Honor 8 Launched in India: Price, Release Date, Specifications, and More

As expected, Huawei Terminal's Honor brand on Wednesday launched its flagship smartphone in India - the Honor 8. The smartphone is a significant upgrade from its predecessor, and comes with a dual rear camera setup, a premium metal build, and a fingerprint scanner at the back. The Honor 8 (Review) smartphone is priced at Rs. 29,999, and will be available via Amazon India, Flipkart, and the Honor Online store from Wednesday itself, starting at 3pm IST. The smartphone will be made available in Sunrise Gold, Pearl White, and Sapphire Blue colour options.

(Also see: Honor 8 Review)

The Honor 8 will come with 24 months extended warranty, 3-month screen damage replacement warranty, 3-month replacement service for any manufacturing defects, and 'postal repair' - for a pan-Indi pick and drop service. The smartphone sports 2.5D glass protection on the front and back and has rounded metal edges. The smartphone has buttons on the display, and the volume and power buttons are housed on the right. It has a fingerprint scanner at the back which also comes with a physical press. Apart from unlocking the smartphone, it can be used to perform multiple functions such as opening apps, calling up Google Now, and scrolling through photos while viewing them in the Gallery.

(Also see: Honor First Impressions)

As mentioned, the Honor 8's big highlight is the dual camera setup at the back. The two 12-megapixel sensors do not protrude out of the smartphone, and sit neatly within the frame. The company claims that one sensor records colour information, while the other records in monochrome with higher contrast. The two images are then processed and merged together to give the best photo output to the user. The cameras feature f/2.2 aperture, laser autofocus and dual tone dual-LED flash.

Other features include screen-lock snapshot, virtual aperture shooting, night shot, professional mode, beauty mode, food mode, panorama, HDR, watermark, light painting, time-lapse, slow-motion, audio note, document scan, capture smiles, touch to capture, Sound Snap, delayed shooting, and face detection. There's also an additional 8-megapixel camera at the front, and its supports panoramic shots for selfies. The front camera has f/2.4 aperture, and supports 1080p video recording.

As for other specifications, the Honor 8 supports single-SIM (Nano-SIM) slots, and runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow with the company's EMUI 4.1 skin on top. It sports a 5.2-inch full-HD (1080x1920 pixels) LTPS LCD display with 96 percent NTSC and pixel density of 423ppi. The variant launched in India is powered by a 1.8GHz octa-core Kirin 950 processor paired with Mali-T880 GPU and 4GB of RAM. It offers 32GB of inbuilt storage which is expandable further via the microSD card (up to 128GB).

It is powered by a 3000mAh battery, which claims to offer up to 9-hours of online video streaming, and 24 hours for online music streaming. It also supports fast charging and claims to takes about 100 minutes to fully charge, and 30 minutes to charge up to 47 percent.

Connectivity options include 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth v4.2, GPS/ A-GPS, NFC, and an infrared scanner. The Honor 8 does not support FM Radio. The smartphone measures in at 145.5x71x7.45mm, and weighs 153 grams. Sensors on board include an accelerometer, an ambient light sensor, a gyroscope, and a proximity sensor.