Honor took part in one of the most exciting days of this month. Today, we had the release of two new Oppo Reno11 smartphones, the new Oppo Paid Air 2, and the Red Magic 9 series. As expected, Honor is also here to present the highly-anticipated Honor 100 and Honor 100 Pro. These two interesting devices come with interesting technologies and have the goal of keeping Honor as a relevant brand in the Chinese market and perhaps, will also make a good impression for global consumers. The Honor 100 is the world’s first smartphone with the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3, and the Honor 100 Pro boasts the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 with some interesting hardware. Without further ado, let’s see what these devices have in tow for the competitive market.
Honor 100
Starting off with the Honor 100, it is the entry model in the lineup. However, “entry” does not mean anything close to the mid-range market. Instead, we have an impressive smartphone with a nice set of specifications. It’s a thin 7.8 mm smartphone with a gorgeous 6.7-inch OLED display with 1,220 pixels of resolution and a fingerprint scanner under the display. Under the hood, we have the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 3. It’s Qualcomm’s newest chip for the premium mid-range market. It has 1 x ARM Cortex-A715 core that goes up to 3.15 GHz, three ARM Cortex-A715 cores at up to 2.4 GHz, and four Cortex-A510 cores at 1.8 GHz. It’s a powerful chipset that can handle anything on the Play Store without issues.
Honor decided to keep things simple in the camera setup. There are just two cameras on the back – a main 50 MP Sony IMX906 sensor with f/1.95 aperture and OIS, and a 12 MP ultrawide shooter with 112-FOV. The phone has a punch-hole cutout for the 50 MP selfie shooter. Yes, it has an impressive camera on the front for the best-quality selfies.
One interesting feature in the Honor 100 series is the exclusive RF chip C1 for better calls. The C1 chip determines the best cell tower to connect to, and when there is Wi-Fi connectivity, the phone can switch effortlessly between networks. Honor promises the two devices to have smoother calls on high-speed train rides, and ensures that internet and video will run smoothly in the subway and elevators.
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The Honor 100 draws power from a huge 5,000 mAh battery with the charger provided in the retail box. The phone has 100W fast-charging, NFC, Honor Histen Sound, and MagicOS 7.2 running on top of Android 13.
Pricing and Availability for the Honor 100
The vanilla phone starts from CNY 2,499 ($350) for the variant with 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of Storage. There are four color options to choose from – Black, White, Blue, or Purple. The phone can be ordered at the Honor China website.
Honor 100 Pro
The Honor 100 Pro has a huge 6.78-inch OLED display with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 running the show. The Honor 100 may be decent with the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3, but the 100 Pro will be the best option for those who want extreme performance on gaming.
Honor keeps the 50 MP main camera and the 12 MP ultrawide shooter from the vanilla. However, it adds a third 32 MP camera that can achieve 50x Zoom. The phone misses a periscope lens, so we assume that this zoom is achieved via software. Anyway, the phone features OIS for smooth video recording and steady images.
The Honor 100 Pro boasts the same 5,000 mAh battery with 100W charging as its sibling. However, the phone also adds 66W wireless charging. According to Honor, this is enough to bring the phone from flat to 100% in just 42 minutes.
Honor also took the opportunity to tease its VC cooling solution with a 4,674 sq. mm total area in only a 0.35 mm thin component. It should keep thermals in control even on demanding usage. Apart from the exclusive features, the Honor 100 Pro brings most of the vanilla’s specs. That includes Bluetooth 5.3, Wi-Fi 6, RF C1 chip, and Magic OS 7.2.
Pricing and Availability
The Honor 100 Pro is already up for sale in four colors – Black, Blue, Purple, and White. The Purple and While colors have a faux leather texture on the back. The prices for the premium variant start at CNY 3,399 ($480) for a 12/256GB model, and CNY 4,399 ($620) for the 16GB/1TB variant. The latter is limited to the Purple and White colorways.