launching the Huawei P10 at MWC would mean treading away from the company’s particular release history for its flagship smartphones. Previous models from the P-series were launched a month or two following the MWC event. Huawei P9 together with the P9 Plus, for instance, took the spotlight during a launch event on April 6 and got their initial market release on April 29. At MWC 2016, the Chinese tech company launched a Huawei Mate Book, a tablet and laptop hybrid powered by Windows 10.

As for more news about the Huawei P10 and P10 Plus, leaks and renders have started to further intensify the excitement toward their release. According to the leaked images, as reported by Mirror, it seems like the Huawei P10 will sport a dual curved-edge display. Hardware-wise, the standard Huawei flagship might feature the HiSilicon Kirin 960 SoC. It could also have a front-mounted fingerprint sensor.

And like the Huawei P9 camera specs, the 2017 flagship is expected to get a Leica-branded dual-lens shooter, too. Other camera features found on the rear part of the phone are dual-LED flash and laser autofocus.

Meanwhile, leaked renders for the Huawei P10 Plus recently began circulating online and it shows a metal unibody with a 5.5-inch curved display. Under the hood, it is purported to have specs like the Kirin 965 chipset paired with either of these two potential memory/storage options: 6GB RAM/128GB storage and 8GB RAM/256GB.

Huawei P10 Plus’ battery could have 3650mAh capacity and as for its operating system, it could get a pre-installed Android Nougat with EMUI 5.0 at launch, Phone Arena explained. Talking about the phone’s camera and other specs that can be expected upon the P10’s release, the publication noted the following:

“Huawei P10 Plus will also have two 12MP cameras on its back and an 8MP cam up front. An iris scanner module is rumored as well, along with a fingerprint reader for security.”

Are you hoping to see Huawei’s new smartphones at MWC 2017? The Inquisitr will keep you updated for more release news about the Huawei P10, P10 Plus, and the alleged P10 Lite.

[Featured Image by Anthony Harvey/Getty Images for Huawei]