If you're looking for a 4K display on your smartphone you'll need to accept a major compromise on battery life.

TechRadar spoke to Kevin Ho, President of Huawei's Handset Product Line, at a special briefing at Huawei's campus in Shanghai, where he explained the limitations of the super high resolution display.

"For the large screen 4K is very good, but on a smaller smartphone display our eyes may not be able to see the difference between this and 2K resolutions.

"4K requires a lot of power, so if you use it you need to make compromises. A 4K display on a smartphone will give you half a day of battery life, but a 2K display can give you over a day of usage from a single charge."

Never say never

Ho isn't ruling out the possibility of 4K smartphones completely; "I don't want to say there's no chance for 4K on smartphones, but we need to think about compromise and whether our eyes can tell the difference."

Consumers want a phone that lasts more than a day and at the moment the technology means that's not possible when using a 4K screen on a smartphone.

Huawei is working on new battery technology, but it's a couple of years away from being at a level to roll out to consumer devices, and the firm currently isn't divulging any further information on its work here.