Huawei gives Honor 3 the lumberjack treatment, teases set-top box

Huawei Honor 3
The Honor 3 looks good and performs well outdoors

Huawei today unveiled the Honor 3, the third generation of Honor devices, and it's both a slight upgrade and an important departure.

Specs-wise there's nothing surprising here: the Honor 3 comes packing a 4.7-inch 720p LCD display, Huawei's own 1.5GHz quad-core K3V2 processor, 13- and 1-megapixel cameras, Android 4.2.2: Jelly Bean, and memory to match its predecessor the Honor 2 with 2GB RAM and 8GB of storage.

But the Honor 3 is also Huawei's first "ruggedized" Honor device, joining the likes of Samsung's Galaxy S4 Active with an IP57 rating for resistance to dust and water.

That rating means it can be submerged in water up to 30 minutes at a meter's depth, and its highly sensitive touchscreen even recognizes input from wet hands.

Honor in the western world

Finally the Honor 3 also features an IR blaster like those on the Galaxy S4 and HTC One that lets it control TVs and the like.

The Honor 3 is on sale now for ¥1,888 ($309, £200, AU$346), and for now it's only in China.

Other Huawei phones, including the Huawei Honor, have reached the western world before.

TechRadar asked Huawei to clarify whether the Honor 3 will do the same, but so far we haven't heard back.

The MediaQM310

Huawei today also announced the MediaQM310, a set-top box with a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 chip, Bluetooth and dual-band WiFi.

Huawei MediaQM310

The Huawei MediaQM310

The box will stream content from the cloud and connect to China Network Television's online video services.

There's no pricing yet, but the MediaQM310 will release in China in September.

Via Engadget

Michael Rougeau

Michael Rougeau is a former freelance news writer for TechRadar. Studying at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Northeastern University, Michael has bylines at Kotaku, 1UP, G4, Complex Magazine, Digital Trends, GamesRadar, GameSpot, IFC, Animal New York, @Gamer, Inside the Magic, Comic Book Resources, Zap2It, TabTimes, GameZone, Cheat Code Central, Gameshark, Gameranx, The Industry, Debonair Mag, Kombo, and others.


Micheal also spent time as the Games Editor for Playboy.com, and was the managing editor at GameSpot before becoming an Animal Care Manager for Wags and Walks.