The $305 Huawei Honor II Challenges The World’s Cheapest Quad-core Phone (Videos)

By Herman Lai, posted Oct 29, 2012 at 1:33 PM, 9,480 views,

The $305 Huawei Honor II Challenges The World’s Cheapest Quad-core Phone (Videos)

Huawei held a launch event in Beijing this afternoon. And sadly, there isn’t a 6.1-inch giant phone to be found. But the good news is, Huawei Honor II has been announced. Honor II is a 4.5-inch quad-core phone with an amazingly low price tag at 1,888 yuan ($305). We’re totally stunned! It’s even cheaper than Xiaomi’s quad-core phone. Check out the launch event and a review of Huawei Honor II after the break.

The Launch

The event located in Beijing, China

Lots of Huawei’s fans and press medias attended to the launch event

Reception booth

Typically, press media and other attendees are required to sign in before enter the event. But as you can see, Huawei not only demanded attendees to sign, it also asked people to take picture on a big interactive touchscreen.

Huawei’s carry bag

Tencent QQ plush Doll

The poster emphasized Honor II can provide up to 72 hours of standby time.

Booth Girls

Huawei’s Fans Zone

Huawei’s Fanboys: “I love Huawei!”

Launch Event Live on Sina Weibo

Gangnam Style’s parody for heating up the event

Yu Cheng Dong (the chairman of Huawei) and Martin Lau (President of Tencent) both on stage

Huawei Honor II will come with some Tencent’s customized apps and softwares.

Huawei Honor II

Official Huawei’s Promo video Part 1

Official Huawei’s Promo video Part 2

Hands-on Video

GALLERY: Huawei Honor II
(For larger view click here)

Huawei Honor 2 will pack the company’s own K3V2 quad-core chipset clocked at 1.4GHz and a 4.5-inch 720p IPS display with 1280 x 720 resolution (326 ppi). Huawei will only offer Honor II with 1GB of RAM at the moment, but the company promised it will be upgraded to 2GB RAM in the future for the SAME PRICE. Other standard features include 8GB of onboard storage, with a microSD expansion slot up to 32GB, 1.3MP front-facing camera (720p video recording) and a 8.0MP rear shooter (Full HD video recording), 3.5mm headphone jack, WiFi, Bluetooth 3.0, a 2,230mAh battery, and Android 4.0.4. It might still take a while for Huawei to customize Android 4.1 for its device. Moreover, Huawei claimed Honor II will only need 5-sec to boot up and provide with 72 hours of standby time. In addition, it will be compatible with WCDMA 850/900/1700/1900/2100 MHz, it’ll work on AT&T in the U.S; GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz networks.

Packaging and Accessory

1.3mp front-facing camera

The back shell is made by plastic-like material, but it doesn’t feel cheap and it looks somehow superior.

It will come with Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound

MicroUSB port on the side; The phone is 10.5 mm thick

Standard SIM-card slot and a removable battery

For those who’re not familiar with Huawei’s Hisilicon K3 V2, it is developed by the company itself. K3V2 is a quad-core A9 that has 16 GPU cores built-in, clocked at either 1.2 or 1.5GHz. The chairman of Huawei claimed it is 20 to 30 times faster than NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 chipset, and promised it’s “the world’s fastest“ chipset. HiSilicon is a limited company which used to be the ASIC Design Center of Huawei Technologies. Hisilicon has set up design divisions in Beijing, Shanghai, Silicon Valley (USA) and Sweden. The company has experiences of making SoC for network surveillance, videophone, DVB and IPTV. K3V2 will be the first smartphone chipset that the company is making. It’s possible that some other smartphone manufactures to equip Huawei’s chipset in the future.

Software

Huawei’s customized Android 4.0 interface

Torch and Voice Recorder

Huawei’s Cloud+, App Store, Back-up

Huawei Honor II won’t have Google Play since it is blocked in China, but it’ll have its own app store instead.

One of the Tencent’s customized app “百变相机“, a photography app.

One of the Tencent’s customized app “百变相机“, a photography app.

Tencent customized i-Sharing (爱享) app

i-Sharing is an integrated social sharing app for users to share their photos on social networks (Tencent Weibo, Sina Weibo, Renren) more conveniently. Users are required to log in their QQ account in order to use this app.

Huawei’s i-Sharing (爱享)

Availability

Huawei Honor II’s launch event

Aforementioned, Honor II will be priced at 1,888 yuan ($305), pre-orders start on the 1 Nov 09:18 – 3 Nov 23:59 on Huawei’s Vmall. Those who pre-order the Honor II will also get participation in a lucky draw, it will give out a Mercedes-Benz Smart as the prize. However, Huawei’s Vmall pre-order system only allows people with a Chinese smartphone number though.

Huawei Honor II VS Xiaomi Mi-Two

Click here for larger

The release of Huawei Honor 2 will put it on a collision course with the Xiaomi Mi-Two. Xiaomi Mi-Two will start selling tomorrow for roughly 1,999 yuan ($322).

Our Thoughts

Huawei Honor II is an impressive quad-core phone. Quality hardware. Attentive Android customization. Affordable. Right now, it’s the cheapest quad-core phone that you can get.

As you may not know, Huawei has a strong bargaining power in manufactures components, since the company is one of the world’s biggest telecommunications equipment manufacturers. Therefore, it can manufacture its smartphone’s components and processors (e.g. K3V2), which helps cut down the production cost and this is an advantage that Huawei has over other Chinese smartphone vendors. Now, even big name like Huawei is aiming at the low-price smartphone market, it’s certainly putting pressure on second/third-tier smartphone manufacturers including Xiaomi, OPPO and Meizu. The price of quad-core smartphone will fall and the low-price smartphone market in China will become tense along with the arrival of Huawei Honor II.

Source: PConline (Chinese translated), ePrice’s Weibo, Huawei’s Official Weibo