Huawei’s new Osta brand will start with two phones, the O1 and O1 Pro

Huawei appears to be working on a new phone brand called Osta. Two Chinese tipsters named it on 4th November 2026, along with the first two phones: the Osta O1 and the Osta O1 Pro. One of them then posted a corner of the O1 Pro’s box. It reads “OSTA O1 Pro” and “16GB RAM+1TB ROM”, and below that is the name Huawei Device Co., Ltd, Huawei’s devices company. That’s the best evidence so far, but it’s still a leak. When Huawei was asked about the rumours last month, it told people to wait for official information.

Osta would be a sub-brand, a separate name under the same parent company. Huawei has had one before. It started Honor in 2013 for younger buyers and lower prices, then sold it in November 2020 while the US trade blacklist was squeezing its phone business.

So when Osta’s Chinese name, Xingmang, surfaced in October, the rumour that spread the most was that Huawei was building a new Honor. That meant mid-range phones with Kirin 8-series chips, priced at roughly USD 270 to USD 600.

This week’s leaks say something different. One of the tipsters now says the first Osta phones are all flagship level, meaning close to the best a phone maker sells. But that doesn’t mean Huawei’s best. Other leaks put Osta slightly below the main Huawei brand, with pricing that won’t be especially low. It’s aimed at younger buyers and the mid-to-high end, and will sell mainly online. And when the tipster was asked whether Osta would now take over all of Huawei’s wide phones, the answer was no: Huawei’s flagship lines will still get wide models positioned higher. So we think you should expect good specs with some cuts, at a price that isn’t cheap.

How the O1 Pro compares with the Pura X View

The O1 Pro is said to look a lot like the Pura X View. That’s Huawei’s wide phone that doesn’t fold, which we covered when it was unveiled in August. Most phones have tall, narrow screens of around 20:9. The Pura X View is wider at 16:9.5, so more fits on its 6.39-inch screen than that number suggests. In China, it starts at USD 900. One tipster says it passed a million phones shipped in its first 50 days.

From the front, you should expect almost the same phone. The leaked O1 Pro is also 6.39 inches and 16:9.5, with bezels, the border around the screen, of about 1.05mm.

The first difference is the zoom camera. The Pura X View has a 50MP periscope camera with 3.7x optical zoom. A periscope folds light sideways inside the phone, because a thin phone has no room for a long lens. A leak says the O1 Pro won’t have one. We haven’t seen its full camera details, but unless it has another kind of zoom lens, we think far-off shots will lean on cropping. The same leak says it should cost a bit less than the Pura X View.

The screen may be another difference. The O1 Pro’s is said to be LTPS, which describes the layer of transistors that drives each pixel. Those transistors leak current, so the screen has to keep redrawing roughly 30 to 60 times a second at minimum, even when you’re staring at a still page. That uses more power. The more expensive type, LTPO, adds a second kind of transistor, so the screen can slow to as low as once a second and save battery. So LTPS is the cheaper type of screen, which is funny on a phone being called a flagship. Huawei’s page doesn’t say which type the Pura X View uses, so we can’t call it a step down from that phone.

The top O1 Pro does appear to do better on RAM, the working memory apps run in. Huawei lists the Pura X View with 12GB only, while the O1 Pro’s box photo shows 16GB.

We know far less about the Osta O1

The O1 is said to be a regular-shaped phone with a screen curved on all four edges and a large round camera module. That’s the firmer part. The chip isn’t as clear. Posts point to a Kirin 9000-series chip, Huawei’s own higher-end family. For the O1 Pro, they point to the same family, mostly the Kirin 9025, plus HarmonyOS 7. The Kirin 9025 is the chip in the Pura 90 Plus we covered last month. But none of these posts come with a photo or a document, and last month’s most widely shared rumour said Kirin 8. We won’t know for sure until Huawei announces them.

When will these phones launch?

It isn’t clear yet. A tipster said on 6th November that news of both phones could come next week, alongside a small folding computer and a thin smartwatch. Zhu Dongdong, who runs Huawei’s tablet and PC line, said on 5th November that a product lighter than the 798g MateBook Pro S would be teased next week, which fits the folding computer at least. Huawei itself has given no date, no price and no list of countries.

In the longer run, another leak says the brand could also cover tablets, earbuds, watches and routers. Huawei’s trademark filings from July for the Chinese name cover phones, watches, earphones and chips.

Why Osta isn’t shaping up as a new Honor

We think memory prices are a big part of it. Richard Yu, who chairs Huawei’s consumer business, said in September that rising memory prices add more than USD 200, about KES 26,000, to the cost of every phone. Yu also said higher prices will squeeze the low end and push makers towards mid-range and premium phones. A phone with 16GB and 1TB at the bottom of October’s rumoured prices is hard to imagine in that market. We think a second brand would let Huawei drop the periscope to offset some of that cost and still sell the wide shape.

Will Osta come to Kenya?

We aren’t sure yet. No leak we’ve seen says Osta will sell outside China. 

If an importer brings an O1 Pro here, the software is likely the catch. HarmonyOS can’t run standard Android apps, so every app has to be rebuilt for it. Huawei phones made for sale abroad, like the Pura 90s Pro Max, run EMUI instead, Huawei’s Android-based software, without Google services. So before importing one, check that the apps you use every day exist for HarmonyOS.

We’d wait for the price. If the O1 Pro comes in well under USD 900, you get the wide screen without paying for the Pura’s zoom camera. If it comes in close to that, we don’t see much reason to pick it over the Pura X View.