The Huawei Honor 8 is just in time for the long-rumored Samsung Galaxy Note 7 unveiling tomorrow, giving phablet buyers a cheaper alternative thanks to the Chinese phone maker.
Honor, technically a sister company to the Huawei, showed off its Note 8 specs today, and they are big, with a 6.6-inch 2K resolution screen and 4500mAh battery. Both are significantly larger than the 5.7-inch display and nearly 4,000mAh battery rumored for the Samsung Galaxy Note 7.
The device also sports a powerful eight-core Kirin 955 processor and 4GB of RAM - the latter of which is rumored to be similar to the Note 7's rumored Snapdragon 820 guts. Of course, the Note 7 in the UK and pretty much every country outside the US and China may have Samsung's faster Exynos processor.
What isn't larger is the price - the Huawei company says the price for the Honor Note 8 starts at ¥2,299 (about $346, £262, AU$457) for a 32GB model and goes up to ¥2,599 (about $421, £319, AU$557) for a hefty 128GB version.
NOTE the cost
Those prices are especially impressive, considering that the Samsung's predecessor phablet, the Galaxy Note 5, launched its 32GB version for about $700 (approximately £530, AU$926) last year, nearly double the price of the Honor Note 8 for the same amount of storage.
Also worth considering is the 5.5-inch iPhone 6S Plus - setting wallets back $749, £619, AU$1,129 for its lowest-tier 16GB model, with only half the RAM and a weaker battery to boot. The newest iPhone has just 2GB of RAM, though you do have to factor in that its operating system, now up to iOS 10 beta, uses less RAM to begin with.
The Honor Note 8 is currently exclusive to China, but Huawei will have a special launch event in San Francisco on August 16. That may wind up being the Honor Note 8's debut with American audiences. There's been nothing confirmed yet regarding similar events for UK and Australian markets.
