Honor, the youth-oriented Huawei smartphone brand targeting ‘digital natives’, released the Honor 8 Pro in Europe, the latest addition to the Honor 8 flagship series.

According to media reports, the device is near identical to the Honor V9 which launched in China during March for around $435.

Priced at £474.99 ($593) for Europe, the company said the Honor 8 “has been built to deliver the best performance for gaming, streaming and photography” and comes with a 5.7-inch screen and 6.97mm body, “making it one of the slimmest smartphones on the market”.

The company trumpeted the device’s gaming capabilities. It will run “the most demanding games” at high frame rates with minimum lag, even in 3D.

A Quad HD display means “games come to life… for maximum immersion” while the 64 GB internal storage is “spacious enough” for advanced 3D games and can be expanded via a microSD card by up to 128 GB.

The company also talked up the smartphone’s battery power. A high-density 4000mAh battery works with SmartPower 5.0 technology, which Honor said offers up to two full days of use from a single charge.

Wilkin Lee, sales and marketing manager for Honor UK, said “We know that a big bugbear for smartphone users who live an always-on fast-paced life is often the battery of their device cutting out at a pivotal moment…we’ve gone to great lengths to make sure our users are equipped with the best battery performance.”

VR credentials
The box the device is supplied in becomes a Google Cardboard virtual reality (VR) viewer, and Honor 8 Pro will come pre-installed with the Jaunt VR app.

Honor 8 Pro features a 12-megapixel dual-lens camera capable of shooting 4K videos. The company partnered with camera maker GoPro to develop a feature which intelligently organises photos by category and automatically generates customisable video stories.

It learns from users’ behaviour and habits to minimise lag and ensure applications and files load smoothly. For example, if Facebook is consistently opened at the same time every day, the system will load the app in the background in advance, cutting down app load times significantly, Honor said.

The device also features the latest version of Huawei’s Emotion user interface software, EMUI 5.1, which debuted on the vendor’s P10 in February.

Honor 8 Pro runs Android 7 (Nougat) and will go on sale on 20 April.