Huawei Nova 4: The phone is coming, but not to Switzerland

Luca Fontana

21.12.2018

Translation: machine translated

Huawei presents the Nova 4, whose main feature is a hole in the screen. This eliminates the controversial notch. The catch: the necessary certificates are missing for sale in Switzerland. This indicates that Huawei is not planning to bring the device to Europe.

At the end of November, our editorial colleague Dominik Bärlocher wondered what Huawei's mysterious announcement of the Nova 4 was all about. A picture with a shooting star seemed to give it away: Huawei is making the notchless smartphone before the competition does
.

Now the cat is out of the bag. The shooting star is actually a camera.

The Nova 4 has a 6.4-inch display with a resolution of 2310×1080 pixels. It thus remains true to the 19.5:9 aspect ratio introduced by the Mate 20 Pro. The phone is powered by a Hisilicon Kirin 970 SoC and 8 GB RAM. There is also 128 GB of internal memory, a fingerprint sensor on the back and a 3750 mAh battery. The main camera has a resolution of 48 megapixels and a ƒ/1.8 aperture. The front camera has a resolution of 25 megapixels and an ƒ/2.2 aperture.

Now the bad news: the phone has only been announced for the Chinese market. It will not be available for sale in Switzerland. A clear indication: The phone lacks the CE labelling.

The thing with CE labelling

In order for a smartphone to be sold in Switzerland, it needs various certificates. One of these is the CE mark. The mark is affixed by the manufacturer itself. The manufacturer thereby declares that it complies with all applicable Swiss directives and safety standards that are required for sale. This applies, for example, to toys, machines and electrical appliances such as smartphones. Without this label, they may not be sold in Switzerland and the EU.

If the retailer sells such devices despite the lack of labelling, this can have legal consequences. In particular, the retailer could face expensive warnings. It could even get worse for the manufacturer: In extreme cases, the Federal Office of Communications (Bakom) could issue a "ruling on non-compliance", which could result in the sale of the devices being banned altogether in Switzerland.

So the phone will never come to Switzerland? The ball is in Huawei's court. Because the Chinese manufacturer is not currently planning a market launch in Europe, the procedure for CE labelling is not even being tackled. To be honest: I wouldn't wait for that, because the likelihood of the phone being sold outside of China after all is small.

What is certain is that we are not allowed to sell you the phone without CE labelling, even if we had the means to get it for you.

Luca Fontana

Senior Editor

Luca.Fontana@digitecgalaxus.ch

I'm an outdoorsy guy and enjoy sports that push me to the limit – now that’s what I call comfort zone! But I'm also about curling up in an armchair with books about ugly intrigue and sinister kingkillers. Being an avid cinema-goer, I’ve been known to rave about film scores for hours on end. I’ve always wanted to say: «I am Groot.» more

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