Last month, TCL launched a phone in China under its FFALCON brand. The device which is sold as the FFALCON Thunderbird FF1 was thought to be a joint product between TCL and Huawei, but FFALCON reached out to us to inform us that isn’t the case. New info has surfaced that confirms Huawei’s input in the development of the phone.
The FFALCON Thunderbird FF1 became available for purchase last week and users who have gotten their hands on it have begun to post details about it. One such post is from the popular Weibo account @WHYLAB and it shared live images of the phone taken at an offline store. In one of the photos, it is shown that the device is running Huawei’s own software, EMUI 12, and not TCL’s custom Android fork!
When FFALCON contacted us, they told us the FF1 is solely developed by FFALCON and not in collaboration with any smartphone brand. It thus comes as a surprise that the FFALCON FF1 is running Huawei’s own software. The contact also informed us that the phone is manufactured by an independent ODM partner.
Seeing as the FFALCON Thunderbird FF1 is running Huawei’s own software, it means that Huawei did have an input in the production of this device. However, it is understandable why Huawei doesn’t want to be associated with it.
Huawei phones powered by Qualcomm chips can’t have 5G support as the U.S. only granted the chip manufacturer license to supply 4G chips to Huawei. However, the Thunderbird FF1 is a 5G phone powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 690 processor. Huawei definitely doesn’t want to be associated (as a co-manufacturer) with the phone as that could spell trouble. Considering there doesn’t seem to be a law that says Huawei can’t license its software to other manufacturers for use, it appears Huawei may be in the clear.
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