Huawei Nova 12 Pro and 12 Ultra debut with Harmony Smart Communication and variable-aperture 50MP camera

Despite the presence of the Nova series' first ever Ultra variant, the 11 Pro's sucessor still gets a lot of its family's top upgrades, a "physical aperture" (f/1.4-4.0) lens for its main 50MP sensor included. It is backed up with an 8MP ultrawide-angle shooter, a laser autofocus module and a "10-channel color temperature sensor".

This new and potentially budding smartphone camera enthusiast-pleasing set-up is, somewhat unsurprisingly, mainly geared at portrait photography. Meanwhile, the plain 12 makes do with more humdrum 50MP wide-angle specs for its main camera instead.

The vanilla model does look nearly the same as its top-end siblings, at least, except for the new "slightly curved" 6.76-inch, LTPO 120Hz OLED panel apparently designed to be more "pleasant to the eye" for Pro and Ultra users.

On that note, Huawei has now revealed that the series' head-lining new blue colorway has indeed been specially developed for this latest crop of Nova phones, right down to the name: Color No. 12.

It is also indeed finished in printed vegan leather, albeit only in the Ultra, with glass for the Pro and vanilla 12 instead. Then again, these options have a new "cherry blossom leaves in fall" pattern for the colorways that are not matte Obsidian Black.

They include Smoky Gray as well as Sakura White and the Sakura Pink that is a 12 Pro exclusive - then again, Huawei has reserved the final extra of Kunlun Glass for the Ultra.

Then again, the Pro remains one of the first Nova-series smartphones with "always-on" Hongmeng (or Harmony, like its v4.0 OS) Smart Communications. It is rated to enhance normal GSM functions in areas of typically weak coverage as well as 2-way Beidou satellite texting.

Somewhat predictably, Huawei is extremely circumspect about the chipsets that confer these new specs, which may only fuel rumors that they are new or altered Kirin-series SoCs - in addition, there are no RAM specs on any of their new product pages.

Huawei has, at least, revealed that these Nova 12 variants have 100W wired charging with potentially handy 5W reverse wired charging...however, the battery that supports both abilities is a slightly underwhelming 4,600mAh in capacity, even in the Ultra.

The main Nova 12 series' pricing barely makes up for those discrepancies for fans of these mid-rangers in China, with the vanilla 12 starting at 2,999 yuan (~$420) with 256GB of internal storage, rising to a maximum of 5,499 yuan (~$770) in the Ultra's 1TB SKU.

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