Honor 9X Pro Heads West Without Google

Amid of flurry of product reveals today, Honor announced the 9X Pro. The phone launched in China last year, but now Honor – a budget brand that belongs to Huawei – seems ready to launch it and its pop-up selfie camera on a more global scale. From a hardware perspective, this global version of the Honor 9X Pro is very similar to its Chinese counterpart, but it'll be arriving in new regions around the world missing one key thing: Google's library of apps.

Instead, the Honor 9X Pro will be using Huawei Mobile Services and EMUI 9.1, as the company attempts to build out its own alternative to Android for the simple reason that it isn't allowed to use Google's services at the moment. Whether or not that will be a deal-breaker for the legions of Android fans who are knee-deep in Google's ecosystem remains to be seen, but Huawei is going to try to make a splash nonetheless.

The 9X Pro is outfitted with a 6.59-inch FullView display that outputs at 2,340 x 1,080 resolution. Honor is able to boast a 92% screen-to-body ratio for the phone thanks in part to the pop-up selfie cam, which clocks in at 16MP.

Indeed, cameras seem to be the main draw of the Honor 9X Pro, with its triple camera array on the back consisting of a 48MP main shooter, an 8MP super wide-angle camera, and a 2MP depth sensor. Those cameras will be assisted by AI techs on a number of fronts, whether it's video stabilization or low-light shooting.

Built around Huawei's 7nm Kirin 810 chipset, the 9X Pro also ships with 6GB of memory and 256GB of storage. The phone is powered by a 4,000mAh battery, charges via USB-C, and even includes a 3.5mm headphone jack. We'll see it launch in France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Netherlands, and Malaysia beginning next month at a price of €249.