Honor V9 unveiled as cheaper iPhone 7 Plus rival – but we may be forced to wait
The Honor V9 phablet has been unveiled, initially for the Chinese market, days before Mobile World Congress gets underway.
The 5.7-inch handset – which forms part of Huawei’s youth focused Honor “e” sub-brand – arrives in the far east with a 2.5D QHD display that’ll show off Android Nougat in all its glory.
That LTPS LCD display also features on-screen buttons, that’ll enable users to whiz through the new-and-improved EMUI 5.0 skin.
Related: Honor 8 review
There’s also plenty of power available thanks to the octa-core Kirin 960 (just like the one in the Huawei Mate 9) and up to 6GB of RAM, if you’re prepared to pay a little more.
There’s up to 128GB of storage with the ability to expand via a microSD card.
The Honor V9 includes Huawei’s 12-megapixel dual-lens rear-facing camera, which Huawei says is capable of 3D modeling. This opens up the possibility of 3D printing items captured by the camera.
The camera is joined by a fingerprint sensor on the back of the device, will be charged by USB-C and also has a 3.5mm headphone jack, which should please those dongle-haters.
The only snag is we might have to wait a little while for it as Huawei’s Honor phones generally take a while to emerge from their homeland. We only got our hands on the Honor 8 smartphone late last year, months after it arrived in China.
The phone will range from 2599 yuan (around £301) to 3499 yuan (about £406) and will be released in fetching blue, gold, red and matte black hues on February 28. There’s even a primitive-looking Google Cardboard-like headset bundled into the box.
With a bit of luck we might even see Huawei announce this for western markets at MWC next week.
Are you willing to ditch household names like Samsung and Apple, in favour of the emerging Chinese brands? Share your thoughts below.