Honor’s first smart TV is changing the game with a smartphone-style pop-up camera, AI capabilities and maybe even the use Huawei’s new Hongmeng OS.
The Huawei-owned brand only announced that it would be joining the smart TV market recently but there have already been plenty of hints floating around online, including images of pop-up cameras and rumours about the addition of its parent company’s Hongmeng OS.
Honor’s 55-inch smart TV is kitted out with a Hongjun 818 chipset (developed by Huawei, of course) designed to provide premium-quality sound and video rather than the Kirin chipset used in Honor’s smartphones. The octa-core processor is capable of supporting 8K video playback at 30fps or 4K Ultra-HD visuals at 120fps. The smart TV will also feature 64-megapixel image decoding, HDR support, super-resolution motion estimate and motion compensation (or MEMC), dynamic contrast improvement, noise reduction and local dimming, according to a report by Android Authority.
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The TV is also set to have tons of AI capabilities thanks to the company’s partnership with Baidu. This includes far-field voice commands and, most likely, voice assistant support via a built-in microphone. In fact, the pop-up camera could be another addition to the AI setup if it supports facial recognition or is used as a motion sensor for controlling the TV.
All in all, the TV sounds like a hybrid between a smart TV and the smartphones Honor has been doing best up until this point. At the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Guangzhou two weeks ago, Honor president George Zhao stated that Honor do not plan to release a traditional TV and rather have decided to do something innovative with this release. If Honor do decide to ditch Android and use the Hongmeng OS, this would just be another way Honor ties the two smart devices together.
Read our review of the Honor 10
The TV is currently priced at 9,999 yuan on the Chinese marketplace, JD.com but we’re still awaited news about a UK release. We’ll have to wait until the Huawei Developer Conference in China this weekend to find out more about Honor’s venture into the world of TV, with the actual announcement expected to take place on the 10th of August.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
