The economic headwinds are blowing. Supply chains are dealing with increased demand; worldwide growth, while still positive, is slowing; and household budgets are tightening. Smartphone manufacturers are not immune. While the flagship foldables and premium high-end phones continue to grab the headlines and drive innovation, the mid-range market is best suited to reach consumers when the wind is blowing. Honor is stepping into this storm with the Honor 600 family.
The Honor 600 Pro is pushing towards flagship territory thanks to the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, while the Honor 600 Lite chases the younger market thanks to the budget-friendly MediaTek Dimensity chipset over the Snapdragons featured in the 600 and 600 Pro. I’ve spent time with the mid-range Honour 600 ahead of the launch, which looks to balance specifications, budget, and appeal.
It’s going to be in direct competition with Samsung’s Galaxy S25 FE and Apple’s iPhone 17e. Once consumers start comparing features between these three handsets, what could make the Honor 600 stand out?
Thanks to the new silicon-carbon technology already available in Honor’s flagship Magic8 Pro, the Honor 600 features a 7,000 mAh battery, well above the two leading competitors. It’s also one of the easiest specifications for consumers to understand, where a bigger battery offers the clear benefit of their phone running for a longer time, potentially two full days and into a third day.
That’s coupled with 80W of wired charging and 27W of wireless charging. With the S25 FE offering 45W wired/15W wireless and the iPhone 17e’s 20W/15W pairing, it’s an easy, obvious win for the Honour 600.
There are a lot of AI techniques packed into any modern-day smartphone, and the Honor 600 is no exception. Most of those will go unnoticed by users, such as the predictive text AI used in Microsoft’s SwiftKey keyboard that ships with the Honor 600 – AI that has been present in SwiftKey for over fifteen years.
Yet some AI tools are being heavily promoted and stand out from those on competing smartphones, none more so than the camera. Much like “it has a bigger battery,” “it takes better pictures” is easy for consumers to grasp, and they don’t need to know the details of the AI processing that happens between the lens and the photo.
It probably helps consumer confidence that the rear of the Honor 600, with its very rectangular camera island running almost full width with the lenses left aligned, brings to mind another competitor, just begging for a comparison. Tucked into this is the wide-angle 200-megapixel main lens and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide lens (which also doubles as a macro lens). Both digital zoom and low-light processing are supported by AI. The former is a key part of the package, given the lack of a telephoto lens in the package, while the latter is part of a processing suite that brings AI to the color grading process.
Honor is highlighting the second version of AI Image to Video in the Honor 600’s software. This allows single or multiple images to be converted by a generative AI engine into short video clips, from multiple photos. Being generative-AI, the results can be scattershot. Processing the same image of a Classic Lego spaceship first showed lights around the ship; the second request saw the ship fly out of the frame, with the 600 making its ‘best guess’ of what the ship’s rear looks like.
Adding a prompt while offering multiple images can help guide the process to a limited extent, but it remains an AI-generated piece of media and the world’s relationship with these images and videos is… complicated.
I’m curious where these tools sit in the “it takes better pictures” discussion Honor is implicitly having with consumers. I don’t see a wave of these clearly AI-generated clips being regularly shared (which does not mean they aren’t out there). Perhaps these functions are loss leaders to grab consumer attention and get them into the door, and then the more subtle AI tools to process and edit the regular photos and videos captured by the Honor 600 will take over?
You have the battery (“It lasts longer”), you have the camera (“It takes better pictures”) and, finally, you have the various IP certifications that the Honor 600 is sporting. With IP68, IP69, and IP69K ratings, this is a robust handset. The latter is one of the highest ratings hardware can achieve, offering total dust protection and resistance to high-pressure and high-temperature water jets.
The Galaxy S25 FE has an IP68 rating, as does the iPhone 17e, so it’s another clear and obvious win when comparing the contenders. I bet people will still buy cases for it, though
Although it looks the part and would love to bring Apple’s geekerati to its own platform, the Honor 600 isn’t directly targeting the iPhone family, no matter the design. Instead, it’s targeting the competitive mid-range of the smartphone market. The specs are not only higher, but easy to see that they are higher, the Magic10 OS software is a comfortable Android experience for new users, and the overall package feels fresh and modern.
The Honor 600 has a simple value promise: it can offer higher specs, better performance, longer longevity, and greater flexibility than similarly priced smartphones.
Leave a comment