Can't buy a Huawei? Honor's hole-punch phone is an affordable alternative

Huawei’s budget sub-brand sells online in the US

Huawei

Karen Chiu

Published: 9:06pm, 23 Jan 2019

Why you can trust SCMP

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

If you live in the US and want a Huawei smartphone, well, good luck with that. After major US carriers backed out of plans to sell Huawei’s devices last year, the brand has pretty much been locked out of the country.

But there is another way to get a Huawei handset... well, kinda, thanks to their lower-cost sub-brand, Honor.

Their latest flagship, the Honor View 20, is coming out this week. The standout feature here? Instead of the usual notch, it's got a hole in the top left corner of the 6.4-inch display -- that's where you'll find the selfie camera.

Honor says you can make 3G calls for 25 hours straight, which seems like a totally normal use case to us (Picture: Honor)

The hole-punch looks like it'll be this year's new smartphone trend -- a fresh alternative to the iPhone-style notch that many Android handsets adopted last year. It's on Samsung’s mid-range Galaxy A8S. It’s also coming to Motorola and Nokia phones, according to leaks.

In Buzz Lightyear’s voice: Holes. Holes everywhere. (Picture, from left to right: Honor View 20, Huawei Nova 4, Samsung A8S)

Anyway, earlier I said it's another way to get a (sorta) Huawei phone. Why? Because Honor specializes in putting high-end features from Huawei phones into cheaper handsets.

It looks very much like the Huawei Nova 4 -- a mid-range handset released in China that also features a monstrous 48-megapixel back camera. But unlike the Nova 4, the View 20 includes Huawei’s latest in-house Kirin 980 chip, the same one found on Huawei’s pricey flagship, the Mate 20 Pro.

The View 20 begins shipping this week across Europe and a number of Asian countries, starting at €570 (US$648) with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage.

And there's a chance it'll be available in the US: Honor has an official store in the US, though the View 20 isn’t on there right now. It might take a few months, because last year's Honor View 10 didn’t arrive in the US until around three months after it launched in Europe.

This time around, Honor USA has already told American fans to stay tuned for further announcements about the View 20. We’ve reached out to Honor for more information and will update if we hear back.

Tourist sites offer discounts if you’re using a phone made in China

For more insights into China tech, sign up for our tech newsletters, subscribe to our Inside China Tech podcast, and download the comprehensive 2019 China Internet Report. Also roam China Tech City, an award-winning interactive digital map at our sister site Abacus.

Post