Huawei stages a launch contest for the Honor 6's debut in Europe
Ever since it based itself in Europe, China's Huawei has been enthusiastically boasting how comfortable it feels doing business and development in the old continent. For one reason or another, the company hesitated to make a high-profile dash towards the EU smartphone market, but it looks like it's feeling brave enough to get startin'. It has set up a fancy landing page to launch its hero phone, the Huawei Honor 6, with a bang:
Touting an industry-leading screen, processor, camera, and battery life, the near side bezel-less Honor 6 looks every bit as good as we talked it up to be in our Monsters from Asia spotlight article.
But what about the hardware powering Huawei's new flagship? Simply put, the configuration leaves nothing to desire, and it also marks Huwei's first big break in its own processor development. We're talking about the company's new Kirin 920 octa-core processor, with its 4+4 Cortex-A15/Cortex-A7 cores, and powerful Mali-T628 GPU. Huawei's boss boasted that this chip is even faster than Qualcomm's Snapdragon 805, and initial benchmarks seem to agree to as much. What's more the Kirin 920 comes with an embedded Category 6 LTE chip that is capable of theoretical speeds of up to 300 Mbps -- that's more than any carrier on the planet can push to your device.
And yet, there's more. The Honor 6 also comes with 3GB of LPDDR3 RAM, 16/32GB of expandable storage, a 13-megapixel Sony IMX214 sensor with f/2.0 aperture, and a 5-megapixel front-facing selfie camera with f/2.4 lens (that shoots selfie panoramas!). The Honor 6 also has two SIM slots -- one for LTE and one for 3G. Lastly, the device is powered by Android 4.4.2 KitKat, skinned over with the company's Emotion UI.
The smartphone will launch in Europe in six days. Until the clock strikes twelve, customers are invited (oh, snap!) to register their e-mail addresses and compete for a chance to win one of 50 smartphones in Huawei's pre-launch queue. Share your invite with friends and you'll have better luck. That's how Internet marketing happens nowadays, so there's hardly any room for complaints here.
This is Huawei's debut in our column, but, boy, does it deserve it! We were quite impressed with the Honor 6 when Huawei announced it, for it offers the very latest in hardware, including a 3000 mAh battery, all packed into an extremely thin, 7.5 mm (0.3 in) body. The phone is also pretty compact for its screen size (5''), and its display-to-body ratio sits at the great 75.7%, meaning one-handed usage won't be out of the question.
But what about the hardware powering Huawei's new flagship? Simply put, the configuration leaves nothing to desire, and it also marks Huwei's first big break in its own processor development. We're talking about the company's new Kirin 920 octa-core processor, with its 4+4 Cortex-A15/Cortex-A7 cores, and powerful Mali-T628 GPU. Huawei's boss boasted that this chip is even faster than Qualcomm's Snapdragon 805, and initial benchmarks seem to agree to as much. What's more the Kirin 920 comes with an embedded Category 6 LTE chip that is capable of theoretical speeds of up to 300 Mbps -- that's more than any carrier on the planet can push to your device.
And yet, there's more. The Honor 6 also comes with 3GB of LPDDR3 RAM, 16/32GB of expandable storage, a 13-megapixel Sony IMX214 sensor with f/2.0 aperture, and a 5-megapixel front-facing selfie camera with f/2.4 lens (that shoots selfie panoramas!). The Honor 6 also has two SIM slots -- one for LTE and one for 3G. Lastly, the device is powered by Android 4.4.2 KitKat, skinned over with the company's Emotion UI.
The smartphone will launch in Europe in six days. Until the clock strikes twelve, customers are invited (oh, snap!) to register their e-mail addresses and compete for a chance to win one of 50 smartphones in Huawei's pre-launch queue. Share your invite with friends and you'll have better luck. That's how Internet marketing happens nowadays, so there's hardly any room for complaints here.
We're pretty sure the Honor 6 will eventually go on sale through Huawei's dedicated European store, just like Oppo's smartphones. Allegedly, the first countries to receive it will be the UK, Germany, The Netherlands, and France. The pricing could turn out to be very reasonable, as the Honor 6 costs just ~$323 (¥1999), while the 32GB costs ~$372 (¥2299) in China.
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