Latest news with #Honor
Business Times
4 hours ago
- Business
- Business Times
China's Honor developing humanoid robots in US$10 billion AI plan
HONOR Device, the smartphone maker spun out from Huawei Technologies, is developing humanoid robots as part of its push into China's crowded artificial intelligence (AI) arena. The Shenzhen-based company's department for new business opportunities has decided to go further with robotics including human-shaped machines, it said on Wednesday (May 28). It announced in March a US$10 billion initiative to expand into new industries, with a focus on AI and novel applications. China is leading the way in humanoid robotics with a handful of promising startups that have recently raised their profile. Last month, Beijing hosted a robot half-marathon that was completed by only a few of the 21 robots that entered. Nvidia chief Jensen Huang has said the field has the potential to turn into a trillion-dollar industry, especially in factories and warehouses designed for human workers. Honor's expansion into robots would mirror efforts by the likes of Xiaomi, which has gotten into making electric vehicles and smart factories, to diversify away from commodity electronics. Such as rivals Oppo and Vivo, Honor is building its own agentic AI services that will be integrated into its software for smartphones and other devices. BLOOMBERG
Phone Arena
14 hours ago
- Business
- Phone Arena
Honor 400 5G Review: Form meets function
The Honor 400 5G is the latest mid-ranger, part of Honor's "number" series. The phone launched on 21 May and comes in two flavors, a "Pro" version and a vanilla 400. Today we're going to focus on the core model. The 256GB version of the Honor 400 5G starts at €499, which puts it in direct contention with the Samsung Galaxy A56, the Pixel 9a, and the iPhone 16e - three midrange phones from the three biggest brands out there. Honor managed to achieve this attractive price tag by cutting some corners in some areas, while in others the phone excels, challenging even flagships. Time to take a deeper look. The Honor 400 5G managed a composite score of 6.4, which is right between its main competitors — the Galaxy A56 (6.1) and the iPhone 16e (6.6). The final score is dragged down by the lack of wireless charging and the somewhat low video score, but the phone does well in the main camera department, wired charging, and also the display part. Let's start with an overview of the Honor 400 5G specs: The design language of the Honor number series has certainly changed. The core model now employs a much more modern flat design, with flat sides, front, and back. Some might argue that this design has become so widespread that most modern phones look the same, and this is true to some extent. The Honor 400 5G, however, has a very distinctive and unique camera housing. This camera bump has the shape of a trapezoid with rounded corners and houses two big vertically positioned circles—for the main and ultrawide cameras. There's an offset smaller circle with an LED flash inside. Overall, the end result is pretty stylish, especially in the Desert Gold color variant. The size and weight of the phone are average—right in the middle with the 6.55-inch screen and the weight of 184 grams. In the hand the phone feels sturdy and substantial, well-made, without any flex or weird sounds when put under load and pressure. All the available colors for the Honor 400 5G | Image by Honor We already mentioned the Desert Gold color option (it's the best in our opinion), but you can get the phone in two other hues—Midnight Black, Meteor Silver. There's a special color called Tidal Blue but at the moment it's not available globally. A modest retail box, just in line with what other brands are doing (bye-bye included chargers and cases) | Image by PhoneArena Sadly, another trend has caught up with the Honor 400 5G, and it's the barebones retail box one. There's no charging brick included, nor any back cover or case. You get only the phone and a USB-C cable. A small bonus is the pre-applied screen protector. These are the times we're living in. A gorgeous AMOLED screen that's plenty bright | Image by PhoneArena Moving to one of the best features of the Honor 400 5G—its display. The 6.55-inch AMOLED panel is great—bright, vibrant, and smooth. Honor claims 5000 nits of peak brightness, which is overkill and probably measured with a very small portion of the display lit, but we have tested these claims in our lab, and the results are below. The Honor 400 5G managed to shine with around 1600 nits both at 20% APL and with the whole display lit, which goes to show that there's a limit set on the