Huawei unveils affordable Honor 8 Pro flagship, starting under $600

[Shawn Knight]

Huawei has launched a new flagship smartphone under its Honor sub-brand. Dubbed the Huawei Honor 8 Pro, the new handset features a sizable 5.7-inch quad HD display (2,560 x 1,440 resolution, 515 PPI) that’s powered by an octa-core Kirin 960 processor, Mali-G71 graphics and 6GB of RAM.

There’s also 64GB of local storage on tap that’s expandable up to 128GB, dual 12-megapixel rear-facing cameras with f/2.2 aperture lenses, an 8-megapixel selfie camera up front, 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, a 3.5mm headphone jack, NFC, GPS, USB Type-C charging and more.

A large 4,000mAh battery with Fast Charging technology keeps the show going. Speaking of, that show will be powered by Google’s Android 7.0 Nougat with Huawei’s custom EMUI 5.1 overlay on top (sorry, no pure Android here).

The handset measures 157mm x 77.5mm x 6.79mm and weighs just 184 grams.

The Huawei Honor 8 Pro will be offered in your choice of blue, black and gold color schemes starting at £475, or just south of $600. Given the general cost of today’s flagships (Samsung's Galaxy S8, for example, starts at $750), that’s on the lower end of the scale for a handset that looks incredibly solid – at least, on paper.

No word yet on whether it’ll be sold through your local US carrier but you should be able to grab one from Amazon come April 20.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/68819-huawei-unveils-affordable-honor-8-pro-flagship-starting.html

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

It sounds and looks (albeit old fashioned compared to the S8) and sounds fine on paper and in reality it probably is. It's just too big for my liking. Now if it had those slim S8 bezels... I could probably get by with it.
There's more about it here

 

[Theinsanegamer]

"affordable" is not just under $600. Most people think of affordable as $200, $300 tops.

$600 is flagship level pricing.

 

[yRaz]

"affordable" is not just under $600. Most people think of affordable as $200, $300 tops.

$600 is flagship level pricing.

beat me to it

 

[MoeJoe]

6P bootloop/bricking issues have killed Huawei as a serious player.

They learned nothing from the Nexus Program.

 

[Puiu]

"affordable" is not just under $600. Most people think of affordable as $200, $300 tops.

$600 is flagship level pricing.

I have no idea why the author would call a 600$ smartphone "affordable".

 

[Greg S]

If average household income is just under $55k in the US, who is going to spend 5% of their annual income on cell phones? That's insane to call $600 affordable for most people.

 

[MoeJoe]

I have no idea why the author would call a 600$ smartphone "affordable".

Fake News

 

[p51d007]

LOL...I guess considering most "flagships" are hovering around the $1000.00 range, 600 would be considered "affordable" but, like other posts, anything OVER 400 to me is considered too much.
I bought a Huawei Mate2 about 3 years ago for 300 bucks, great phone, great battery life. Once the Mate9 came out the price on the 8 dropped. Got it for 400 bucks.
It amazes me that consumer electronics usually get CHEAPER and BETTER. TV's, DVD players, game controllers...pretty much all consumer electronics goes down in price. Smartphones have BUCKED that trend by improving AND getting more expensive. Until people tire of that...I doubt they will change.
When you figure the "average" smartphone cost to build is around 300 dollars, but, they charge double or triple that, some manufactures are raking in a pretty hefty profit.

 

[Technosense]

I just "upgraded" to a Galaxy S6 for $299 off Amazon and couldn't be happier. I was waiting for what seemed like forever to upgrade my Note Edge (4) and just gave up. I just wanted wireless charging, IR blaster, headphone jack and decent performance and get all that. If this were under $500, I think it would hit, at $600 it gets lost in the crowd.

 

[Bryan1223]

Anyone notice that this phone's design looks almost exactly like the Apple iPhone 6,6+,6S,6S+,7,7+ (and quite possibly soon to be) 8/7S, 8+/7S+?

Why are all the phone companies that run Android make their phones look like iPhones (as far as the phone or, in other words, the hardware goes)?

 

[Spect]

"....with Huawei’s custom EMUI 5.1 overlay on top (sorry, no pure Android here)." What is the incentive for cellphone manufacturers to spend time & money developing their proprietary software, bloatware, skins, apps, and launchers? I have never met anyone who enjoys having these items on their device. I have always wondered why they​ do this. It is actually a selling point now to have "stock Android" and seems pretty simple (to me) to achieve, just do nothing. Yet it is actually somewhat rare to find. It seems like the money spent on these software & apps would be much better spent on hardware or beta testing to improve user experience. I can't think of any other industry where doing absolutely nothing improves your item's desirability yet is still so hard to find.
BTW, this post was sent from a Google Pixel. Meaning I was willing to pay a premium to get "less" software. Which kinda sucks.