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Honor 5X finally lands in Europe following Munich launch (+ hands-on video)

The Honor 5X, a 5.5-inch all-metal phone costing under £200, launched in China at the tail end of 2015 and arrived Stateside earlier this year. Now it’s the UK’s turn as the Honor 5X launches in Europe.

As the name suggests, the 5X is the follow-up entry-level device to last year’s Honor 4X and as the company proudly announced at launch, it’s another smartphone squarely aimed at ‘digital natives’ (shudder). Awkward terminology aside though, on first impressions the 5X looks like a legitimately promising mix of price and performance.

Read next: Our full in-depth Honor 5X review

At a glance

Screen size 5.5-inches
Screen resolution Full HD (1920×1080)
Weight 158 grams
OS Android 5.1 Lollipop
Rear camera 13-megapixels
Front camera 5-megapixels
Processor 1.2GHz/1.7GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 616
Memory 2GB
Storage 16GB. Expandable via microSD up to 128GB
4G Yes
Bonus features Dual-SIM w/ microSD card, Perfect Selfie mode

The DNA from other Honor phones, such as last year’s Honor 7, is clearly visible and whilst we’re not entirely sure that we agree with the notion that Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Spain served as the design inspiration for the 5X, it features premium touches like a brushed metal back, with only a few plastic elements and can be had in grey, gold or silver, supposedly to reflect the museum at dawn, day and dusk.

At launch it comes running Android 5.1 Lollipop dressed in the company’s own EMUI (Emotion UI) 3.1 skin, but Honor is hoping to push out an update to Android 6.0 Marshmallow before the end of March with a bump to EMUI 4.0 soon after.

The Honor 5X launches today on Vmall – Huawei and Honor’s European online retail site, with plans to bring it Three and Amazon soon after. The best bit – it costs just £189.99, which for a dual-SIM 4G phone with a Full HD screen and expandability up to 128GB, is pretty insane. Similarly priced handsets include the Wileyfox Storm and the Samsung Galaxy A3, but there’s little in the way of competition out there right now.

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