brightness. Nevertheless, this result is pretty impressive, and in real life the phone is legible even under very bright sunlight. Other metrics, such as color accuracy, minimum brightness and color temperature, are also up there with much more expensive models. The Honor 400 goes down to just 1.5 nits of minimum brightness, and also sports an average deltaE of 1.22—very good color calibration from the factory. In terms of biometrics, we have an under-screen optical fingerprint scanner, which is the most popular solution nowadays. It's not as fast or as accurate as an ultrasonic one but gets the job done. The classic wide-ultrawide combination on the back of the Honor 400 5G | Image by PhoneArena We do all kind of scientific measurements in our lab in order to produce camera score that is as objective as possible. The Honor 400 5G main camera scores a decent result, and even though the phone doesn't have a dedicated telephoto, the zoom results are also decent (thanks to crops from the huge main sensor). Where the phone lags behind is video, both shot with the main camera and the ultrawide. The selfie result is pretty good, though. Honor went down the well traveled road of dual camera systems, slapping a main and ultrawide cameras on the back of the Honor 400 5G. What grabs attention is the 200MP sensor under the lens of the main camera. The sensor itself is 1/1.4", so decently large, and it sits under lens with f/1.9 aperture. The ultrawide camera is nothing to write home about. There's a 12MP sensor, the aperture is f/2.2 and we've got 112-degree field of view. You can check out some samples below. All in all, just like our lab tests showed, the main camera of the Honor 400 5G is doing the heavy lifting. It produces quite pleasant and detailed photos with wide dynamic range and accurate colors. The ultrawide is just okay, there's some loss of detail due to the small-ish sensor but nothing major. As the phone doesn't have a dedicated telephoto, all zoom shots are either 2x crops from the main sensor (which are quite nice, as there are more than enough pixels at hand), or digital (4x). The selfie shots are also pleasant, thanks to the 50MP selfie camera, one of the largest pixel-count-wise on a phone in this price range. You can check out the quick video sample above. The image stabilization is decent, and the detail is good, but colors seem a bit weird and there are occasional exposure troubles here and there. In our lab, the video quality scored somewhat low, but in real life it's decent and gets the job done. MagicOS 9 powered by a Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 | Image by PhoneArena Unlike the "Pro" model, the vanilla Honor 400 5G comes equipped with a midrange Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 processor. There's 8GB of RAM on all storage variants (256GB and 512GB), and this constitutes the average midranger (forming sort of a tautology). Unsurprisingly, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 is not really a powerhouse. The CPU scores put the phone last, compared to the relevant competitors from the three biggest brands. Even the Pixel 9a with its Tensor G4 is faster, and the Samsung A56 (the main rival, as we see it) is also faster in raw synthetic CPU benchmarks. That said, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 gets the everyday job done decently, there aren't any lags or stutters during normal day-to-day tasks, and you can play games if you like, the phone is more than capable of handling most of those as well. GPU Performance Speaking of games, the GPU performance is a bit better on the Honor 400 compared to what the Exynos inside the Galaxy A56 achieved, so it's a consolation of sorts. If you want the most power for the least amount of cash, though, the iPhone 16e is unbeatable in this particular task with its A18 chip inside. Honor 400 5G Software The Honor 400 5G comes running MagicOS 9 out of the box, based on Android 15. There are some clever AI tricks on board, carried over from the flagship Magic series. You can use Magic Portal to quickly select images and text and send them to another app. You can also translate text and audio in real time, get help with your writing, and generate subtitles for songs, movies, etc. There's also a deepfake detection feature that uses AI and can detect spam audio and video calls. But the really cool AI feature comes from Google, and it's called Image to Video. This can be found inside the Gallery app under the tab select a photo to be turned into a video, and after a couple of seconds, you get a pretty amazing result. People start walking, cars start driving, and old oil paintings come to