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The new Honor 8X budget smartphone has been announced by Huawei’s budget smartphone brand as the company continues to develop and release handsets that are filled with a wide range of features while holding the line on prices.
The Honor 8X, which includes a 6.5-inch borderless HD FullView display, features an octa-core Kirin 710 processor, 4GB of memory, 64GB or 128GB of onboard storage, a Mali G51 graphics chipset with integrated GPU Turbo capabilities and a microSD card slot that accepts expanded storage cards of up to 400GB.
The faster Kirin 710 chipsets provide vastly increased performance over the processor used in the previous model, while the overall graphics performance is improved by about 130 percent, according to Honor.
The handset, which is built around a metal frame and glass front and rear surfaces, features a dual-lens 20-megapixel and 2-megapixel rear main camera as well as a 16-megapixel front-facing camera, which include artificial intelligence capabilities. The AI features allow the cameras to recognize 22 different categories and 500 scenarios in real time, while optimizing camera settings and enhancing photos for users. A new night shooting mode uses AI to eliminate the blurring of photos when taking night shots under a maximum 6-second exposure, according to Honor’s claims.
The Android phone is powered by a 3,750mAh rechargeable battery that promises all-day performance. The handset also includes dual-SIM card slots and Honor’s EMUI 8.2 user interface overlay. It comes in blue, black or red.
In addition, the Honor 8X is equipped with a new eye comfort mode certified by TUV Rheinland, which promises to reduce blue light radiation emitted by the screen to prevent eye fatigue.
AI Adjusts Signal, Voice Quality
The phone’s AI capabilities also aim to automatically recognize weak-signal or strong interference scenarios and adjust the signal and voice quality for users on the fly, according to Honor. If the phone is being used in a noisy environment, such as on the subway or in brisk wind, the smartphone will recognize the background noise and enable AI noise cancelation to improve voice quality and enable clearer conversations, according to the company.
The new Honor 8X is now available in France, Italy and Spain and will be available in more countries through the end of the year, including in the United States, according to a company spokesman. Prices are expected to range from $287 to $345.
“With the newly unveiled Honor 8X, Honor is setting out to hit new benchmarks in terms of balance between value, design and performance,” George Zhao, president of Honor, said in a statement. “Honor 8X doesn’t just meet the needs of our customers, it represents a stunning leap forward in smartphone technology, tearing down old conventions on what is possible, while keeping a strong focus on design aesthetics. It’s a trailblazer which demonstrates that flagship features do not require compromise.”
Honor brought its first value-priced smartphone to the U.S. in August of 2016, with the Honor 8. The Honor 8 was an unlocked handset with an alloy frame and glass front and back that included a 5.2-inch Full-HD touch-screen display, the company’s own octa-core Kirin 950 processor, 4GB of LPDDR 4 memory, 32GB or 64GB of on-board storage and a microSD slot for expandable storage cards up to 128GB.
The Honor 8 also had dual 12-megapixel rear-facing cameras and an 8-megapixel front-facing camera, both featuring a wide range of automatic and manual photographic capabilities, as well as an assortment of creativity tools. The original Honor 8 was priced at $400 for the 32GB model or $450 for the 64GB version.