Huawei Unveils An All-Glass Honor 8

Huawei brings a baby P9 in the guise of Honor 8, their new smartphone.

This past week Huawei launched their new smartphone by the name of Honor 8.

The new smartphone is basically the cheaper version of their higher-end flagship, the Huawei P9 (priced at about USD 950). That definition itself makes the Honor 8 certainly seem promising, given Huawei’s value-for-money history.

However there are two major differences from the Huawei P9: the Honor 8 uses glass around the back too, and uses an older chipset with a lower-clocked CPU.

Honor 8 comes with an octa-core Kirin 950 chipset, with two options. One of the options has a 3 GB RAM with 32 GB of internal storage, while the other pairs 4 GB RAM with 64 GB of internal storage.

Cameras on the smartphone are above mark-to-market; an 8 megapixel camera on the front and a 12 megapixel dual camera in the back.
The ‘dual’ bit for the rear camera, translates into two cameras being placed side by side on the back of the device, both having f/2.2 aperture, laser autofocus, dual-tone LED flash, BSI CMOS sensor and full HD video recording ability.

A growing technique in the smartphone world currently, is an additional camera sensor beside the main camera module of the device. Not only does this sensor gather more light, it also captures detailed depth-of-focus information thus enabling re-focusing on any object in the photo post-facto.

So, you can choose where you want to draw focus in a photo, even after you’ve clicked it. And you can play around with it, to your heart’s content!

The phone is supported by a 3,000 mAh battery, which should give it a good day’s life — which is nothing quite extraordinary.

The rest of the specs are fairly everyday — a 5.2 inch 1080p display, two dynamic SIM slots (one of which does double as a microSD slot), a fingerprint scanner mounted on the back of the device.

As for the looks of the phone, the phone comes with glass on both sides, fitted into a sleek aluminium frame around the sides. The smartphone is clothed in five colours and has crafted a unique form factor by matching the colour of the frame to that of the glass. Quite a striking look overall!

The sleek and classy look will appeal to customers for the sophisticated form factor with a great finish.

The device will come to the Chinese market starting 19th July, at about USD 290 for the 3 GB/32 GB version, and about USD 375 for the 4 GB/64 GB version.

The company is yet to unravel its plans regarding an international launch, but one can assume that it would bring the phone to Asian markets before the European or the American markets, given the proximity and the viability of the market.

In other news: Huawei has been sending out invites in the US, for an event in San Francisco, California, on the 16th of August. Speculations point to this being the US-launch of Honor 8.

Let’s wait and see as this promises to be an engaging quarter!

Originally published at Chip-Monks.