Honor 90: Everything you need to know

Honor is about to launch its 90 series of phones and the rumour mill has been in full flow with the specifications we should expect when the new models arrive.

Here’s everything we know so far about the Honor 90 series. 

When will the Honor 90 be released?

The official Honor Weibo account has posted an announcement that the Honor 90 and Honor 90 Pro will be unveiled in China on May 29. 

This makes it just around six months since the Honor 80 series launch, which is in keeping with the pattern we’ve seen in the past, as the Honor 70 phones arrived half a year before the 80 series. 

Which models will make it out of China remains speculative at the moment. When the 70 series launched, it was only the standard Honor 70 that made it to Europe. None of the 80 series models came to Europe, and there’s no indication at the moment of which ones we should expect this time around. 

Looking across a few more releases, we notice that the Honor 50 also launched in Europe, so it could be that Honor has decided to only launch every other generation in wider markets. If this is true, then the Honor 90 could well come to these shores. 

As usual, don’t expect any launch at all in the US.

How much will the Honor 90 cost?

There’s no official word on pricing at the time of writing, but we’d expect the new models to stay quite close to the ones they supersede. This means we can use the Honor 80 series prices as a reliable guide, although, as they only released in China, it’s a bit loose on what European pricing might look like.

• Honor 80 SE: From ¥2,399 (around $350/£290/€330/₹29,000)
• Honor 80: From ¥2,699 (around $400/£330/€370/₹33,000)
• Honor 80 GT: From ¥3,299 (around $485/£400/€455/₹40,000)
• Honor 80 Pro: From ¥3,499 (around $515/£425/€480/₹42,500)
• Honor 80 Pro with flat display: From ¥3,599 (around $530/£435/€495/₹43,500)

As a reference, the standard Honor 70 did appear in European markets, priced at £479/€549 (approx $590). 

So far we’ve only seen the Honor 90 and 90 Pro models teased, so it looks like we may have to wait for the SE and GT variants, if they are planned at all for this release cycle. 

What specs and features will we see in the Honor 90?

We already know what the Honor 90 and 90 Pro will look like, as Honor released a teaser trailer for the new phones in which the launch date was confirmed. Here’s the video, via SparrowNews:

While Honor is yet to confirm the configurations of the 90 and 90 Pro models, we have seen some reliable leakers announcing what we could see when the new phones appear. 

In terms of processing power, Digital Chat Station posted on Weibo that the Honor 90 will be powered by a Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 chipset, while the Pro model will sport a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. The former is a slight step up from the Snapdragon 782G that came in the Honor 80, as it’s more energy efficient, improves performance, and runs on a 4nm architecture rather than 6nm.

The Honor 90 Pro’s Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 is the same chip as the one in the Honor 80 Pro, so it could be that the company thinks that’s already powerful enough, or has tweaked the software to get more out of this very decent chipset. 

One thing Honor has announced officially is that the new phones (or at least the Pro model) will come with a 200Mp main camera. GizChina reports that this could be the same Samsung ISOCELL HP3 sensor that appeared previously in the Honor 80 Pro, but whereas that model had the resolution capped at 160Mp, Honor may utilise its full potential in the new iteration.

Another standard across the range is expected to be a 5000mAh battery, although charging may not be the same, as ITHome reported recently that the two models were spotted on a Chinese certification site, with the Honor 90 listed with a 66W charger and the Honor 90 Pro a 100W charger.

Recent leaked photos of the phones’ fronts show that the Honor 90 will have a curved edge display and centre aperture for the selfie camera, while the Pro will have a pill-shaped opening, probably to support an additional sensor for face unlock of better depth of field in selfies. The Pro display is expected to be a 1.5K OLED panel, and both models will get the new 3840Hz PWM technology that should prove more efficient in terms of energy use. 

That’s all we know so far, but obviously it won’t be long until we see the full spec sheet for both phones. Until then, check out our guides to the best Android phones to see what the Honor duo will be up against.