Honor 50 review

The company makes an impressive comeback with a premium smartphone, but is it all it could be?

The Honor 50 marks the return of Honor to Europe with a Google Mobile Services-supporting device after almost two years. Good thing it’s a quality smartphone, too, especially for the asking price. (Image: Honor)

Well, this is new. How often do tech journalists get to review a “reboot device”? No, not to reboot a device (that happens more often than they’d like) but to play with a reboot device, in the sense that it’s a device marking a comeback for its manufacturer. That does not happen often and that is exactly what the Honor 50 — the first smartphone coming to Europe from Honor after it parted ways with former parent company Huawei — actually is. It’s a reboot device on a mission to attract consumers by doing what Honor always did best: offer an extremely competent smartphone for less money than one would expect for it.

The Honor 50 also marks a new direction for the company: its intent to address the high-end, premium segment of the smartphone market. Honor’s message is not going to be about just “value for money” anymore — although there will be other handsets focusing on that in the future — as it will be bringing out more high-spec models at higher prices. The Honor 50 is the first step to getting there. So how does this “new direction”, “reboot device” fare?

Impressive design, solid built, amazing screen