Everything you need to know about the Honor 8 Pro

Huawei-owned Honor has just unveiled its latest smartphone, the Honor 8 Pro.

The device is positioned at the high-end market but priced at slightly less than some of its major competition like the Samsung Galaxy S7 and iPhone 7 Plus.

It's pitched as Honor's new "super flagship" phone, and comes equipped with some interesting new features.

To give you an easily digestible rundown of the new smartphone and all its features, we've broken down what it offers into chunks.

Gaming performance

The Honor 8 Pro is certainly no slouch. It contains a Huawei EMUI 5.1 960 octa-core processor (4x2.4GHz + 4x1.8GHz), Mali-G71 GPU and 6GB of RAM. But for graphical processing, it also supports the Vulkan API to deliver game performance improvements over its predecessor, that based on Open GL.

With this extra power, the company claims that all-round graphic performance is enhanced up to 400%.

To show off its capabilities, Honor has partnered with DS Fishlabs on Galaxy on Fire 3 - Manticore, and the firm claims the game runs slightly smoother than normal at around 30fps on its device, with colours also optimised for the title.

Design and Display

It's a sleek look for the Honor 8 Pro, and this time has been designed to be more consumer friendly. It comes in a few different colours: Platinum Gold, Midnight Black and Navy Blue.

The screen size is 5.7 inches, bigger than a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and iPhone 7 Plus. It's slightly slimmer too with a thickness of 6.97mm. It also features a 2560 x 1440 Quad HD display with 16 million colours.

One interesting point to note: the dual camera on the back is flush with the body of the phone – so they doesn't stick out at all.

Camera

Those cameras aren't designed to just be flush with the case, of course. The phone houses a 12MP + 12 MP dual-lens camera on the back and 8MP front-facing camera.

Thanks to its dual-camera, that can easily recognise depth when taking photos, users can access a wide aperture mode to make blurry backgrounds, giving some images a more professional look.

Supported photo resolution for the back camera is up to 3968x2976 and for video resolution up to 4K 30fps / 1080p 60 fps.

The front-facing camera, as expected, is less powerful. It supports photo resolution up to 3264x2448 and video resolution up to 1080p 30fps.

Battery

When it comes to battery life, Honor makes a lot of promises. It packs in a 4,000 mAh battery that's said to last for around 30 hours on 3G Airtime and its standby time is 21 days.

It also claims that through regular use, it'll last for two days and 1.44 days with heavy use – though it may last a bit less than this if you were to play intensive games for long periods of time.

As for charging your dead battery, it'll take an hour and 50 minutes to reach a full charge.

Virtual reality support and Google Cardboard included

A nice little feature of the Honor 8 Pro is the inclusion of Google Cardboard within the box design itself. That includes the cardboard headset and the lenses required to make VR work.

This means users can start trying simple VR experiences right out of the box, all powered by that 2560 x 1440 Quad HD display, powerful processor and GPU, and Vulkan API support. It is not Daydream-compatible, however.

The cost

Perhaps one of the most important things to know before buying a phone is the cost.

The Honor 8 Pro will cost £474.99.

That's with 64GB of storage space, but It'll cost more however to expand up to 128GB, which is the phone's limit.

In comparison, the iPhone 7 Plus starts at £819 for the 128GB model and while the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge starts at £599 for the 32GB model.

Technical Specifications:

• Huawei EMUI 5.1 (Android Nougat)
• 4,000 mAh battery
• 4 x 2.4GHz + 4x1.8Ghz octa-core processor
• 5.7 inch 16 million colour touchscreen
• 12-megapixel + 12-megapixel dual rear-facing camera
• 8-megapixel front-facing camera
• 6GB RAM
• Expandable storage up to 128GB, Micro SD
• 3.5mm headset jack
• Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, 2.4G/5G + Bluetooth BT4.2
• Colours: Platinum Gold / Midnight Black / Navy Blue
• VR support – Google Cardboard