More good news for the local midrange phone market as honor are planning to “unleash” two of their much-awaited midrange smartphones, the honor 5X and honor 7 Enhanced in Malaysia next week!
We just received the invite in our mail stating that honor are planning to launch both devices at the same time on January 26, next Tuesday. Suffice to say we will be bringing you live updates from the ground on that very day.
honor 5X
Of the two devices launched, the honor 5X is definitely the more interesting one. The 5X is honor’s answer to the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3, with it’s full metal build as well as rear mounted fingerprint scanner. The 5.5″ device will sport a full HD screen plus a Snapdragon 616 octa-core processor — a departure from their home-grown Kirin SoCs. Nevertheless, the Snapdragon 616 will be paired with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage.
What it does have over the Redmi Note 3 is a dedicated microSD card slot which allows you to expand that small internal memory. Because of the fact that honor ditched the hybrid SIM set up, users can use two SIM cards and the microSD storage simultaneously. It will come running Android 5.1.1 Lollipop out of the box with their EMUI 3.1 skin running over it.
For camera optics, the device will sport a 13MP f/2.0 primary shooter with dual-LED flash to help out in low light conditions, as well as a 5-megapixel f/2.4 front shooter. The phone will draw power from a fairly large 3,000 mAh battery that has support for Quick Charge 3.0.
The honor 5X is going for RMB1,099 in China (around RM730) which is only a touch higher than the Redmi Note 3’s 16GB version and the same price as the 32GB version. In Malaysia you can get an imported Redmi Note 3 (via DirectD) for under RM1,000, so the question is: How low will honor go?
honor 7 Enhanced
The honor 7 Enhanced isn’t all that different than the already good un-enhanced version which we liked a lot. The only enhancement is the fact that this device will now come with 32GB of internal storage and Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box.
While the bump in storage from 16GB might not be that big of a deal to some, many felt that one of the biggest problems with the honor 7 was the lack of storage space. Now with double that, this device just got a whole lot better.
Besides that, this will be the first non-nexus smartphone in Malaysia to be officially sold with Android M out-of-the-box. So, you get to have all those awesome Marshmallow features to yourself.
The device features a 5.2″ full HD display on the front with an octa-core Kirin 935 processor clocked at 2.2GHz paired with 3GB of RAM. Camera-wise it has a 20-megapixel Sony IMX230 camera sensor with PDAF and a dual-LED flash. The front camera is an 8MP unit with its own front-facing flash to help with those low-light selfies.
In China, the honor 7 Enhanced is going for RMB 1,999 (around RM1330) — the same price as the honor 7, with the original getting a bump down to RMB1,799 (around RM1,200) — which is quite the steal. In Malaysia, the honor 7 is priced at RM1,399 so we expect the new Enhanced version match the original’s price.
