Honor 9X Pro and View 30 Pro will come to Europe at low prices
Don't expect them in the US, though.
- Shortlisted for British Photography Awards 2022, Commended in Landscape Photographer of the Year 2022
Huawei's sub-brand Honor has taken the wraps off a pair of new phones : the 9X Pro and the View 30 Pro. I'll start with the View 30 Pro. It's becoming more and more difficult for companies to make their phones stand out from the crowd, so Honor's tactic with the View 30 Pro is to use a different shape of image sensor in its main camera.
I know what you're thinking. "So what?" But it's actually quite an interesting quirk. While most imaging sensors in phones tend to have a 4:3 or 3:2 aspect ratio, the View 30 Pro's sensor has a 16:9 aspect ratio, which makes it particularly suited for shooting video.
Admittedly, that's only really useful if you're really keen on shooting video all the time, and even then, it's not a guarantee of better quality. The iPhone 11 Pro seriously impressed with its video skills in our recent tests and it doesn't have a 16:9 sensor.
It shoots video in 4K, has electronic image stabilization and Honor promises great contrast and colors from the sensor technology it's using.
Elsewhere, the phone uses Huawei's latest Kirin 990 processor, it has standard, superwide and telephoto zoom lenses and has a punch-hole cut out for the front-facing camera built into the screen.
The 9X Pro, meanwhile, will come with a more affordable price tag and a more pared down set of specs. Along with the Kirin 810 processor, the phone has a dual rear camera (with standard and superwide lenses), a side-mounted fingerprint scanner and and a front-facing camera that pops up from the top edge of the phone.
Both phones have fancy-looking colorful glass backs and while they both run Android at their core, neither has access to Google services, including the Google Play Store, which severely limits their usefulness in the West. This is due to parent company Huawei's ongoing political difficulties in the US, which also means these phones are unlikely to go on sale there.
The 9X Pro is expected in the UK and wider Europe within the next few weeks for a price likely to be around the £250 mark. (That converts to about $325 or AU$490.) The View 30 Pro is expected to be closer to £500.
The phones are joined by a new laptop -- the Honor MagicBook -- which packs a 14-inch nontouch display, Windows 10 , AMD processors and a metal design. It's expected to cost under £600.