Hands-on with the new Honor 4X
Joining the Honor 6 Plus is the Honor 4X, a 5.5-inch, 4G-friendly phone that sits below the 6 Plus. It's a mid-range phone at heart and doesn't have has standout feature like the 6 Plus's dual cameras. What it does have is a 64-bit processor and dual SIM card support. It's going to be priced between the Honor 6 and the Holly which, means it could cost anywhere from £110 up to £250.
The design is not all that inspiring. From the front, it has that glossy, piano black look you find on a large majority of phones. Around the back there's a more textured finish with a cross-stich effect that offers a sturdy grip. It weighs 170g and measures in at 8.65mm thick so it's not super slim but it's far from bulky.
Behind the removable back lies a non-removable 3,000mAh battery, the micro SD to expand storage beyond 8GB and the dual SIM card slots. Unlike the Honor 6 Plus, the 4X sticks to a 720p HD display and runs on Android 4.4 KitKat with Honor's EMUI 3.0 on top. That does mean living without an app drawer, but aside from that, you'll have all the core Android features at your disposal.
For photos, there's a 13-megapixel main camera and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera, but power is the headline feature here. 64-bit processors have made their way into more expensive phones like the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the iPhone 6.
So it's a rarity to find a mid-range with a similar setup. It also has 2GB of RAM, where most mid-range phones normally offer 1GB less to handle multitasking.
Early verdict
Unlike the Honor 6 Plus, the 4+ is a more underwhelming announcement. It doesn't have a particularly bad set of specs and should be another solid mid-range phone from Honor but nothing more than that. Dual SIM is becoming more common place in phones like the Moto G 2 and having a 64-bit processor sound impressive, but I don't think the 4X is going to be one of the standout phones of the year.
