Honor will show its next mid-range phones on Friday. The company told followers on Weibo on Monday to “see you on 13th November”. Reservations opened three days before that, with a deposit of about USD 15 or KES 1,900.
There are three phones:
- the Honor 700,
- Honor 700 Pro and
- Honor 700S.
All three are already on Honor’s online store as deposit-only listings with no price. Honor hasn’t given a time or a venue, and its store page still lists the launch event as “stay tuned”. So Friday could be a first look, with the full launch on a later date. We’ll update this piece either way.
The number series sits below Honor’s Magic flagships, which launched in September. All three 700 phones come in four colours: clear sky, pink mist, cold white and blue tone. The 700 and 700 Pro go up to 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. The 700S stops at 12GB of RAM, also with up to 512GB of storage.
The screen on the back
Every model gets what Honor calls an AI dynamic rear screen, a small display set into the camera block. Fang Fei, president of Honor’s product line, says it does rear-camera selfies, themes and an AI pet. Honor’s posters also show it with a heart-rate reading and a flight’s check-in counters, and Honor says you’ll be able to press and drag a GIF, emoji or photo onto it.
We think the selfie part is the most useful. The cameras on the back of a phone are better than the one on the front, so with a screen beside them you can see yourself and frame the shot with the better camera.
A second screen needs room and power, so you’d expect a thicker phone with less battery. Fang Fei says Honor avoided both. Honor quotes a thickness of 7.96mm and what it calls the largest battery in the price tier, without giving a capacity. For comparison, the Honor 600 Pro from May is 7.88mm, so Honor’s new figure is a fraction thicker.
What the leaks add
Apart from the thickness, every 700 series figure here comes from tipsters or a certification filing, not from Honor.
| Honor 700 series | Honor 600 Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Screen | 6.57-inch, 1.5K | 6.57-inch, 2728 x 1264 |
| Rear screen | 1.72-inch | None |
| Chip | Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 (700), Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 (Pro) | Dimensity 8550 Elite |
| Main camera | 200MP | 200MP |
| Telephoto | 50MP periscope on the Pro | 50MP periscope |
| Battery | Up to about 9,000mAh in the series | 8,000mAh |
| Charger | 80W | 80W wired, 50W wireless |
| Thickness | 7.96mm | 7.88mm |
| Price | Not announced | CNY 3,899 (about KES 76,000) at launch |
The chip line is the shakiest. On 24th October, the tipster who now names those two Snapdragon chips was asked whether the 700 series would get them. The answer was “no”, and not to expect much from the chip on this line. Another leak points to a Dimensity 8600 and a Snapdragon 8 Elite instead. The 80W is a certified charger’s rating, which doesn’t prove the phone charges that fast, though it matches the 600 Pro.
Will it come to Kenya?
Honor hasn’t said anything about a global launch. Last time, the global Honor 600 and 600 Pro went on sale in April, and they were different phones: the global 600 Pro has a Snapdragon 8 Elite and a 7,000mAh battery. Honor’s Middle East and Africa site lists both, but we’ve found no official Kenyan launch. So if a global 700 arrives, check its spec sheet, because the chip and the battery may not match what Honor launches on Friday.
We think Honor has shown plenty of the rear screen and very little else. The chip, the cameras, the battery and the price decide whether these are good phones, and none of them is official yet. The Chinese 600 Pro started at about USD 583 or KES 76,000, so that’s the number to hold the 700 Pro against.
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