Huawei Honor 8 Lite launches ahead of MWC 2017

Recently hinted to be launched at upcoming Mobile World Congress 2017 this month, Huawei Honor 8 Lite just got listed for pre-orders on a Finnish online retailer.

Following the speculation and rumors about the smartphone and recent appearance on a Finnish blog, the Honor 8 Lite is now officially available in Finland on an online retailer. Like previous iterations, Huawei has used an approach to sell a lighter version of its high-end smartphones for an affordable price.

This time Huawei did the same with its Honor brand having launched a “Lite” variant of the acclaimed Honor 8 smartphone. The Honor 8 Lite indeed features lower specifications (not greatly lowered anyway) but is cost effective as well as it comes with Android 7.0 Nougat software pre-installed with Huawei’s EMUI 5.0.

The Honor 8 Lite sports the same 5.2 inch screen with the exact full HD resoltion as the original model, also with the 2.5D curved glass on the front and the same reflective rear glass. The phone actually downgrades at the power with a mid-range Kirin 655 octa-core processor whereas the original Honor 8 has the high-end Kirin 950. The Lite model, instead of 4GB, stands at 3GB of RAM which is still great.

The internal storage of the Honor 8 Lite is what’s considerable which is only 16GB in space including ROM. However the phone features expandable memory via microSD card. The phone also features the fingerprint scanner – not sure, whether or not exactly a piece from original Honor 8 but it’s placed right there on the back.

Even though the dual-SIM phone features lower graded processor, it features the same 3000mAh battery as came with original Honor 8. It will be really great to have this capacity of backup as the phone still features similar display components.

Visually the rear camera is what makes the phone look different as the Honor 8 Lite features only the single camera module on the back unlike the dual-cam in Honor 8. The Lite model boasts a single 12-megapixel rear camera while features a similar 8-megapixel front-facing camera.

While the listing on the Finnish retailer is only offering a white version of the Honor 8 Lite, the blue, black and gold models were previously appeared with a covers suggesting to be launched at MWC 2017. The black variant was also shared by Huawei Finland on their Instagram page.

Honor 8 Lite wasn’t revealed via an official announcement but the listing on the Finnish retailer is official with the price tag of €269 or approximately $290 – it’s about PKR ~30,000/-. The phone is currently on pre-order and will be available from February 17th, 2017.