Paul Briden 07/04/2017 - 12:54pm

The Honor 8 Pro is packed full of high-end hardware – and it is coming to the UK

A new Honor smartphone has just been announced for the European market as the Honor 8 Pro. The Honor brand is owned by Huawei, but produced by a separate branch of the firm. In this case, the Honor 8 Pro is a re-branding of a handset already available in China as the Honor V9.

Until now, however, the Honor brand has largely been aimed at the younger demographic, with its "for the brave" slogan and a lower end price tag. The Honor 8 Pro bucks this trend somewhat with an RRP of €549 (£480 in the UK); previously no Honor phone has been priced above €400.

I have just finished reviewing the Huawei P10. That handset is Huawei’s current flagship and Huawei, as you may well know, owns Honor. But the odd thing here is that given the choice of these two handsets, I’d be more inclined to get the Honor 8 Pro.

It’s cheaper, it has better specs and, in my humble opinion, it looks better too.

However, as the Pro name suggests, this is a pretty capable handset; so you do get a fair bit of bang for your buck. The display is a 5.7in QHD affair, while the processor is Huawei's blisteringly quick Kirin 960. That's the same CPU as the Huawei Mate 9 and Huawei P10. There's also 6GB of RAM onboard along with 64GB of storage.


The camera hasn't been upgraded from the regular Honor 8; a dual-12MP sensor setup on the rear. There's also a fingerprint scanner, a 4,000mAh battery, microSD support, and a Type-C USB port.

Pre-orders are now live, you can place yours here.

In addition, a second Honor smartphone was also announced as the Honor 6C, which will be available across Europe by the end of April. This is a much cheaper handset with an RRP of only €229.

Honor 8 Pro Specs

Display 5.7" IPS LCD 2560 x 1440; Gorilla Glass 3
Software Android 7.0 Nougat; EMUI 5.1
CPU Kirin 960
GPU Mali-G71 MP8
RAM 6GB
Storage 64GB UFS 2.1, expandable via microSD
Cameras 12MP RGB + 12 Monochrome rear; 8MP front
Battery 4,000mAh
Connectivity WiFi 802.11b/g/n, 2.4GHz, Bluetooth 4.2; TD-LTE/LTE-FDD, dual-SIM
Ports USB Type-C 2.0, 3.5mm
Measurements 157 x 77.50 x 6.97 mm; 184 g
Colors Blue, black, gold

Specs include a 5in 720p HD touch display and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 processor with 3GB of RAM. There's a generous 32GB of onboard storage with microSD support for expansion.

The camera setup is also interesting with a 13MP f/2.2 primary sensor capable of 1080p video capture, plus a 5MP f/2.2 secondary on the front for selfies. The phone also features a fingerprint scanner and a 3,020mAh battery. It runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow with the Huawei EMUI on top.