Huawei tries something new, relaunches the Honor 6 smartphone without the Huawei name

By Andy Boxall October 29, 2014

Huawei has re-announced the Honor 6 smartphone, and is using it to spearhead a new campaign to break into the European market. The phone, originally launched back in June, will be sold through a few online retailers, and the hihonor.com online store, which is operated by Huawei. The company is relegating its own name to the background, and seems to be promoting the Honor brand instead.

It’s not the first time Huawei has considered altering its name to improve awareness in international markets. Rival Chinese brand ZTE has also toyed with the same idea using its Nubia brand name. While the Huawei name has become better known over the past year, it still doesn’t have the same recognition as Samsung, LG, or HTC. That doesn’t mean Honor will save it though, as any prospective buyers in the UK will look at the name and wonder why someone has spelled “Honour” incorrectly.

Back to the phone. The Honor 6 doesn’t have a 6-inch display, as the name suggests, but a 5-inch panel with a 1080p resolution. One of Huawei’s own 1.3GHz, octa-core Kirin 920 chips powers the device, and it drives Android 4.4 with the Emotion UI over the top. There’s an impressive 3GB of RAM to assist the processor, and the phone comes with 16GB of internal memory, plus a MicroSD card expansion slot.

A 13-megapixel camera sits on the rear, and a 5-megapixel selfie cam is fitted above the screen. Both have the ability to shoot panoramic photos. The phone’s chassis is very slim at 6.5mm, and the whole device weighs 135 grams, making it very compact for the size of the screen. Huawei claims it has a 75.7 percent screen-to-body ratio, meaning the bezels around the screen are relatively slim. For comparison, this slightly improves on the similarly sized LG G3 Beat’s 74.1 percent ratio.

Huawei has priced the Honor 6 very competitively. It’s £250 (that’s about $400) without a contract through Amazon in the UK, and should cost around 270 euros throughout Europe. Huawei hasn’t launched the Honor 6 in America, but it has tested a similar strategy with the Ascend Mate 2.

Editors' Recommendations

Senior Mobile Writer

Andy is a Senior Writer at Digital Trends, where he concentrates on mobile technology, a subject he has written about for…

Mobile

Global Honor 20 launch marred by fear, as Huawei gets squeezed by U.S. ban

honor 20 pro

The launch of the Honor 20 series may be the first new device range to be seriously hit by Huawei’s presence on the Entity List, which prevents the company from purchasing U.S.-made goods and services without U.S. government approval. Huawei executives are reportedly watching the forthcoming European launch closely, according to anonymous sources speaking to Bloomberg. There is some expectation that sales will be poor, which may force it to cut off shipments.

Honor will launch the Honor 20 on June 21 in the U.K., France, and other European countries. The Honor 20 Pro does not have a final international release date yet, and may not arrive until July. Bloomberg’s sources state two major French carriers will not stock Honor devices at all. Refusal to stock Honor’s latest smartphones may derive from concerns the devices will not have access to future Google Android software updates, although Honor has stated the Honor 20 series is not affected by the ban.

Mobile

Here’s how iOS 18 could change the way you use your iPhone

The lock screen on the Apple iPhone 15 Plus.

It seems the long-overdue Siri overhaul will finally arrive at WWDC in just over a week from now, and the digital assistant will embrace AI trickery in all its forms. According to Bloomberg, Apple’s planned upgrades for Siri will deeply integrate with on-device functions at the OS level and with the installed apps, too.

“The new system will allow Siri to take command of all the features within apps for the first time,” the report says. The most notable capability is that Siri will only require voice prompts to interact with apps, thanks to a major change in the AI architecture powering it and putting large language models in command, just the way Gemini or ChatGPT draw their own skills from such models.

Mobile

The Apple Watch Series 9 has a nice price cut today

The Apple Watch Series 9's camera app, showing the viewfinder and the zoom feature.

Apple Watch Series 9 Andy Boxall / Digital Trends

The Apple Watch Series 9 is one of the most confusing watches out there. It was banned due to a sort of IP issue with its blood Oxygen sensing tech. Then, the ban was lifted in late 2023. And, finally, the ban got reinstated (sorta) earlier this year. So, can you get the watch? Surprisingly, not only is the answer "yes" but also "yes, and on sale!" Right now you can get a 41mm version of the somewhat controversial watch that rests at the top of our list of the best smartwatches for just $429. That's $70 down from the usual $499. Tap the button below to find your watch or keep reading to see all the details about what it can do.