Huawei Unveils Honor 7 Smartphone In China With Premium Appeal And Impressive Features

Huawei has officially announced the Honor 7, a smartphone for the upper midrange market. It will succeed the Huawei Honor 6 that was released in 2014. Preorders for the new device have already started in China. It will start shipping there beginning next Tuesday.

The chassis of the Honor 7 is made from an aluminum alloy and comes in three colors -- silver, gold and dark gray. It houses a 5.2-inch display that supports full HD resolution.

Instead of using the Snapdragon or MediaTek chipset, Huawei has used its home-baked Kirin 935 chipset that contains an octa-core processor and Mali-T628 graphics. The SoC is supported by 3 GB of RAM.

The rear camera on the device is of 20 MP and it comes with a dual-LED flash. The camera lens is protected by sapphire glass. On the front, there is an 8 MP selfie camera. Below the rear camera, there is a fingerprint scanner.

The Honor 7 will be available in three variants. The single SIM variant comes with an internal storage capacity of 16 GB and is priced at 1,999 yuan ($320). The dual-SIM variant costs 2,199 yuan ($355). The 64 GB dual-SIM version is priced at 2,499 yuan ($400).

The expandable storage on the Honor 7 supports up to 128 GB on a microSD flash memory card. All three variants support LTE and NFC connectivity.

The handset will come loaded with Google's Android 5.0 Lollipop operating system, overlaid with an Emotion 3.1 launcher. Huawei has added a battery of 3,100 mAh capacity on the device along with quick-charging support.

As of this writing, there is no confirmation as to when the Honor 7 will be made available outside China. During the launch event in Beijing, the company also introduced the Honor Band Zero wearable device and the Honor Whistle Bluetooth headset, reports Cnet.

Huawei is rumored to be partnering with Google in releasing the purported Huawei Nexus 2015 smartphone later this year. However, there is no confirmation from Google.