Huawei Honor 5X Lands In Europe And UK, Honor 7 Premium Coming (Somewhere) In March

Huawei, which has been making great strides lately in increasing not just its global market share in smartphones, but also its market share in the U.S. and Europe, announced that its affordable Honor 5X smartphone launched in UK and other European countries.

The device costs only £190 in the UK, but it looks more like a higher-end device and offers the specifications you’d find on an upper mid-range device. The phone comes with an octa-core Snapdragon 616 chip, a 5.5” Full HD IPS display, 2 GB of RAM, 16 GB of storage, a 13MP rear camera with f/2.0 aperture and 28mm wide-angle lens, a 5MP camera with an 88-degree wide viewing angle optimized for selfies, and a 3,000mAh battery, which seems to be standard in such large devices these days. The device also supports dual-SIM (micro-SIM and nano-SIM) and a microSD slot.

Because fingerprint sensors are rapidly gaining popularity even in lower-priced smartphones, the Honor 5X brings a fingerprint sensor as well. The company promises an unlock response time of 0.5 seconds and high accuracy in identifying the fingerprint patterns. It uses a capacitive FPC1025 sensor from Fingerprint Cards AB with a 192x192 pixel matrix at 508 dpi.

The Honor 5X also takes advantage of the fingerprint sensor in ways that most phones do not. From matching different fingerprints with the launching of different apps, to locking files individually or in an "Access Safe." In the latter’s case, you have to choose a passphrase that is then used to encrypt local files, and you can associate a fingerprint with the passphrase making it easier to unlock the specific files or apps.

The Honor 5X is available in three colors (gold, silver and grey) on Huawei's vMall web store, Amazon, Clove and Ebuyer, as well as in three UK stores February 12. Those who want to get it in the U.S. can order it from the company's U.S. store, Amazon or Newegg for $200.

Huawei also announced the Honor 7 Premium, a 5.2” Full-HD smartphone with the company’s own 2.2 GHz Hisilicon Kirin 935 processor, 3 GB of RAM, 32 GB of storage, a 20MP rear-camera, a 5MP front-facing camera with flash, a 3,100 mAh battery, and its own fast-charger included. The Honor 7 Premium will go on sale in March 2016 in Gold and Mystery Grey.

Huawei would not reveal where the Honor 7 Premium would be available, but given its recent push into new markets, we wouldn't be surprised to see it land in the U.S., UK and Europe. We'll probably learn more at Mobile World Congress later this month.

Lucian Armasu is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware. You can follow him at @lucian_armasu. 

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