Huawei’s former budget brand Honor has a new phone and partnerships with Qualcomm, Intel and AMD, revealing one option for dealing with US restrictions
- Honor says it is working with Qualcomm, Intel and AMD, among others, after breaking from Huawei freed it from US restrictions
- The 5G Honor View40 is the brand’s first smartphone since becoming independent as it seeks to move further into mid-tier and high-end devices
Honor has announced a new 5G smartphone, the View40, and partnerships with global semiconductor companies, including Intel and Qualcomm, revealing that the company is no longer subject to US restrictions after spinning off from former parent company Huawei Technologies Co.
While Google was not mentioned at the launch event, Honor confirmed that it is resuming partnerships with a number of international suppliers. The company said it is working with US companies Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and Micron Technology. Honor also listed South Korean companies Samsung and SK Hynix, Taiwan-based MediaTek and Japan-based Sony.
Most of these companies either design or manufacture chips. Access to Qualcomm, the world’s largest smartphone chip vendor, is considered especially critical for many mobile device makers.
The partnerships show that attempts to cut off Chinese companies from US technology still have workarounds that could be used in the future if the relationship between the two countries does not thaw under US President Joe Biden, who came into office on Wednesday.
At the launch event held in Shenzhen, Honor CEO Zhao Ming said the company has weathered extreme difficulties over the last five months. Honor, originally launched as a budget brand under Huawei, aims to move further into mid-tier and high-end devices, Zhao said.
Starting at 3,599 yuan (US$557), the View40 is a mid-tier device that comes with several features that could be considered premium, a traditional hallmark of Honor and competitors like Xiaomi, OnePlus and other Chinese brands. The View40 includes a 4,000mAh battery that can be fully charged in 35 minutes using its 66W charging. The curved display has a resolution of 2676x1236 pixels and a 120Hz refresh rate, a feature typically found in much more expensive devices.
With Honor now separate from Huawei, the View40 is not powered by its former parent company’s Kirin chips. Instead, the phone’s 5G functionality comes courtesy of the MediaTek Dimensity 1000+ system-on-a-chip.
Honor has not announced international availability, but it started selling the phone in China on Friday.
Huawei’s former budget smartphone unit has big plans for 2021
Launched by Huawei in 2013, Honor quickly became one of China’s most popular budget smartphone brands before expanding abroad. By 2020, the brand had more than 200 million users worldwide.
In 2019, Huawei shipped a total of 240 million smartphones, including Honor devices, a 16 per cent increase over 2018. Huawei and Honor smartphones together made up 17.6 per cent of global smartphone shipments in 2019, second only to Samsung.