Honor Launches First Post-Huawei Phone

Honor, the Chinese smartphone brand formerly owned by Huawei, launched the V40, its first device since being sold off. CNBC reports: Huawei sold Honor, its budget smartphone brand, in November to a consortium of buyers in China, as a way to help the unit survive in the face of U.S. sanctions. In 2019, Huawei was put on a U.S. export blacklist called the Entity List which restricted American firms from selling certain components to the Chinese technology giant. This included both semiconductors and software.

Honor's new smartphone is called the V40. It boasts a 6.72-inch display and comes in three colors: silver, black and rose gold. Honor talked up the phone's graphics processing and touchscreen capabilities, features that enhance gaming on the device, a popular use of smartphones in China. It has the ability to connect to next-generation 5G mobile networks, a key requirement in China which is the world's largest market for 5G phones. The V40 uses a key 5G chip from Taiwan's MediaTek, a company which became China's number one smartphone semiconductor supplier in 2020. Honor's V40 starts at 3,599 yuan ($556) for the 128GB storage option and 3,999 yuan for the 256GB version. It will be released in China but it is unclear if it will be launched internationally.

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