Honor 50 series unveiled with 120Hz displays, 108MP cameras and GMS support

Honor opened a new page in its history today with the release of its Honor 50 series. The Honor 50 Pro, Honor 50 and Honor 50 SE are the first devices from the company which will ship with GMS support out the box in over a year. All three come with 120Hz displays, 108MP main cams and up to 100W fast charging.

The Honor 50 and its Pro counterpart are also the first phones powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 778G chipset. The Honor 50 SE is the more affordable entry in the trio and relies on Mediatek’s Dimensity 900 platform.

Honor 50 and 50 Pro

The best of the Honor 50 bunch is naturally the Pro model. It packs a curved 6.72-inch 10-bit AMOLED display with FHD+ resolution and 120Hz refresh rate. There’s a pair of selfie cameras (32MP main + 12MP ultrawide) housed in the pill-shaped cutout. The display brings 300Hz touch sampling rate, dynamic refresh rate which should help with battery life.

Honor 50 Pro and Honor 50

The regular Honor 50 dials back to a 6.57-inch panel with the same core specs as the panel on the Pro model though it only carries a single 32MP selfie shooter.

Around the back, both phones share identical cameras housed in two large circular openings. There’s a 108MP main cam in the top ring with a 1/1.52-inch sensor and 9 to 1 pixel binning. The accompanying lenses include an 8MP ultrawide snapper and two 2MP modules for macro shots and depth data. Honor is also touting special Vlog modes which capture video from the front and back cameras simultaneously.

These are the first smartphones to use Qualcomm’s new 778G mobile platform which brings a Kryo 670 CPU paired with an Adreno 642L GPU for performance close to the Snapdragon 780G. The SoC is paired with 8 or 12GB RAM.

The software front is covered by Magic UI 4.2 based on Android 11. International units are expected to arrive with GMS support out the box. Honor 50 Pro comes with a 4,000 mAh battery and 100W wired charging speeds while the vanilla model packs a larger 4,300 mAh cell with 66W charging.

Honor 50 and Honor 50 Pro go on pre-sale from June 25 in China. Honor 50 starts at CNY 2,699 ($422) while the Honor 50 Pro begins at CNY 3,699 ($578). Honor confirmed both will be available internationally in over 40 regions, but didn't provide a date for that.

Honor 50 SE

The Honor 50 SE brings a flat 6.78-inch LCD with a 120Hz refresh rate and a single punch hole for the 16MP selfie shooter. The back houses the same 108MP main cam from the more expensive models alongside an 8MP ultrawide cam and a 2MP macro cam.

Honor 50 SE

The big change comes in the SoC department where the Honor 50 SE packs Mediatek’s Dimensity 900 platform paired with 8GB RAM and 128GB storage.

The phone brings a 4,000 mAh battery with 66W wired charging. It boots Magic UI 4.2 based on Android 11. Pricing starts at CNY 2,399 ($375) and availability in China begins on July 2.