US trade restrictions have put Huawei in a difficult position over the past few years, with the Chinese electronics company prohibited from sourcing goods from US companies. That’s even led the company to pause manufacturing its own Kirin processors, since Huawei relies on software from US companies to design its chips.
So the company spun off its Honor sub-brand last year, allowing the new company to resume sourcing components from companies including Intel, AMD, Microsoft, and others. Now Reuters reports Huawei may be looking to sell off its flagship Mate and P series smartphone brands to give them a new lease on life.
For its part, Huawei denies that it’s looking to sell, referring to the report as “unsubstantiated rumours,” but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen eventually.
Here’s a roundup of recent tech news from around the web.
- China’s Huawei in talks to sell premium smartphone brands P and Mate [Reuters]
Huawei may sell its flagship P and Mate series smartphone brands to a consortium backed by the Shanghai government following the sale of its Honor brand. Huawei denies it, but the US trade ban has put the company under pressure. - Pine64 releases a $1 pogo pin breakout board and $8 microSD card extender for the PinePhone [LinuxSmartphones]
The microSD extender lets you insert and remove storage cards without taking the back cover off the phone. The pogo pin breakout board does the same for the phone’s 6-pin connector, making it possible to attach DIY add-ons like cameras and other gear without opening up the case or replacing the back cover. - PinePhone news roundup [LinuxSmartphones]
There’s been a lot of other PinePhone development (both hardware and software related) in the past week or so. Here’s a roundup of some - First look at the GPD Win 3 docking station [@liliputingnews]
The GPD Win 3 is a handheld gaming PC that’s up for pre-order through Indiegogo. But GPD also offers a dock accessory as a $50 add-on $799 starting price during an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign. It connects to the USB-C port and lets you use it like a desktop PC. GPD sent me a demo unit to test, and you can see what it looks like in the images below. I can say that file transfers from a network share drive over Ethernet are at least twice as fast as over WiFi, but there’s only a single USB-C port, and it doesn’t support Thunderbolt, so graphics docks are a non-starter. More performance details coming soon.Â
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The dock for the Win 3 basically turns it into a PC Switch. That’s really cool.
That’s basically where I see phones going… As Microsoft is now making Android natively available on Windows, one day you’ll have a regular smart phone that runs all your Android phone apps, and when you dock it it switches to a full on Windows desktop mode. This is how PC gaming will dominate the gaming market as a whole in years to come, and snatch the portable gaming market from Nintendo. If the device doubles as a mobile and PC, it will have both the popular mobile games and the AAA PC/MMO/ESports games.
All you need is a device like the Sony Xperia 5.ii, as that is compact enough, has front-firing stereo loudspeakers, 120Hz display, flagship specs etc etc. Then have two pocketable JoyCons (like the Razer JungleCat) that attach unto the sides of the phone without needing a case.
Then when you’re on-the-go you can enjoy your Mobile Games using the built-in iGPU of the SoC with performance akin to 720p, 30fps, Low Settings (ie Nintendo Switch). Then when you get home, just dock it in front of your TV. It will fast charge it, allow the ARM CPUs to overclock and sustain, whilst active fans cool the phone. The iGPU gets disabled and uses a built-in dGPU inside the dock (think GTX 1650/RTX 3050) that handles the heavy games. Now performance is akin to High Settings, 60fps, 4K-Checkerboard-DLSS (ie Xbox Series S). The data between your phone and your console is basically shared together either on the phone, removable external SSD connected/inside the dock, or the cloud. Plus you can do your regular PC computing on it, when plugged in to a Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse, etc.
Android is at the stage allowing good PC computing, Vulkan is revolutionary for graphics, and ARM cores are powerful enough to rival x86. So all the pieces to get this done properly are there… it just needs proper funding, leadership to do it right.