life. It's a neat feature, and you can do a lot of cool stuff with it—for example, take a black and white picture of your great-grandfather and make it move. Finally, Honor stepped up its game with the software updates and now offers up to 6 years of major OS updates for the Honor 400 5G, matching what Samsung is doing with the Galaxy A56 . Honor is now well into the fourth generation of its silicon-carbon batteries, so we expected great things from the 5,300 mAh cell inside the Honor 400 5G. Especially given the midrange chipset. Sadly, the phone performs rather mediocre, getting beaten by competitors with smaller batteries (e.g. the Galaxy A56 ), and the main culprit seems to be browsing score. The phone manages just 13 hours, where competitors are able to go for 17-20 hours in the same test. The Honor 400 5G supports up to 66W of wired charging power, and this juice fills the battery from zero to full in 45 minutes. In this particular area the Honor outperforms its competitors, which all need twice as long (or even longer) to charge to full. Fast wired charging but no wireless - it is what it is | Image by PhoneArena The other area where Honor cut some corners is wireless charging. Or the lack of it. There are no wireless charging coils inside the Honor 400, and there's not much else to be said about it. If you're into using this tech, it will be a drawback for you. When it comes to audio we were pleasantly surprised by the Honor 400 and its stereo system. The loudness is decent and there's almost no harmonic distortion even at max volume. You can spot some in the high frequency, but all in all, the audio quality is quite good. There's no 3.5 mm headphone jack, so you need to rely on Bluetooth headphones or use an adapter. In terms of haptic feedback, the vibration produced by the motor inside the phone is strong and also tight, you won't miss a notification or a call in silent mode. It's a good-looking device, but is it enough for a buying decision? | Image by PhoneArena Time for the million-dollar question! Should you buy the Honor 400 5G? The answer, anticlimactically, is it depends. The phone does some things right and neglects others. For starters, the display is beautiful—thin bezels, bright and colorful, sharp and detailed. The main camera is also pretty decent; not many phones in this price range get the 200MP treatment in this the wired charging is pretty fast, and we can't overlook the design (quite literally). Last but not least, the Honor 400 comes with the promise of 6 years of major OS updates, though we're not sure if the hardware will manage to live up to that promise. Now, not everything is roses, though. The Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 is not the fastest midrange processor, and we doubt it will be able to keep the phone running smoothly for 6 long years. There's no wireless charging, and the video quality is not on par with the competition. But you get what you pay for, in the end. For €499, the Honor 400 5G offers quite a decent package. If you want to go against the grain and not reach out and grab a Galaxy A56 or a Pixel 9a , this phone could be a decent alternative.
South China Morning Post
15 hours ago
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Smartphone maker Honor joins robotics race after pledging US$10 billion AI investment
Chinese smartphone maker Honor has joined the country's heated race to develop robots, as it aims to reposition itself as an artificial intelligence (AI) player amid heightened competition in the Android handset market. Honor said on Wednesday that it would develop its own robots, and that it had already helped Chinese start-up Unitree Robotics break the record for running speed by a humanoid robot. The Shenzhen-based firm, a spin-off from telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies, said that its robotics efforts would include working with partners 'to enable more possibilities'. Honor's intended foray into China's crowded robotics space comes after its newly appointed CEO James Li Jian announced a high-profile AI initiative earlier this year that he called the 'Honor Alpha plan'. The plan will see the firm invest US$10 billion over the next five years to transform itself from a smartphone maker into 'an ecosystem company' focused on AI devices, Li said ahead of the MWC Barcelona trade show in Spain in March. Honor used its proprietary AI algorithm to train a robot from Chinese start-up Unitree. The machine achieved a peak running speed of 4-metres per second, breaking the record for humanoid robots, the company said on Wednesday at a launch event in Shenzhen for its new Honor 400 series handsets.
