Huawei launches one of the thinnest flip phones on the market

The Nova Flip follows the same route but adds some hardware panage for good measure. The phone weighs just 195 grams, and its hinge can withstand 1.2 million bends, according to the SGS Switzerland testing authority.

Further down the specs sheet, we find a 6.94-inch LTPO OLED with FHD+ resolution and a 1-120Hz refresh rate. The cover screen is just 2.14 inches, which is rather small by modern flip phone standards. It's a square panel that can act as a viewfinder, and display basic things such as the weather, music, calendar, who's calling you, etc.

This cover screen sits next to the main camera system, which consists of a 50MP main camera with a 1/1.56-inch RYYB sensor and F/1.9 aperture, alongside an 8MP ultrawide lens and a 32MP front-facing camera. The RYYB sensor is Huawei's proprietary tech that swaps the green pixel for two yellow ones in order to maximize the light captured by the sensor.

Huawei is still under severe restrictions when it comes to US intellectual property, and unsurprisingly, the company hasn't disclosed the hardware specs of the Nova Flip. Our good friends from PhoneArena dug up a Geekbench listing, though, and it shows that we're probably talking about a Kirin 8000 chip, the same one found on the Nova 12 and Nova 12 Pro.

The Nova Flip runs on HarmonyOS 4.2, Huawei's own operating system based on Android, and in line with the current AI trends, the phone can do several AI tricks, such as object removal, contextual image search, text selection in images, and image generation.

In the battery and charging department, we find a 4,400mAh battery and 66W wired charging support. The base 256GB model goes for CNY 5,288 ($744), and you can get (if you're in China, of course) a 1TB storage version for CNY 6,488 ($911). The official Nova Flip sales start on August 10.

Our take

Some of you probably remember the Huawei P50 Pocket, Huawei's first attempt at a flip phone with a strong orientation toward fashion. This flip phone was a stylish take on the normal flip phone, and it holds its fashion stance even today.

The Nova Flip looks like a follow-up, only under a different moniker. Huawei continues to prove time and again that the company is capable of dishing out top-notch hardware, but the US sanctions clip Huawei's wings outside China.

The Nova Flip looks like a very interesting and compact device, but it rocks old silicon and lacks Google services. The chances to see this thin flip phone outside China are pretty slim at the moment, which is a pity.