Pretend Huawei’s troubles never happened
Honor has long been known as one of Huawei’s sub-brands, and with all of Huawei’s US woes, Honor phones were also affected — just like Huawei handsets, Honor devices became notorious for their lack of Google apps. To ensure the survival of the brand, Huawei sold off the Honor name not too long ago. And under new ownership, the manufacturer recently unveiled the Honor 50, a phone that works properly in the West thanks to the presence Google apps and services. Now you’re finally getting your chance to buy that smartphone outside its Chinese home market.
The Honor 50 looks an eerily lot like some Huawei phones (ie the Huawei P50), and it’s actually identical spec-wise to the Huawei Nova 9, with the primary difference being that the Honor 50 supports 5G (the Nova 9 is 4G-only) and has a 108MP camera sensor instead of a 64MP unit. Otherwise, specs and design are the same, down to a matching Snapdragon 778G CPU, screen size, hole punch, and odd-shaped rear camera setup. This suggests that Huawei and Honor are still sharing R&D despite being different companies, or at least did back when these phones were being designed and developed.
Of course, the detail that’s grabbing all our interest is the fact that this phone is actually using Google apps now. Huawei never actually stop selling phones globally, and it was still possible to buy phones like last year’s Huawei P40-series in markets like Europe. Still, the appeal to buy those phones was greatly diminished. Huawei provided some measure of a replacement for Google services in the form of the Huawei AppGallery and Huawei Mobile Services (HMS), but that wasn’t enough to sway a lot of shoppers, as Google is actually kind of a key part of Android if you want your phone to work fine in Western markets. This isn’t actually Huawei now, but it’s probably the closest we’re going to get to a Huawei phone with GMS.
The Honor 50 is available now in markets like the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. It’s retailing for 529 euros for the version with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, while a bump to 8GB of RAM will set you back 599 euros.
Read Next
About The Author
