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Opinion: Huawei, it is time to stop releasing old smartphone under a new name

Why the Chinese manufacturer would re-release the P smart Z is quite incomprehensible to us.
Why the Chinese manufacturer would re-release the P smart Z is quite incomprehensible to us.
Our review of the Huawei P smart Pro leaves a lot of questions unanswered. We do really have to wonder why the Chinese manufacturer released, for the second time, a year-old Huawei smartphone in which the only thing that changed was the name.

Old wine in a new wineskin; this expression already applied to the Honor 9X, which we reviewed in fall of last year. The Honor model that came to the European market was almost identical to the Huawei P Smart Z, except for slightly faster internal storage, a somewhat better Sony sensor for the main camera, and worse speakers. The Chinese manufacturer did not make any other changes besides the ones we have mentioned above.

Why the Chinese manufacturer would re-release the P smart Z is quite incomprehensible to us. Well, the intension is clear, though: Huawei wants to bring new models with Google Services to the market. This can only work as long as the manufacturer uses established hardware configurations, because in 2019, Huawei was placed on the U.S. Commerce Department’s “entity list”, which meant that US companies were no longer allowed to conduct business with Huawei. This meant a lot of restrictions, among which is the fact that all new smartphones from Huawei come without Google Services. 

However, is this the right long-term solution, to just rename old models so that they can come with the Google Play Store preinstalled? We do not think so. Because this raises the following question: Why should buyers get the P smart Pro when they can get the nearly identical Honor 9X? The latter has seen a 100-Euro (~US$110) price cut and is now significantly cheaper than the P smart Pro. 

According to Reuters, the US has extended the trade restrictions for Chinese telecommunications companies, including Huawei, for another year. Our final question is this: Does this mean that we shall soon see the Huawei P Smart Z in the form of an Honor 10X or a Huawei P smart Pro 2021 New Edition? Hopefully not.    

Source(s)

Review of the Huawei P smart Pro on Notebookcheck.com

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > Reviews > Opinion: Huawei, it is time to stop releasing old smartphone under a new name
Marcus Herbrich, 2020-05-19 (Update: 2020-05-21)