Honor's latest phone for Europe is a beast, and it'll cost £475 in the UK.
Huawei's Honor brand has taken the wraps off its latest high-end handset, which just happens to be the biggest, highest-specced Honor phone to date. The Honor 8 Pro breaks cover today, running the latest Huawei hardware and software — and the overall package looks to be competitive with the likes of OnePlus at its launch price of £475. (If it looks familiar, that's because the Honor 8 Pro landed in China a few weeks back as the .)
The Honor 8 Pro's internals are in the same league as the Mate 9 and P10.
For your money, you'll get a slim, stylish metal exterior and a 5.7-inch Quad HD display, powered by the latest Kirin 960 CPU — previously seen in the and . That's backed up by a whopping 6GB of RAM and 64GB of base storage, plus expansion via a hybrid slot, which can hold a second SIM or a microSD card. The Honor 8 Pro packs a big screen, but it's also the slimmest handset we've seen with a 4,000mAh battery, which promises top-notch longevity. When it comes time to charge, the 8 Pro supports Huawei's 9V/2A quick charging (but not the newer, speedier Super Charging tech.)
The camera setup will be familiar to owners of the — on paper, the hardware appears identical to that phone's dual-lens 12MP setup, however Honor is leveraging the improved ISP (image signal processor) and general number-crunching abilities of the Kirin 960 to step image quality up a notch compared to the 8 Pro's predecessor, particularly in low light.
This is also the first Honor phone to ship with EMUI 5.1, the latest version of Huawei's software layer, based on . That's the version that first debuted on the P10, with improved touch responsiveness, low-level tweaks for extra performance, and video-wrangling features in the Gallery app, thanks to the "Highlights" feature developed in partnership with GoPro.
The Honor 8 Pro's leading color in the UK is the "navy blue" you see above, and it goes up for pre-order today on Huawei and Honor's store. Regular sales begin on other outlets, including Amazon.co.uk, from April 20. There's no word on any U.S. release plans for the Honor 8 Pro at present — today's announcement only covers European markets.
Tempted? Check out our full review for more on the Honor 8 Pro!