There’ve been several signs in recent years that suggest Huawei has made it as a premium smartphone brand, particularly recent Q2 sales figure that pushed Huawei above Apple as the world’s number two smartphone brand by market share (though as I wrote about recently, that surely will change by year’s end).
However, I think a more recent development is a more substantial sign of Huawei’s rise up the smartphone food chain: small Shenzhen phone brands, which used to copy only Apple and Samsung, are knocking off Huawei now.
The UmiDigi One Pro is a $160 budget smartphone that looks like a combination of the iPhone X and the Huawei P20 Pro. The front is clearly inspired by the iPhone X, down to the giant notch that is completely unnecessary on the One Pro because it has no facial scanning system. Move around back and the One Pro sports a glimmering gradient purple/blue paintjob, an obvious copy of the Huawei P20 Pro’s twilight variant.
The brazen lack of originality can be unbecoming, but that’s just how these small Shenzhen OEMs make their money: they reverse engineer big name phones and pump out copycats that look and feel the part for a much, much lower price.
Of course, the processing prowess of the One Pro is nothing to write home about. The Helio P23 chipset from MediaTek struggles to handle graphic intensive games and the camera is barely usable in low light situations (but surprisingly decent during the day, as seen in photo samples below), but truth be told the phone is more than enough for a lot of people. Instagram, WhatsApp and Gmail all run fine.
The phone, surprisingly, has a couple of hardware features that are usually omitted from budget or even mid-tier phones: there’s NFC, wireless chargnig and stereo speakers on the One Pro. But ultimately what I’m most impressed with is the One Pro’s build quality. I’m currently testing the “it smartphone” du jour, the Samsung Galaxy Note 9, and if I’m being honest, both phones feel similarly constructed from a pure in-hand feel. The steel railings on the $1,250 Galaxy Note 9 aren’t any more premium or sturdy feeling to my hands than the $160 One Pro’s sides, and although the front glass and back glass panel of the One Pro won’t survive as many drops as the Note 9, they feel equally smooth to the touch in optimal condition.
I’m not saying the One Pro is anywhere near as impressive as the Note 9, but as I see the flood of praise for the Note 9 from U.S. reviewers — most of whom don’t have access to Chinese phones and thus are relegated to testing just the big mainstream names like Apple, Samsung and Sony — I can’t help but wonder if they would change their tone if they got their hands on their cheaper Chinese counterparts.
The Note 9 costs $1,250. Xiaomi recently released a new phone with the exact same chipset and RAM (meaning it is equally as powerful) for $300. The UmiDigi One Pro is just as premium feeling in the hand (it looks very nice too, shameless copycat job aside) and costs $160. The price gap between those phones are so absurd, it’s hard to give a blanket recommendation to the $1,250 device.
