A few days ago, we were surprised to see the return of Wiko. To those unaware, Wiko is a French brand that made a couple of smartphones several years ago. The brand went missing but now is back to conquer the Chinese market. Yeah, the Chinese brands have conquered Europe and other global markets, and now Wiko wants to make justice by conquering China. Can it succeed? Honestly, we don’t have high hopes. The new phone carries the simple Wiko 5G name and is a rebranded Huawei Nova 9 SE. The phone even runs HarmonyOS, so you might be wondering – what can make you opt for this device instead of the original one? The Wiko branding and the 5G support.
Thanks to the multiple US sanctions, Huawei can’t use 5G on its phones…at least for while. The brand is also prevented from dealing with TSMC, which basically killed the Kirin lineup. The company is able, thanks to negotiations, to use Qualcomm chips without 5G. Thanks to it, we had some Huawei phones in recent months bearing Snapdragon chips, but without 5G. The Huawei Nova 9 SE is not an exception. Now, the Wiko 5G is an option for those who enjoyed the original Nova 9 SE but want to surf on faster internet speeds.
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Wiko 5G specifications
Besides the 5G capabilities, the phone also has some slight design changes. Most of them are only color-based, so you probably spot similarities when comparing both devices. Moving on, the Wiko 5G boasts the Snapdragon 695 SoC with 5G support. It packs a 6.78-inch LCD screen with a 120 Hz refresh rate and 2,388 x 1,080 pixels of resolution. The panel also has a 270 Hz touch sampling rate. The phone comes in options with 128 GB or 256 GB of Storage, and there is always 8 GB of RAM. The phone draws power from a modest 4,000 mAh battery with 66W wired charging.
In terms of optics, the phone has a 108 MP main camera, an 8 MP ultrawide, and two 2 MP snappers for macro and depth sensing. The phone has a punch-hole at the front for the 16 MP selfie snapper. As we’ve said before, it runs HarmonyOS. So we assume that the updates will come straight from Huawei.
The Wiko 5G will retail at CNY 1,999 ($287) for the option with 128 GB, and CNY 2,199 ($315) for the 256 GB version. We are curious to see if the phone will succeed in China. You know, it’s not an easy task for foreign brands to conquer the segment.
