Huawei’s Honor brand challenges Xiaomi with 3X and 3C low-cost phones

Huawei’s known for its Ascend smartphones around the world, but back in late 2011, the company also started toying with a small Honor series for select budget markets. Fast forward to today, the latter sub-brand has become Huawei’s platform to compete with the sudden surge of affordable online brands in China — most notably Xiaomi, the pioneer of that industry. With a little help from MediaTek (and ironically not Huawei’s own HiSilicon), the phone maker is upping its firepower over this territory with two new dual-SIM devices: Honor 3X and Honor 3C.

The Honor 3X joins the first wave of octa-core 1.7GHz MT6592-powered devices, and it boasts 2GB of RAM, a 13-megapixel f/2.2 main camera, a 5-megapixel 1.4-micron front imager plus a generous 3,000mAh battery. The 720p resolution on the glove-friendly, 5.5-inch IPS touchscreen may seem like a let-down, but in this case, Huawei reasoned that going 1080p would push power consumption up by as much as 20 percent, plus many folks may not notice the visual difference — a point that Huawei Device Chairman Richard Yu has often echoed publicly.

On a brighter note, the 3X is the first phone to feature dual-3G SIM slots — one Mini SIM and one Micro SIM — for WCDMA (China Unicom and most carriers around the world) and TD-SCDMA (China Mobile). Better yet, both slots will recognize either type of 3G radio, as opposed to having designated slots for each. There’s also a dual-mic system for in-call noise cancellation, as well as DTS audio support. The price? From just CN¥1,698 or about $280 off-contract, making it a tad more affordable than the Xiaomi MI3. Alas, there’s no launch date just yet.

The “C” in Honor 3C probably stands for “cheaper,” as evidenced by its specs. It features a quad-core 1.3GHz MT6582 SoC with 2GB of RAM, along with a 5-inch 720p LTPS panel, a 2,300mAh battery, a Sony 8-megapixel f/2.0 main camera, the same 5-megapixel front imager as the 3X’s, dual-SIM slots (WCDMA + GSM or TD-SCDMA + GSM) and microSD expansion. Like the 3X, this model also comes with dual-mic noise cancellation. The damage is only CN¥798 (about $130) for the 1GB model, or CN¥998 ($160) for the 2GB flavor, and China-based folks can pre-order from online retailer JD.com or Huawei’s own Vmall.com as early as tomorrow.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Source: Vmall (Chinese)