Huawei Honor 6 Plus goes official, dual camera and 0.1s focusing time in tow

Huawei's first dual camera phone is a reality, as the company took the stage in Beijing to announce the Honor 6 Plus officially, just as expected. First things first, let's get the specs out of the way, and focus on that sublime camera part afterwards. The Honor 6 Plus flaunts a 5.5" 1080p display, 1.8 GHz octa-core Kirin 925 chipset, which is a brand new silicon from Huawei, with dedicated image signal processor (ISP). The phone sports the hearty 3 GB of RAM, and 32 GB of storage plus a microSD slot for expansion. All that funky jazz is backed up by a pretty generous 3600 mAh battery unit, housed in a 150.46 x 75.68 x 7.5mm chassis - not the most compact out there, but still what you'd expect from a 5.5" screen diagonal.

It is the camera system that piques our undivided attention, though, alongside the sub-$400 price tag, at least in China. Huawei placed a 5 MP front-facing shooter on the Honor 6 Plus, just like it did with its latest Ascend P7, G7 and Mate7 handsets, but the rear is housing something totally new and unexpected. Similar to HTC One (M8)'s Duo Camera system, the Honor 6 Plus is equipped with two rear shooters, dubbed “Symmetrical dual camera technology“. The rear camera can take 13 MP shots, but actually consists of two 8 MP sensors with huge 1.85 micron pixel size, and a dedicated ISP is tasked with the merging and interpolation shenanigans. One of the cameras dons f/2.0 aperture and autofocus, while the sidekick sports f/2.4 and a fixed focus setup.

The use of two sensors with two lens kits allows for much more light to be raked in when taking a shot, thus exposing night scenes better, and also focusing much faster - Huawei claims 0.1s focusing time, which, if it holds water, might make it one of the fastest mobile cameras around. The dual-camera kit is framed with zinc alloy in order to keep the sensors in parallel without any misalignments, which is a pretty important feat for such a twin arrangement. Needless to say, the two lens system allows for the depth-of-field effects we are seeing with the One (M8) and other camera apps, but there's also other stuff onboard that allegedly bring quality noise reduction and low-light performance, which you can see detailed in the video below. 

The Honor 6 Plus will be up for preorder as soon as tomorrow from the Huawei mobile shop in the source link below, with shipping starting a week after. Pricing is pegged at 1999 yuan (~$323) for the 3G version, and 2499 yuan (~403) for the 4G LTE one, with both models sporting dual SIM card slots, with one slot taking micro SIMs, and the other a combined nano SIM/microSD slot. Not bad at all for all these specs, and we can't wait for the first samples from the “Symmetrical dual camera technology“ to start trickling down the pipe.

source: Huawei & GizmoChina