Huawei unveiled its latest clamshell foldable smartphone, the Pocket 2, this week, bringing more competition to Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip lineup, at least in the Chinese market.
As expected, some of the specs on Huawei's new phone put what Samsung is offering on last year's Galaxy Z Flip 5 to shame. The battery capacity is considerably larger (4,520 mAh vs 3,700 mAh on the Flip 5), charging speeds go up to 66W wired and 40W wireless, and there are more memory configurations to choose from, with a minimum of 12GB of RAM on all variants and up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage.
But the most important distinction is in the camera setup. The Pocket 2 comes with four rear-facing cameras, but that's not the interesting part, as one of those cameras is a 2-megapixel UV sensor that only seems to be designed to tell you when the sun is too harsh and offer suggestions on applying some sunscreen.
The interesting part is the 8MP zoom camera that accompanies the 50MP primary and 12MP ultra-wide cameras. The Pocket 2 has 3x optical zoom; the Galaxy Z Flip 5, on the other hand, lacks a telephoto lens, and its primary camera is also too low-res for digital zoom to be a suitable alternative.
The latter will reportedly be fixed on the Galaxy Z Flip 6 as it is rumored to feature a 50MP primary camera, but the rest of the camera setup is not expected to change, which means the Z Flip 6's photography chops will be outdated on day one.
Some Samsung fans argue that customers looking for a clamshell foldable aren't interested in the best camera specs, but it's clear that the Korean giant is simply taking advantage of being the dominant player in the foldable space.
Hopefully, Samsung will not be using the lack of any true competition as a crutch for too long. With features such as Flex Mode and a huge cover screen, Galaxy Z Flip smartphones offer unique camera capabilities that aren't possible on Samsung's non-folding flagships, but that shouldn't be an excuse for avoiding meaningful hardware upgrades.
