Huawei has officially unveiled the Honor 6 at an event in China’s capital, Beijing. The device follows in the footsteps of its predecessors in the Honor range by being an alternative to Huawei’s flagship Ascend P series devices. With the P7 clocking sales of over 1 million units in just one month and Huawei currently the number three powerhouse when it comes to smartphone sales in the world, it is the likes of the Honor and other Huawei devices that are popular in the Asian market that drive those numbers.
The Honor 6 is different in that it has Huawei’s Kirin 920 (the P7 has the 910 so here’s an update), the company’s octa-core chipset which pairs with a Mali-T628 to produce a Snapdragon 805-beating performance if Antutu benchmark scores are anything to go by. The octa-core implementation is pretty much how Samsung did it with the Galaxy S4, a big.LITTLE architecture (4 Cortex A15 cores + 4 Cortex A7 cores with device switching to either set of cores depending on intensity of task at hand). Remember we’ve just seen the S805 in the Samsung Galaxy S5 LTE-A alone and it is considered one of the best mobile chipsets of 2014 alongside the upcoming Snapdragon 810 and the beefed up Snapdragon 800 (801). That should tell you something about where the Chinese are going with. However unlike most would have expected, there’s no QHD panel here (Kirin 920 supports QHD), just some 1080p goodness and more.
Here’s the full list of the main specs of the device:
- Size and weight: 139.8 x 68.8 x 6.5mm, 135g
- Display: 5 inch 1920 x 1080 pixel LCD
- Processor: Kirin 920
- Memory: 16 GB/ 32 GB expandable to 64 GB via microSD/ 3 GB RAM
- Camera: 13 MP/ 5 MP
- OS: Android 4.4.2 KitKat (with Emotion UI 2.3 overlay)
- Others: LTE (Cat 6), Dual-Band Wi-Fi, NFC
Unfortunately we have no information on the battery capacity yet.
For those curious about the build material, it is aluminium alloy (so that it doesn’t heat up alot).
Huawei is very ambitious with this device’s capabilities as it is not just the processor it is pitting against Samsung and Qualcomm’s best but it is also telling the world that it has the best power saving feature of any device we’ve seen so far including Apple’s iPhones and Samsung’s Galaxy devices.
The device is currently confirmed for the Chinese market only where it will go on sale for $321 for the 16 GB version and $369 for the 32 GB version starting 1st of July. There’s no word on international availability but it could be a while before it moves outside Asia. Huawei’s other big device, the Ascend Mate 2 is just going on sale in the West despite having been launched back in January.
Note: Earlier information quoted this device as being the Honor 4. This was an error and it is highly regrettable. The article has since been updated to reflect the correct information.
