The Honor Note 8
has been made official today in China, as promised about a week ago
. The high-end phablet from Huawei's sub-brand joins the likes of Xiaomi Mi Max
and Lenovo Phab 2 Pro
in an area where the 'phone' is starting to lose ground to the 'tablet'.
The 6.6-inch Honor Note 8 is bigger than those two competitors by some 0.2" in diagonal, and Huawei has picked 1,440 x 2,560 px as the proper resolution at this size. That results in a 443ppi pixel density by their own calculations - plenty sharp, then.
Huawei tends to pick from its own inventory for chipsets to power its flagships and it's no different with the Note 8 - it's the Kirin 955 in charge of things. That means an octa-core CPU in a 4xCortex-A72 + 4xCortex-A53 configuration and a Mali-T880 MP4 GPU. There are 4GB of RAM on board (though a lower-specced 3GB version has been rumored and showed up on TENAA earlier), and storage options are 32/64/128GB with 23/52/110GB left to the user, respectively.
The primary camera is a single 13MP unit, unlike the
Honor 8 (non-Note) and its 2x12MP setup. This one does feature optical image stabilization, but video recording is still capped at 1080p. On the front there's an 8MP shooter to handle selfies.
The Honor Note 8 has a hybrid dual-SIM slot, which can take a couple of nanoSIM cards, or one nanoSIM and a microSD card - not our favorite solution, but if you plan on using both SIM cards, at least you can opt for a higher built-in storage capacity. Also, only one of the SIM cards can tap into a 4G/3G network, the second one is limited to 2G.
You do get dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, GPS/GLONASS/Beidou and Bluetooth v4.2, but there's no NFC support or MHL for wired video output. The port on the bottom is USB Type-C, but don't let that fool you - it only conforms to USB 2.0 specs. There's a 4,500mAh battery inside the Honor Note 8, and the device measures 178.8 x 90.9 x 7.18mm, while weight is a reasonable 219g. The phablet runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box.
The Honor Note 8 can be pre-ordered starting today, with sales kicking off on August 9. Prices start at CNY 2,299 ($345) for the 32GB base variant, twice the storage means CNY 2,499 ($375), and the 128GB top model will set you back CNY 2,799 ($420). Global availability remains to be detailed.
