Honor 60 Pro arrives with Snapdragon 778G+, 50MP ultra wide cam, Honor 60 gets a larger 120Hz displa

2021-12-05

This January Honor unveiled its first phone since becoming independent, then in June it announced the Honor 50 series, which marked the return of Google Mobile Services on its phones. The company is on a roll and is now unveiling the Honor 60 series.

In a way, history repeat itself – the 50-series was the first to use the Snapdragon 778G chipset, the Honor 60 Pro now becomes the first with the updated version, the Snapdragon 778G+. This chip is still based on the 6 nm design of the original, but cranks up the clock speed of the Kryo 670 prime core to 2.5 GHz (up from 2.4 GHz) and the Adreno 642L promises 20% higher performance. The vanilla model, however, sticks with the original 778G chip.

Also like last time, the vanilla and Pro models are quite similar, except for several key upgrades on the Pro. Unlike last time, however, there are just two phones – no SE here (not today, at least).

The Honor 60 and 60 Pro are equipped with 10-bit OLED displays with 120 Hz refresh rate with 100% DCI-P3 coverage and an HDR10 certification (HDR10+ for the Pro). Note that they use high-frequency PWM at 1,920 Hz. This will lead to less flicker than typical PWM systems, but it still not DC dimming.

This is where we encounter the first difference between the two. The Honor 60 Pro has a quad-curved display, which the company argues leads to a smoother in-hand feel. The display is larger too with a 6.78” diagonal. The vanilla phone also has a curved display, though only on two sides – the left and right side arc at a 58º angle. This one measures 6.67”.

As before, the main camera on the back features a 108 MP sensor. It is a 1/1.52" sensor that can do 9-in-1 pixel binning for an effective pixel size of 2.1 µm

However, for this generation the Pro model got an upgraded ultra wide-angle camera with a 50 MP sensor and a field of view of 122º. And it has autofocus, so it can do macro photography with a focus distance of just 2.5 cm (1 in). The vanilla model keeps the 8 MP ultra wide cam of the previous generation. The third module on the back for both models is a 2 MP depth sensor.

For the selfie camera, we have to go back to the screen. Some of you will have already noticed that the Pro phone has only a single camera on the front (the 50 Pro also had an ultra wide selfie cam). The 60 Pro's single selfie camera does have a fairly wide 100º lens and a 50 MP sensor, allowing it to crop in for a closer view. The vanilla model has a 32 MP camera on the front.

Honor believes that the 60-series makes for excellent vlogging phones and it used AI to enable a hands-free experience – you can do ‘raise hand’, ‘flip’, ‘slide’ and several other gestures to control the camera (e.g. switching between front and back cameras or enabling picture-in-picture mode).

The two phones have larger batteries compared to the 50-series. This time around both have the same capacity, 4,800 mAh, up from 4,000 mAh on the 50 Pro and 4,300 mAh on the vanilla 50. The price for this capacity upgrade is that both phones now charge at 66W. Charging speeds are still really fast, the first 50% of the battery are filled up in 15 minutes. However, we should note that the 50 Pro supported 100W charging and could do a full charge in 25 minutes (again, with a smaller battery).

One last upgrade over the 50-series that is a few months old now – the new phones will arrive with Magic UI 5.0 out of the box, which is based on Android 12. The new version delivers improvements to privacy and security, along with other enhancements.

Honor is looking forward to the Year of the Dragon, so it held a global design competition. It received 5,000+ submissions from over 40 countries from around the world and turned the best designs into cases for the Honor 60 series.

The Honor 60 and 60 Pro are currently on pre-order in China. The vanilla model starts at CNY 2,700 ($425/€375/?31,800) for the 8/128 GB model, but there are 8/256 GB and 12/256 GB options as well (each step adds CNY 300 to the price). The 60 Pro starts at CNY 3,700 ($580/€515/?43,500) for an 8/256 GB unit, plus you can upgrade to 12/256 GB for CNY 300 more.

There is no word on when the two new models will go global, but the Honor 50 series needed a few months.