Honor's New Mid-Range Phone Is A Potent Rival For Realme And Xiaomi

Ever since it split from Huawei, Honor has been trying hard to make a comeback. Its attempts have been met with marginal success, and the company has seen good responses to most handsets it announced through 2021-22. Among the products it launched in the past few months are the likes of the Honor Magic 4 Pro, Magic V, and the Honor 50.

What was missing from Honor's refreshed lineup, however, was a feature-packed, value-for-money device. Something that would put up a spirited fight against the likes of the Redmi Note 11 series from Xiaomi and the Realme 9 Pro series.

And that seems to be precisely what the company intends to deliver with its new smartphone — the Honor X8. While the naming scheme of this new device is reminiscent of the older Honor 8X and Honor 9X smartphones, a quick glance at the phone's design indicates that it will be positioned as a slightly premium mid-range smartphone with some really interesting specs.

The first thing you would notice about the Honor X8 is its physical design. While the rear panel of the phone is reminiscent of the latest top-tier iPhone, it does have a character of its own. The Honor X8 is quite a large smartphone — evident from the fact that it features a 6.7-inch, FHD+ LCD panel that supports a 90Hz refresh rate and 2388 x 1080 pixel resolution.

Powering the Honor X8 is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 chipset that integrates the Adreno 610 GPU for graphics. It comes in a single configuration at 6GB RAM and 128GB internal storage. The Honor X8 supports dual SIM cards, but network support is limited to 4G LTE. This may not really be a bad thing because most markets where the Honor X8 is expected to launch either do not have 5G networks or have minimal coverage. It is unclear at this moment if the phone has a microSD card slot, though.

The rear camera setup includes a 64MP primary camera, a 5MP ultra-wide camera, and twin 2MP sensors for macro and depth sensing. The front-facing camera, on the other hand, gets a 16MP camera. Video recording using both the front and rear cameras top out at 1080p, which is a bummer, really.

Being a relatively slim device, even with the large size, Honor could only cram in a 4000 mAh battery on the Honor X8. However, the phone does ship with a 22.5-watt charger, although the company is yet to reveal the 0-100% charging times.

Apart from 4G LTE networks, the Honor X8 also supports Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, as well as Bluetooth 5.0, along with a 3.5mm jack. It also gets a side-mounted fingerprint sensor for biometric authentication.

The Honor X8 is likely to get a limited launch at least in this initial iteration, with the device going on sale in select middle-eastern countries first. The phone is likely to also make it to Europe in the months to come.

While it is unclear if it will ever make it to markets like India, Pakistan, and Southeast Asia, it will need to be a bit more competitive in terms of specs before it gets there. Honor, unfortunately, is yet to reveal the pricing or availability details for the Honor X8 for the Middle-east. We do expect the phone to officially go on sale in the next few days.