HUAWEI launches HONOR Beta program in the US

HUAWEI has announced the launch of of its HONOR Beta program in the US, while also confirming previous rumors about the launch of the HONOR 8 Pro in Europe, with pre-orders going live today.

The company said the HONOR Beta USA program will allow a small number of consumers in the country to give feedback to HUAWEI on not only the company’s current HONOR products, but also for upcoming hardware and software products “slated to reach the market in one or even two years from now.” You can sign up to be considered for the HONOR Beta USA program at its official Facebook page at the link below. The HONOR Beta team will review all submissions in order “to match applicants with specific opportunities”.

People who are chosen to participate in the HONOR Beta program will get notified throughout the year. There’s no word on what specific products the beta testers will be asked to check out.

HUAWEI also confirmed the European launch of the HONOR 8 Pro, which will be sold for the price of €549 in markets like France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland. Pre-orders are now being accepted at the HONOR European site. In the UK, the HONOR 8 Pro will cost £475.

As we have reported before, the phone itself will have a metal body that contains a Quad HD 5.7-inch display with 2,560 x 1,440 resolution. The HONOR 8 Pro will have HUAWEI’s own Kirin 960 octa-core processor inside, which has four Cortex A73 cores clocked to 2.4GHz and four Cortex A53 cores clocked at 1.8GHz. It will also have the Mali-G71 GPU that includes support for the Vulkan graphics API.

The phone will have Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box, with HUAWEI’s own EMUI 5.1 skin. It has 6 GB of RAM, 64 GB of onboard storage and a microSD card to add up to 256 GB of additional storage. It also has dual 12 MP rear cameras, along with an 8 MP front-facing selfie camera. The phone comes with a fingerprint sensor on the back and a 4,000 mAh battery that is supposed to last up to 30 hours on a single charge. It’s being sold in Platinum Gold, Midnight Black and Navy Blue colors. There’s no word if the HONOR 8 Pro will be sold in the US.