A mere day after Huawei announced the Huawei P9 and Huawei P9 Plus flagship handsets, a third model for the series has appeared onine, leaked in a hands-on first-look preview, dubbed as the Huawei P9 "Lite". It's worth pointing out straight away that, ahead of the Huawei P9 launch, both the P9 and the P9 Plus had been heavily rumoured and leaked for a very long period, but we had heard literally nothing about a "Lite" model at all.

It's a bit of a surprise, therefore, that it has  sprung out of nowhere, making us a little bit cautious about the authenticity. The source for the leak is Hi-Tech Mail.ru, which was fortunate enough to get some alone time with the P9 Lite, and a set of specs, which suggests this is a mid-ranger variant of the regular model. The choice of "Lite" name appears to be deliberate to emphasise the difference in specs from the regular model, as opposed to the design, build, and display size. Indeed this is not a "Mini" or "Compact" variant as it packs the same 5.2in 1080p display at 423ppi.

However, the P9 and P9 Plus signature feature - the dual-Leica camera array - is omitted in this version, instead it's equipped with a more straightforward single 13MP sensor with a single LED flash and an 8MP front-facing secondary camera. At the moment the chipset hasn't been detailed, but the source says there are two RAM variants at 2GB and 3GB, normally we'd assume that would vary based on storage model, but there's only one in this case at 16GB onboard and with microSD support for up to 128GB cards.

Pleasingly, the Huawei P9's impressive battery hasn't taken a hit on the P9 Lite and is the same 3000mAh rated cell, and it also still features a fingerprint scanner (kinda odd, if we were cutting costs for a mid-ranger that'd be the first thing we'd drop, but ho hum, guess that's why we're not phone designers right?).

There's not much more to go on at the moment, and no details of exactly (or even vaguely) when (or where) this smartphone will be released. If the hands-on is anything to go by this is looking like a pretty complete model, however, rather than some hodge-podge test prototype unit, so we'd expect some noise from Huawei itself fairly soon. There is, of course, the possibiity that somone with a Huawei P9 is simply having a laugh at our expense! We'll keep you posted as we hear more.