Huawei Pura 70 Ultra review

Design, build quality, handling

The Huawei Pura 70 Ultra looks like most of the flagships nowadays - slightly curved panels, a large and immersive screen with a small cutout, and an interestingly designed back panel with one giant and peculiarly looking camera housing. It is also IP68-rated for dust and water resistance.

Let's start with the front. Atop the screen sits the Crystal Armor Kunlun Glass with a 2.5D edge, exclusive to this Ultra protection, advertised for being 300% stronger than the Kunlun Glass on top of the Pura 70 Pro and Pura 70 displays. The Crystal Armor Kunlun Glass is made of a highly transparent amorphous diamond carbon material and should have it all - incredible scratch resistance and impressive drop resistance, which we didn't test.

The frame is made of polished aluminum and is slightly curved to match the rest of the design.

Finally, we come to the eco-leather back panel that has the same 2.5D curvature as the front glass.

The camera housing is huge, but they say it would have been even bigger if it wasn't for the retractable mechanism of the primary camera lens. The camera island has metal housing around the triangular glass, and the metal extends over the LED flash, too.

There are three high-end cameras here - the 40MP ultrawide, followed by the retractable 50MP primary, and finally comes the periscope lens for the 50MP zoom camera. The laser emitter and receiver for autofocus and depth detection purposes is located in the small black surface around the lens for the zoom camera.

Indeed, with this large blob Huawei needed to come up with a shrinking solution. And that is the retractable lens for the 1" primary sensor. If not, the housing would have become way too big and would have compromised its safety. Huawei claims the mechanism has been tested and it is going to endure over 300,000 retracting cycles.

Huawei Pura 70 Ultra is also available in white, brown and black colorways.

The front is home to the 6.8-inch X-True Display LTPO OLED screen with really thin bezels and a small perforation for the 13MP AF selfie camera. The panel has 1,260 x 2,844 pixels, 1B colors, HDR10, 120Hz refresh rate and up to 2,500nits of peak brightness.

Almost hidden to the naked eye are the under-display fingerprint scanner and the top speaker/earpiece.

Just like most phones these days, the Huawei Pura 70 Ultra features a hybrid stereo speaker setup - the earpiece doubles as a speaker, and there is also another bottom-firing gull-blown speaker.

The Huawei Pura 70 Ultra doesn't have a card slot - there is no option for memory expansion.

Huawei Pura 70 Ultra measures 162.6 x 75.1 x 8.4 mm and weighs 226 grams, which is about the same as the iPhone 15 Pro Max.

The Pura 70 Ultra is easily likeable. It is a smartphone with a futuristic design and an excellent build. It also offers superb grip even without a case, which is incredibly important. Overall, even with the gargantuan camera housing, we have nothing but positive impressions of the Pura 70 Ultra's handling in day-to-day use.