The remaining days of 2017 are numbered, and it is time to look forward to what the next year will bring in terms of premium smartphone offerings. According to the latest scoop, Huawei will be among the top tech firms to open 2018 with a bang. The Shenzhen-based company is expected to launch its next flagship handset, the Huawei P11, rumored to pack impressive camera technology and rival Apple's iPhone X.

According to Tech Radar, the Huawei P11 will be included in the first wave of brand new smartphones to be unveiled in the first part of 2018. There are a handful of media-covered tech events in which the P11 could be showcased, just like the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January and the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in late February or early March. Although, it is expected that the handset will follow the tracks of its predessor, the Huawei P10, which was launched at the MWC 2017 last February.

Huawei has always have a consistent schedule of launching its flagship devices for the past few years. This time around, the handset maker might end up using tge MWC again to be the P11's center stage. In fact, Roland Quandt of the online tech-based website WinFuture said on Twitter that Huawei representatives present at the company's Christmas event in Germany were hinting on the P11 launch in 2018's first quarter. This makes the MWC the best bet for the handset's launch, which will take place on Feb. 26 in Barclona, Spain.

As for the highlight specs of the Huawei P11, XDA Developers speculates that the next flagship will boast a powerful technology to outclass all other premium phones released this year. Specifically, the P11 is said to include a special camera feature to rival iPhone X's TrueDepth camera.

Previous reports suggested that the Huawei P11 will have a notch on top, similar to the latest Apple flagship phone. Now, there are rumors that this same notch feature will be used to hold a technology just like the iPhone X's TrueDepth feature. Specifically, Huawei's camera technology in question is the Point Cloud Depth Camera, which was already introduced by the Honor 7X and Honor View 10 handsets this year. This technology provides more accurate 3D facial mapping and recognition tasks to unlock the device.

Huawei's Point Cloud Depth Camera has yet to be fully included in a device, as its sensors are inside an external accessory to be connected to Huawei 7X and Honor View 10 via USB Type-C port. It is expected that 2018's Huawei P10 will be the first to pack the Point Cloud Depth Camera feature well within its body. This technology will be placed particularly in the P11's iPhone X-like notch. If this actually happens, the Huawei P11 will give Apple's new Face ID biometrics a run for its money.