Huawei’s sub-brand Honor will unveil the Honor 9 on June 21 or June 20, according to latest industry rumors. Sources say that the Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer will launch the device with a price tag of 2,499 yuan, which translates to approximately $362 and is in line with Honor’s previous product strategy of releasing smartphones that offer high value for money. The phone’s release window also matches the one of its predecessor that was launched in July 2016.
Regarding the device itself, previous reports have indicated that the Honor 9 will feature a 5.2-inch LCD display panel with a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels (FullHD), in addition to being powered by the HiSilicon Kirin 960, Huawei’s 64-bit system-on-chip (SoC) housing four ARM Cortex A73 cores clocked at 2.4GHz and four ARM Cortex A53 cores with a maximum operating frequency of 1.8GHz. The company’s flagship piece of silicon is also equipped with the Mali-G71 MP8 GPU, the same one that’s featured in the Exynos 8895 SoC fueling the recently released Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus. Furthermore, the Honor 9 is thought to boast 6GB of RAM and at least 32GB of UFS 2.0 storage space that will likely be expandable via a microSD card slot by up to 256GB. Last year’s Honor 8 was available in two variants offering 32GB and 64GB of internal memory with identical amounts of RAM, and Huawei’s sub-brand may now opt for a similar approach to releasing the Honor 9.
Industry insiders have so far been giving largely conflicting information regarding the battery size of the handset, though its capacity likely won’t be lower than 3,000mAh, which is what was touted by the Honor 8. Coupled with the same screen real estate and a more efficient SoC, the Honor 9 should be able to offer more battery life than its predecessor, though it remains to be seen whether the difference between the two will be significant in real-world usage. Some previous reports have indicated that the phone will lack a 3.5mm audio jack and will feature a dual-camera setup consisting of a main 22-megapixel sensor for colors and a 12-megapixel black-and-white sensor. More details on the availability of the Honor 9 will likely be available in the coming weeks.