Huawei’s latest smartphone in the Kenyan market, the Huawei P Smart, targets the mid-range market, just a month after the company started selling another device, the Mate 10 Pro, targeted at the high-end customer.
According to Huawei Kenya, the device is going for Kshs 24,500 through long-time partner Safaricom’s retail outlets across the country and Kshs 26,000 in other stores (including Jumia). Huawei is throwing in its hybrid smart band, the TalkBand B2, worth Kshs 5,000. The TalkBand B2, just like the B3 that buyers of the flagship Huawei Mate 10 Pro are getting, lets users use it as a Bluetooth earpiece to make and receive calls as well as a fitness tracker that can be worn on the wrist.
The P Smart is a mid-range device that was launched in December 2017. Just over a week ago, it went on sale in South Africa.
The Huawei P Smart brings today’s smartphone niceties like an 18:9 display and dual cameras to the segment. The latter feature has been around in Huawei’s mid-range lineup for a year now thanks to the GR5 2017 which heralded the trend among budget devices in the local market.
Even with the 18:9 display that Huawei refers to as “Full View”, the Huawei P Smart will be entering a market that is already getting crowded with similar offerings and it may struggle given the low pricing of some of the devices offered by the competition. Tecno’s Camon CM, whose standout feature is the 5.7-inch 18:9 display it rocks costs much less at Kshs 17,000 or thereabout (mostly lower) even though its other features and specifications are markedly inferior to the Huawei P Smart.
OPPO Kenya’s F5 lineup that includes the F5, the F5 Youth and the recently-unveiled F5 Lite, lights up the entire mid-range segment with prices that range from Kshs 32,000 to 23,000 and boasts of features that can be found on Huawei’s flagship devices like Artificial Intelligence integration and improved face unlock that mimics a similar feature on Apple’s iPhone X.
Specifications of the Huawei P Smart are as follows:
| Dimensions and weight | 150.1 mm x 72.05 mm x 7.45 mm, 143 g (including the battery) |
| Display | 5.65-inch Full HD+ display (2160 x 1080 pixels) |
| Camera | Main camera: 13 + 2 MP Secondary camera: 8 MP |
| Processor | Octa-core Kirin 659 (1.7-3.6 GHz) |
| Memory | 3GB RAM, 32GB onboard storage |
| Operating System | Android 8.0 Oreo with EMUI 8.0 |
| Battery | 3,000mAh |
| Network | 3G, 4G |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, 2.4GHz, Bluetooth 4.2, microUSB (no Type-C!) |
| Others | Fingerprint sensor (at the back) |
| Colour options | Black, Blue and Gold |
The P smart and its not-so-cheap pricing is likely a pointer to the direction the Chinese device maker has taken after its declaration last year that it would no longer concentrate on low-end devices.
In 2017, Huawei shipped 153 million smartphones worldwide to net 10% of the global smartphone market share (according to the IDC) and cement its status as the third biggest smartphone maker in the world, after Samsung and Apple.
