If there’s one iPhone X lookalike you should consider right now, it’s the P20 Pro, Huawei’s overkill flagship of the first half of 2018. The handset isn’t available from carriers in the US, but it’s still turning some heads. Also, you can get one on Amazon if you’re willing to cough up the cash.
As the first Huawei phone with a notch, the P20 falls into the iPhone X clones category that already contains plenty of members. But Huawei’s phone appears to be a few steps ahead of all the other notch copycats, and that’s because the company wants to be courageous like Apple.
In an interview with Forbes, Huawei’s mobile chief Li Changzhu said that Huawei thought of the notch idea “three to four years ago,” but the company didn’t go with the design as it was concerned users wouldn’t like it. This response perfectly explains what every company in the mobile business is doing when it comes to taking risks. They simply let Apple try “courageous” moves first. If they stick, then copycats are quick to follow.
“Consumers, especially those in China, like symmetry, and the notch is not perfect in Chinese culture,” Li said. “They like squares or circles—like rounded corners [of the display]. That’s perfect.”
The exec also acknowledged that Apple Apple’s decision to use the notch on the iPhone X was “courage.” Courage is the word Apple used to describe its decision to kill the 3.5mm headphone jack back in 2016, a move many others were quick to copy, Google and Huawei included. But Huawei wants to be “more bold” going forward.
“We missed our chance to [pioneer] with the notch design,” Li said. “Because we were too conservative and cautious.”
The P20 Pro does show some of that boldness. The phone is the first in the world to ship with three cameras on the back, and it comes in an interesting tone-shifting color that nobody else has.
