Honor 5X Launch: UK Price, Release Date, Specs, Features

HUAWEI-OWNED smartphone brand Honor unveiled its latest smartphone to a cheering crowd in Munich earlier today. The Honor 5X boasts a large 5.5inch screen, SnapDragon processor, 13MP rear camera and runs a heavily-skinned version of Android 5.1 Lollipop.

 

The £189 Honor 5X has a 13MP rear camera and diamond-polished aluminium design

 

Honor 5X was launched in Europe at a press conference in Munich, Germany earlier today.

The latest Huawei-built smartphone sports a diamond-polished, aluminium unibody design that Honor says was inspired by the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

Dubbed "the most affordable premium smartphone of 2016", it's true the Honor 5X has some impressive specs, especially for a smarpthone with a £189 price tag.

The front of this museum-inspired smartphone is dominated by a 5.5inch 1080p IPS LCD display, with some 401-pixels-per-inch.

 

Honor has fitted its latest smartphone with a 5.5inch Full HD display and dual SIM card support

Honor claims the design and ergonomics of the smartphone were inspired by the Guggenheim Museum

Turn the smartphone over and you’ll find a 13 megapixel camera, as well as the same reliable fingerprint sensor shipped with the Huawei-made Nexus 6P. Aside from the obvious security implications, Honor lets smartphone owners assign app shortcuts to individual fingers.

So, you can use your index finger to unlock the Honor 5X. Or you can use your middle finger to unlock the smartphone and launch your favourite messenger, like WhatsApp. Five different shortcuts can be programmed for five different fingerprints.

The Honor 5X has a 5MP front-facing camera for your video calls and selfies. It also supports dual SIM cards, which is sure to appeal to frequent travelers.

 

Powering the smartphone is a 1.5 GHz Qualcomm SnapDragon 616 processor and 2GB of RAM. Frustratingly, the Honor 5X doesn’t ship with Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Out of the box, the Huawei-made smartphone runs Android 5.1 Lollipop.

You might struggle to recognise Google’s hugely-popular operating system here, thanks to Honor’s all-encompassing Emotion User Interface, dubbed EMUI 3.1. Amongst the latest tweaks to Honor’s EMUI 3.1 are a new one-handed mode, time lapse mode for the camera

Internal storage is a measly 16GB, but the Honor 5X supports expandable storage via microSD up to 128GB.

 

The Honor 5X packs a 3,000mAh battery, which the company claims will keep you up-and-running for a full work day.

Charging and syncing is handled over microUSB. While that’s not as future-proof as USB Type-C, it’ll surely come as a relief to those with microUSB cables littered around the house and office.

“The Honor 5X is a no-nonsense smartphone that delivers all the essentials digital natives want and need in a device,” said George Zhao, president of Honor. 

“We designed the Honor 5X to be an extension of the personalities of its users – cool, stylish and iconic – and integrated innovative technology to give a superior connected experience, all at an affordable price.

 

"Since its founding two years ago, the Honor brand has seen extraordinary growth by focusing on the online market and bringing digital natives devices that suit their digital lifestyles.

“That success led to expansion beyond China and we are thrilled that the Honor 5X will be available in Europe, the Americas and Asia/Pacific.”

Honor 5X is available to order in the UK £189 from today. It ships in three different colour variations, Gold, Silver and Grey.

• NewsNewsBlog.blogspot..com will update this article with our early impressions of the Honor 5X smartphone later.