Huawei has put a date on its new phone brand. Richard Yu, who heads the company’s Consumer Business Group, says Osta will be unveiled on 20 November. In China the brand is called Xingmang.
Yu gave the date in a Weibo post, and it falls on the same day as Huawei’s newest electric-vehicle launches. The post held a small giveaway: its device tag read “Osta O1 Pro”, the name tech bloggers had already attached to the range’s first bar-style phone. Yu did not mention the model himself, so the tag is the only confirmation.
Osta is Huawei’s first major phone sub-brand since it let Honor go roughly six years ago under US sanctions. Since then Huawei has sold phones under one name only, and a second brand changes that.
Huawei has given no prices, specifications, lineup or sales regions for Osta, and the O1 Pro name is all that is settled about the handsets. The screen shape and memory options doing the rounds come from tipsters, so treat them as unconfirmed.
The timing puts Huawei in a crowded corner of the market. Rivals have been reported to be working on wider, shorter phones of their own: Honor’s wide phone was tipped only yesterday with a battery above 8,000mAh and a 200MP camera, and Xiaomi was reported earlier this month to be testing one to rival Huawei’s Pura X View. Osta may be Huawei’s way of selling that kind of phone under a separate name.
The unveiling is on 20 November, a little over a week away, and that is when Huawei is expected to show what Osta actually sells.
