Wiko is making its Chinese debut on Dec 27…with a rebadged Huawei Nova 9 SE

It may seem like a strange thing given that Wiko is owned by a Chinese company, but the French brand is only now making its debut in the Middle Kingdom. Its first phone will be launched on December 27, and the eagle-eyed amongst you will probably notice something very familiar.

That’s because the device is practically a Huawei Nova 9 SE, replete with the quad-camera array on the recognisable pill-shaped bump. The only discernible differences are the Wiko badge and the “segmented” texturing on the curved back.

The Wiko version looks to retain the Nova 9 SE’s 108MP main camera and f/1.9 aperture. There are no details pertaining the rest of the cameras, but as reference, the Huawei has an 8MP ultra wide, a 2MP macro shooter and a 2MP depth sensor.

Other specs shared with the Nova 9 SE are 66W of fast charging (almost certainly through Huawei’s SuperCharge technology) and up to 256GB of storage. There’s one advantage the Wiko model will have, however, and that’s 5G connectivity. This means it will likely be powered by an upgraded Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 chip, which is offered in China on the Nova 9 SE only through the Hi Nova brand—created to circumvent restrictions on Huawei-branded 5G phones.

It’s unclear what OS the Wiko version will run on, although it will probably come with Huawei’s HarmonyOS out of the box. The company also hasn’t revealed whether the device will receive a wider global release and, if so, whether it will be offered with Google Mobile Services (GMS).