€300 Flagship Killer: HUAWEI HONOR 6 arrives in Europe

Huawei’s HONOR series has often punched above its weight for its price, but the handsets have rarely ever left the Chinese market. In an attempt to expand into new regions and pinch even more market share from the big brands, HUAWEI has launched its new HONOR 6 flagship smartphone in Europe.

The HONOR 6 is undoubtedly a high-end smartphone in the hardware department but carries the price-tag of a modest mid-ranger. The smartphone is priced at £250 in the UK and €300 in the rest of Europe, putting it in direct competition with the OnePlus One, but without the pesky invite system. Here is a summary of the HONOR 6’s hardware:

• 5” inch, 1920×1080 display, 445 PPI
• 1.3 GHz octa-core Kirin 920 SoC
• 3GB RAM
• 13 MP rear camera, 5 MP front camera
• 16GB internal storage
• MicroSD card slot (64GB support)
• 3000 mAh batter
• Dimensions: 139.30 x 68.80 x 6.50 mm
• Weight: 135 g

Kirin is HUAWEI’s own line-up of SoCs. The 920 is built from four Cortex-A15 and four Cortex-A7 CPU cores and a Mali-T628 GPU, just like Samsung’s Exynos 5 line-up. This is the same makeup as the Ascend Mate 7’s processor, albeit with a slightly lower clock speed. The SoC is also capable of Cat 6 LTE speeds of 300Mbps when making use of carrier aggregation, so long as your network supports this.

That’s a lot of phone for £250/€300 and the HONOR 6 is substantially cheaper than the likes of the Galaxy S5, HTCOne (M8), LG G3, or Xperia Z3.

HUAWEI may be synonymous with previous HONOR handsets, but the company is making a calculated effort to keep the HUAWEI brand name out of the picture this time around. By presenting HONOR as its own company, HUAWEI perhaps hopes to dodge accusations that the phone comes from a questionable Chinese brand.

HUAWEI is also planning to sell a flipcover case, protective case, and a set of headphones as accessories to the HONOR 6, but these are still listed as “coming soon”. If this handset has piqued your interested, you can order yours from a local retailer through the official HONOR website.