Honor rocks the boat at IFA 2022: Flagships, tablets and space audio!
Honor made some big announcements at IFA 2022 in Berlin. The manufacturer launched its mid-range premium, the Honor 70, as well as its first tablet, the Honor Pad 8. But it also and above all made official a new "Dual Flagship" strategy to mark its future entry into the foldable smartphone market.
TL;DR
- Honor has launched the Honor 70 and Honor Pad 8 globally at IFA.
- The manufacturer wants to launch two flagship ranges per year, with foldable smartphones in the mix.
Honor is surely one of the manufacturers that made the most noise during IFA 2022. A bit like Samsung, Honor would like to adopt a product strategy with two flagship ranges. This Dual Flagship Strategy should allow Honor to enter the foldable smartphone market very soon.
We can therefore imagine that the manufacturer would launch at least two high-end smartphones each year. A "normal" numbered model and a foldable model. A logical choice when we see that Samsung has doubled its sales of Galaxy Z Flip 4 and Galaxy Z Fold 4 compared to last year's models. But a choice that also shows the ambitions of Honor to return to the forefront after being a little snubbed despite its separation from Huawei.
Honor 70: A smartphone for Vloggers
The Honor 70 was already launched in China last June. The smartphone is primarily designed for the creation of video content, vlogs, light editing etc...
The smartphone embeds a triple camera module carried by a main lens with a Sony IMX800 sensor of 54 MP and a size of 1/1.49 inches. There is also an ultra-wide angle lens of 50 MP and a depth sensor of 2 MP. The selfie camera offers a resolution of 32 MP.
But what about vlogs? The smartphone offers a feature called Solo Cut Mode. It allows you to isolate a particular person among a group thanks to a person recognition technology and not facial. In English, Honor calls it "Person re-identification technology". Basically, if you're out and about and your buddies have the audacity to steal the show while you're filming your fascinating daily life, you can force the Honor 70 to have eyes only for you.
The Honor 70 features a Snapdragon 778G Plus SoC from Qualcomm, a chip that suffers less from overheating issues than higher-end models. The smartphone only comes in a single memory configuration of 8/128 GB. Its OLED display has a diagonal of 6.67 inches, a Full HD+ resolution of 2400 x 1080 p and a refresh rate of 120 Hz.
The Honor 70's battery has a capacity of 4800 mAh and accepts 66W SuperCharge fast charging that can recharge the smartphone from 0 to 100% in 45 minutes. In terms of dimensions, the Honor 70 looks quite compact (161.4 mm x 73.3 mm x 7.91 mm) and light with its weight of 178 g.
The Honor 70 runs on Magic UI 6.1, an interface based on Android 12. The manufacturer did not specify how many updates the smartphone will receive.
Honor Pad 8: The first Honor tablet
Honor starts softly on the tablet market with an affordable but complete model. We start with the dimensions of 240.2 x 159 x 6.9 and the weight of 520 g that make it a tablet with an intermediate format.
The 12-inch 2K screen has a resolution of 2000 x 1200 p with a size/screen ratio of 87% and a brightness of 350 nits. Since the manufacturer doesn't specify it in the spec sheet, we can assume that the refresh rate is 60 Hz.
The tablet packs an entry-level Snapdragon 680 SoC coupled with 4 or 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of RAM. The Honor Pad 8 has a microSD slot to expand storage.
The camera module is quite anecdotal with a 5 MP back camera and a 5 MP front camera as well. The 7250 mAh battery accepts 22.5W wired charging. Like the Honor 70, the Honor Pad 8 runs on Magic UI 6.1, based on Android 12.
Space audio and Magic OS 7.0
Honor made other announcements that I'll skip over more quickly (I'll even flat out skip the launch of the new Honor MagicBook 14).
In particular, the manufacturer unveiled Magic OS 7.0, a "cross-device" operating system to work between multiple devices, from smartphones and tablets to PCs and wearables. In concrete terms, the idea is to let you control a PC, a smartphone and a tablet with a single keyboard/mouse, for example. This new OS will be officially launched in late 2022.
Finally, Honor also announced its own space sound solution for its headphones and earphones. As with Apple or other manufacturers, the idea is to offer a 3D spatialization of sound for a more encompassing rendering when you listen to music or watch a movie.
The technology uses the accelerometers and gyroscopes built into Honor's audio products to track your head movements and adjust the spatialization accordingly, for a more immersive experience. According to Honor, this technology can virtually adjust the distance of the sound from 0.15 to 10 meters.
Price and availability
As for prices, the Honor 70 comes to market costing 549€ in the 8/128 GB variant, and 599€ in the 8/256 GB model. The Honor Pad 8 tablet costs from $349. There is still no release date for these models in the US, nor is there a suggested price in dollars.
