Fashion designers have been lending their names to mobile phone designs since the age of the clamshell phone and MP3 ringtones. Just redial your memory a little to the early aughts when luxury houses such as Versace and Dolce&Gabbana collaborated on the Nokia 7270 and the Razr V3i DG respectively.
Flash forward to December 23 and Chinese tech giant Huawei has unveiled the P50 Pocket, a smartphone that has ambitions of becoming a leader in the revived arena for Y2K-era clamshell phone designs. The design will hit stores in Singapore in early 2022 and will roll out two sleek colourways of gold and white.
However, it’s the phone’s limited-edition premium series with Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen which has caught the attention of style watchers. True to van Herpen’s signature forms and intricate organic details, the collaborative design features gill-like etchings on the surface of the phone’s shell which was achieved through a process of 3D micro-sculpting.
Ahead, we give a rundown of early details we know about the smartphone before it hit shelves here in early 2022.