Phone Arena
2 days ago
- Business
- Phone Arena
Samsung and Apple's underperformance causes rare decline for Europe's smartphone market
While the mobile industry as a whole grew in Q1 2025 according to all major analytics firms, the latest report compiled by Counterpoint Research puts one of the largest smartphone markets in the world at a worrying impasse. That's far from shocking given that China's estimates for the opening 90 days of the year were up 5 percent compared to Q1 2024 at the same time that global figures only increased by 1 percent (or less). Still, it's certainly disappointing to see Europe's first-quarter smartphone shipments go down by 4 percent between last year and this year, especially when you consider that the two biggest vendors out there happened to release new devices that were expected to sell like hotcakes at the beginning of 2025. No, I'm not expecting you to try to guess the name of Europe's top smartphone market performer in the January-March 2025 timeframe and I'm not going to keep you waiting either. That's Honor rather than Samsung or Apple, although the latter two are still the old continent's first and second most successful vendors with 33 and 26 percent of the quarter's total shipments respectively. Honor is the only big gainer among Europe's top five smartphone vendors this quarter. But while Samsung's numbers fell by 2 percent and Apple improved its sales by... 2 percent, Honor somehow managed to jump 20 percent between Q1 2024 and Q1 2025, ranking fourth overall after overtaking Realme. Honor, mind you, made the quarterly top five for the first time a year ago, and if its "continued aggressive strategy in Europe", well, continues, the Chinese brand could surpass domestic arch-rival Xiaomi next to crack the regional podium (also for the first time). Xiaomi, in case you're wondering, is performing worse than Samsung but better than the "Others" category, losing 8 percent of the smartphone shipments racked up in Europe between January and March 2024. That "Others" segment (which obviously includes all kinds of companies from Motorola to Oppo, Vivo, and OnePlus) might be largely responsible for the market's aforementioned 4 percent decline. That's the first such negative result posted in Europe in four quarters, although analysts remain confident (despite all the uncertainty surrounding Donald Trump's tariff policies) that sales could return to growth "by the end of the year." Released in early February around the world, Samsung's ultra-high-end Galaxy S25 trio was supposed to improve on the global box-office performance of last year's Galaxy S24, S24 Plus, and S24 Ultra. But at least in Europe in Q1, that doesn't seem to have happened, and Counterpoint researchers think Samsung's lack of major upgrades is largely to blame for the S25 family's obvious underperformance. The iPhone 16e and Galaxy S25 are not the box-office hits their manufacturers initially expected. | Image Credit -- PhoneArena Apple's budget-friendly iPhone 16e, meanwhile, is at the same time named as the driving force behind its maker's (modest) year-on-year sales increase and described as a "relatively poor" seller in Europe compared to "some" other regions. That may sound contradictory at first, but if you think about it, it makes sense and it kind of perfectly characterizes a device that's too affordable to fail but too expensive to set the industry on fire. Basically, the best way to describe the iPhone 16e 's sales results on the old continent seems to be as mixed, which is naturally not what can be said about such massively popular Honor handsets as the entry-level X6b, mid-end 20 series, and high-end Magic 7 and V3. Clearly, that type of broad, all-encompassing, and all-pleasing product portfolio is the best growth strategy in Europe... and not only in Europe right now.
