Huawei's pricey new Honor goes upmarket. Bold move when prices are sliding

Meh

I refurbed my Honor 6 last week. I suspect that it will be a while before I even think about replacing, to be honest, especially considering that it's about a year and a half old, doesn't look that different to the later models and does everything I want it to.

But then Huawei aren't the only ones that are running out of new ideas for must-have gimmicks.

Looks like a market there ...

Buying second hand 'phones in India for $90, import them back to the UK and sell for £100. I might buy one of those.

> Those £550 flagship handsets

Post AC, since my £739 handset is on pre-order....

This is where it all goes wrong ....

My son has the Honor 7, got it for his birthday last October,

He is prerry picky when it comes to tech and he is overjoyed with it. Loves the audio quality, camera, speed of the handset and screen.

At £250 it was a good enough price, but with the introductory discount we got it for £210 which was brilliant.

I said at the time once Huawei / Honor got established in the UK they would hike their prices up and here we have it. Just like Hyundai & Kia did in the car market.

It's probably a decent handset for £349 but not a bargain any more .... and that might be the deal breaker.

finite limit on flagship market

Flagship handsets are an excessive luxury for many people who make do with cheaper phones that are good enough to do day to day stuff, but it's the usual scenario of selling less "premium" product at a higher margin per item, or more "standard" kit with less margin per item.

There's either a lot of people happy to splash a lot of money on flagship phones (I could buy a decent PC for less than many phones!) or a lot of manufacturers will be struggling to shift enough "flagship" items to make it worthwhile.

I'm on SIM only, for just over 100 quid got (new, not used) 8 core, 3Gb RAM, Marshmallow, dual SIM and separate SD slot phablet size phone - a bit rough and ready and not of "flagship" quality but cheap and cheerful & and no need to insure it as cheap enough to replace if it gets damaged.

Your average (good) independent phone shop will normally have a good range of cheap used stuff - a shame most people use the big name high street outlets instead

I quite like Huawei...

.. my current mobe is one of them, because I needed one in a hurry, brought one as a stop-gap, and 14 months later I'm still looking for a 'proper' phone that's better... I resell TP-Link routers for the same reason

I wish the buggers could spell "Honour" though. Seriously, guys, if you want to give your phone an English name, at least fire up the fucking dictionary and pick a word we all spell the same. "Trumpwomble" might be worth a go.

Rubber backs and Flagships

So I've ordered an LG G5 on the basis that, apparently, the paint on the metal body is a bit "plasticky" and it's a flagship phone. Also does that gimmicky dual main camera thing which I'm not sure about. Also the "Friends" modular thing which is very beta. That said, the last phone I owned that felt as good in the hand was the Moto G 4G Gen 1 and that's biblically old and slower than my bus when I'm late for work.

Can't see £100 of improvement over the 7.

Compare and contrast

"pricey new Honor goes upmarket", "aiming at a pretty difficult midrange. That’s a £100, or 40 per cent, price hike over its predecessor."

"see our hands-on report here" - "high-spec cheapie", "aimed firmly at the price-conscious millennial"

Stupid Chinese manufacturers and their pricey cheapies.

They just can't win

Make up your mind. Make it affordable and it's "Cheap Chinese tat", approaching western company price tags and it's too pricey.

Make up your mind. Make it affordable and it's "Cheap Chinese tat", approaching western company price tags and it's too pricey.

I made up my mind when I bought the Honor 6. It gave me much of what was on offer upmarket for a fraction of the price; the only sacrifice was the "prestige" name and having to put up with Huawei's bloody EMUI interface. The dodgy battery cost me £18 to fix.

Considering who makes much of what we use, which Western companies were you thinking of?