Honor has launched its first smartphone since separating from former parent company Huawei.
The Honor 50 comes equipped with the Android 11 operating system and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G 5G chipset – both of which Huawei is banned from using due to US trade restrictions imposed during the Trump administration.
With five cameras, the Honor 50 is targeted towards a younger audience that is focused on mastering video editing. It also comes with fast-charging capabilities provided by Honor’s 66W9 SuperCharge technology, promising 70% of charge in only 20 minutes.
The Honor 50’s 6.57in, curved OLED screen supports a Full High Definition resolution of 2340x1080, and is capable of producing 1.07 billion colours – covering 100% of the DCI-P3 colour gamut. The smartphone is also set to deliver high screen response speeds, having been equipped with a screen refresh rate of up to 120Hz and a touch sampling rate of 300Hz.
Originally created by Huawei as a budget-smartphone spin-off, Honor is now looking to expand to the premium-handset market – at £449.99, the Honor 50 is considerably cheaper than the iPhone 13 (£779) but is almost twice as expensive as its predecessor, the Honor 9X (£249.99).
Honor CEO George Zhao said that the latest offering continues “the Honor series’ legacy of integrating aesthetics and technology”. The smartphone comes in four colour iterations, ranging from plain black to shimmering silver.
“The new Honor 50 smartphone boasts an array of impressive innovations across its camera, design and performance, by collaborating with our global industry-leading partners,” said Zhao, adding that the company is confident in the Honor 50’s “global success”. In August, Honor’s market share reached a market share of 16.2% in its home country of China.
The Honor 50 is set to be available in 40 countries worldwide, including the US and the UK. IT Pro has contacted Honor for the UK release date and will update this article with new information.
The launch of the Honor 50 comes almost a year after Huawei announced that it would be selling Honor to Shenzhen Zhixin New Information Technology - an enterprise owned by the government of Shenzhen, where Huawei is headquartered. Huawei attributed the decision to a shortage of technical equipment caused by the trade restrictions imposed by the US government.