AsiaOne
2 days ago
- AsiaOne
Honor 400 Series launches in Singapore with first free in-device AI image-to-video tool, Digital News
If you think that advertising the ability to turn images into short video clips as a phone feature seems silly, don't forget that only two months ago, the world was beside itself, turning the most humdrum photos into Ghibli-style animation frames. Part of the reason for the spike in popularity? It was relatively easy to use. And so it is with the Honor 400 Series: the phone features tools that change how we create and share content; the standout AI image-to-video tool-developed with Google Cloud — turns static photos into five-second MP4s, animated by AI. Typically, like all new AI features, you need some know-how and likely some credit spend to do this — far from user-friendly. One caveat — it's limited to 10 activations a day, which should be fine for all except the most-obsessed. On the Honor 400 Series, it's just part of the phone. Flagship-tier specs, mid-tier pricing The lineup includes the Honor 400 ($599) and the Honor 400 Pro ($899). Both feature the same AI suite, which makes the entry model more than just a spec-cut option. The Pro runs a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, 12GB of RAM + 12GB Turbo RAM, and 512GB storage. The regular 400 uses a Snapdragon 7 Gen 3, with the same 12+12GB RAM combo and 256GB storage. Both models feature 1.5K AMOLED panels, 120Hz refresh, and 5,000 nits peak brightness. However, the Pro has a 6.7-inch quad-curved screen with Natural Tone Display support, while the Honor 400 has a slightly smaller 6.55-inch flat AMOLED screen. The 6,000mAh battery is shared across both models, with the Pro supporting 100W wired and 50W wireless charging (44 per cent in 15 minutes) and the regular 400 limited to 80W wired (40 per cent in 15 minutes). Both phones are IP-rated and wrapped in reinforced glass, with the Pro offering IP68 and IP69 water/dust protection and the 400 covering IP66. Cameras: Pro vs practical The 400 Pro gets the full flagship camera treatment with a dedicated 50MP telephoto lens, 3x optical zoom, and up to 50x AI-enhanced zoom-backed by the Sony IMX856 sensor. The regular 400 skips the telephoto entirely and offers up to 30x digital zoom using the main sensor. Both share the same 200MP main shooter and 50MP selfie cam, but only the Pro gets AI Enhanced Portrait, a feature aimed at improving clarity and background separation in tight portraits. The 400 Series supports Honor's Harcourt Portrait mode, inspired by the cinematic black-and-white portraits of 1930s Paris. However, only the Pro gets the full treatment: additional styles like Harcourt Colour and Harcourt Vibrant, plus AI Enhanced Portrait for better edge detail and background blur. The regular 400 keeps things simpler, with the core Harcourt look and standard filters. You still get AI Portrait Snap on both-handy for freezing motion without losing sharpness — but if you want the dramatic studio effect dialled up, the Pro does it better. AI for casual content creation and productivity Cameras can't just be cameras these days, especially when phones like the Honor 400 Series offer tons of easy-to-use, editing tools: AI Cutout to lift people or objects from images and reposition them AI Eraser 2.0 to remove photobombers or reflections with a tap AI Outpainting to extend cropped photos AI Upscale and Face Tune for cleaning up older or imperfect images Moving Photo Collage, which stitches multiple Live Photos into a single animated story For productivity, Honor adds features like AI Notes (summarise, format, correct text), Live Translation (real-time subtitles for phone calls in six languages), and Magic Portal 2.0, which lets users circle objects on the screen to trigger app-specific actions — like searching, shopping, or booking rides. There's even Deepfake Detection, first introduced in the Magic 7 Pro, built into video calls, aimed at identifying AI-generated faces in real time. Not competing on AI power but on usability At $599-$899, the Honor 400 Series finds itself against some of the most recognisable names in the mid-flagship range: Pixel 9a ($799), Samsung Galaxy S25 ($1,098), and even Honor's own Magic series. So, what is its niche? Honor is essentially trying to offer competitive specs for the price, but integrates simple, helpful AI features as a value-add without asking you to buy into an ecosystem or pay extra for creative tools. Most phones with AI talk about efficiency. This one lets you remake your dad's 1987 passport photo into a motion clip. And it doesn't charge you tokens to do it. Sometimes, that's more than enough. Availability in Singapore Pre-orders run from now through May 29, 2025, with bonuses including: Honor 400 Pro: Earbuds Clip, Watch 2i, phone case, and 1-year extended warranty (worth $436) Honor 400: Earbuds X6, Watch 2i, phone case, and 1-year extended warranty (worth $337) Purchase and telco availability begins May 30, 2025, with listings on Honor, Shopee, Lazada, and major retailers, as well as experience stores (Causeway Point and NEX) and Singtel, M1, StarHub telco plans. [[nid:715791]] This article was first published in
