Huawei P9
Has Huawei's follow-up to the P9 been seen 'in the wild'? Huawei

Prolific smartphone-maker Huawei is reportedly hard at work on a worthy successor to its 2016 flagship, the dual Leica camera-sporting P9, with another P-range device predictably called the Huawei P10. While any concrete details would have to wait until spring 2017 – if Huawei follows its usual announcement schedule, at least – an alleged pair of in-the-wild photos and a benchmark report may have given Android smartphone fans an early glimpse at what could lie ahead for Guangdong-based company.

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The images, which popped up on Chinese social media on Wednesday morning local time (16 November 2016), show a phone with a design language that would be very familiar to anyone who has held a Huawei mobile in the last few years, with a rose-gold finish similar to the one found on the P9.

A distinctly Huawei-esque top panel on this 'prototype' houses a duo camera and similar LED flash and laser-autofocus sensor arrangement to the Huawei P9, although the lack of any Leica branding is notable – instead replaced with the word 'Hanzo', which is likely to be placeholder text if the pictured device is genuine.

Leica isn't the only missing name, however, as the spot traditionally reserved for Huawei's logo is occupied by a picture of an ape and the word 'Dreams', which AndroidPure speculates could be the phone's internal codename. Also notable is the lack of a rear fingerprint sensor, which appears to have moved to the front, potentially doubling up as a dedicated physical home button.

The photos, which can be viewed on Weibo here, appeared online just days after a GFXBench benchmark report surfaced that may have revealed some of the Huawei P10's features and hardware specs.

The readout refers to the device only as 'LON-L29' (the Huawei P9 has the model number LON-L19), but the Kirin 960 chipset, Mali G-71 GPU, 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage all point to a premium P-range Huawei smartphone.

The production of a cheaper variant packing 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage was also teased.

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