The Honor 8 is Huawei's newest offering announced yesterday from China. It seems to compete with Huawei's own recent flagship, the P9, on every dimension except two: build quality (glass back vs. unibody construction) and price (this one is about 30% cheaper). We covered the P9 back in April, and the Honor 8 really is almost identical as you can see from the specs:

Honor 8

P9

Processor

Kirin 950 (4 x Cortex A72 2.3GHz + 4 x Cortex A53 1.8GHz + always-on I5 coprocessor)

Kirin 955 (4 x Cortex A72 2.5GHz + 4 x Cortex A53 1.8GHz + always-on I5 coprocessor)

GPU

Mali T880

Memory & Storage

3GB/32GB, 4GB/32GB, 4GB/64GB

Screen

5.2" 1920x1080 LTPS LCD (423 PPI), 96% NTSC color reproduction

Camera (rear)

12MP, F2.2, dual lens (1 B&W, 1 RGB)

Camera (front)

8PM, F2.4

SD Card

Hybrid microSD (dual nano SIM or nano + SD)

Battery

3000mAh

Software

EMUI 4.1 on Android 6.0

Measurements

145.5 x 71 x 7.44 mm, 153 g

145 x 70.9 x 7 mm, 144 g

Build

"2.5D" glass front and back, metal frame

All metal unibody construction

Colors

White, Gold, Black, Pink, Blue

White, Gold, Rose Gold, Silver, Gray

As far as I can tell, except for being ever so slightly slower, bulkier, and cheaper with the glass back, these two phones are almost identical. The same B&W/RGB dual camera setup, the same multipurpose fingerprint reader / button, the same RAM/ROM options, the same GPU, etc.

The biggest difference is definitely the price, with the Honor 8 starting at ¥1,999 ($299), significantly less than the P9 which is available for around $450 on Amazon.

Let's just hope they've got the bugs worked out in their sample image publication SOP. Here are Huawei's sample images taken with the Honor 8.

The Huawei Honor 8 is currently available for pre-order in China (Mandarin-only links on the official product page below).

What do you think, is the metal unibody worth an extra $150? Or would you rather have the same phone with a glass back for 30% less?

Source: Official product page (in Mandarin), Technical specification [PDF]