Huawei announces the P10 series at MWC 2017

New flagship phones officially unveiled in Barcelona.

At its press conference in Barcelona, Spain ahead of Mobile World Congress 2017, Huawei CEO Richard Yu has unveiled the company's latest flagship phones for 2017, the P10 and P10 Plus. The new phones build on the design language of last year's slim, highly-specced Huawei P9, with internals based on the Mate 9's Kirin 960 platform. Like last year we're looking at two different display sizes — 5.1 inches at 1080p for the P10, 5.5 inches at Quad HD resolution for the P10 Plus.

The P10 also packs 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage and the same dual-camera 12/20-megapixel array as the Mate 9, behind f/2.2 lenses. And that gets bumped up to 6GB/128GB for the P10 Plus, with improved optics for the cameras in the form of a significantly upgraded f/1.8 lens.

Huawei's focusing on portrait and selfie photography in its new phones, with an 8-megapixel front-facer behind an f/1.9 lens, and a wide variety of new photographic features for the rear camera that can intelligently enhance lighting in portraits based on facial mapping.

Meanwhile on the software side, the P10 series debuts with Android 7.0 Nougat and the new EMUI 5.1 software layer. Huawei says it's tuned up Android's kernel, memory management, garbage collection and touch responsiveness to make apps load up to 30 percent faster than before. And that's in addition to the machine learning techniques it was using in EMUI 5 to prioritize apps depending on their performance needs.

Huawei also unveiled a new strategic partnership in the P10, this time with GoPro, which powers a new video highlights feature in the stock Gallery app.

Both devices come in a dizzying array of colors in partnership with Pantone — you can expect the phones in three finishes, too. The more traditional blue and gold versions will be available in the Hyper Diamond-Cut finish, while the more unorthodox and colorful green, along with rose gold, silver, black and gold models will be done in a "sandblast" finish. A Ceramic White version will be done in a "high gloss" finish.

The Huawei P10 will be available globally, but won't be sold in the United States. And in the UK, it'll land on all four major networks. It'll start at €649 for the traditional P10, rising to €699 for the P10 Plus. The higher-specced version with 6GB of RAM will go for €799 when it's released, too, later this quarter.