This is the just announced Huawei Nova9 as well as Honor 50. There's a good chance that you haven't heard of either of these phones, but there's something really strange happening here that we need to talk about.
HONOR & HUAWEI —UNBOXING
So, here's the Honor 50, it's a €529 mid-ranger, and to be honest, it's off to a really strong start — you have the phone top, a clear squidgy TPU case, USBC cable, a pair of earphones, and A 66watt fast charger.
And here's the Huawei...wait a second, are these the same box? Okay, well the phone's on top, and underneath, there is an insert, which contains a clear case — a 66watt charger, and would you believe it a USB-C cable. Wow! Very curious!
BRIEF HISTORY OF HUAWEI &HONOR
But before we can even talk about these phones, we need to quickly understand the unusual relationship between Huawei and Honor. So, you might know this already.
The honor was created by Huawei in 2013. Then, for this entire time it's been sitting underneath (then as a sub-brand while the main company was focused on high-ranking professionals and business). People and those who would shop by going into physical stores, Honor as a second Huawei —a channel to sell the same devices slightly later, and at a lower price point to a different market — Young millennials and students who tended to shop online. I'm not exaggerating, literally, the same devices; Honor phones were powered by Huawei's kirin chips.
They can't software called "magic UI", which was effectively a carbon copy of Huawei's MUI, and they've often had such similar designs that I think a lot of people out there didn't even realize that these were rate companies. However, over the last 2years, the distinction between them has all of a sudden become very important because as you might know, in 2019, Huawei and therefore, also, its sub-brands like Honor were banned from using Google services or getting any parts from the US companies. And this move singlehandedly killed Huawei's global ambitions. That sudden inability to access the App store, which is primarily what makes smartphones smart, combined with not being able to have the latest technologies, because you can't work with other companies plus the drop in trust that naturally comes when you are banned from something, means that Huawei smartphone sales have plummeted. And as a company, they've now had to pivot their strategy into focusing less on the phones and much more on the products, and services that surround them. But, because of Honor, this US ban doesn't seem to have had the intended effect. See, all this havoc it's created left Huawei in a dilemma. They could either hold onto Honor — meaning that it would stay banned too, and its global reach would sink alongside Huawei's or they would sell them off to another company, which would mean, the Honor would no longer be owned by Huawei and thus, it could spread its wings and fly again without restrictions.
Eventually, at the end of last year, they decided on the latter —Huawei issued an almost touching statement that talked about all the pressures they've been under, recently. And how they're finally publicly declaring that they are their sub-brand. And the whole thing finishes with,
" We hope this new road of Honor with its shareholders, partners, and employees. We look forward to seeing Honor continue to create value for consumers and build a new intelligent world for young people."
It was like a parent saying goodbye to their child for the last time. But, sure enough, as planned, it has freed Honor, and all-new Honor phones now come with full access to the play store, except, here's what I'm finding a little strange — Honor and Huawei are now separate companies, right?
SIMILARITIES & DIFFERENCE
They've been apart for a full year and yet, look at these two phones — Honor 50, it has a 6.57" OLED screen, and a snapdragon, 778g chipset. It's just 7.8mm thick and manages to pack in a 4300mAh battery. Okay, what about the Huawei? 6.57" OLED screen snapdragon, 778g, 7.8mm, 4300mAh battery finish. Aside from every single angle, these two phones look the same; identical button layouts, identical speaker positioning, identical camera placements; they are the same weight to the exact gram.
Courage! But there are other phones, the Honor 50 Lite is a Huawei Nova 8i, the Honor magic X — foldable looks like the Huawei mate X2 foldable. The list goes on, and it's not just hardware, these two phones right here are completely new harmony OS. But then, why does everything looks so familiar? And check this out — have you seen the icon on the Honor? Looks just taken a Huawei icon and made one tiny tweak to it. The only difference I can see in the camera is that the zoom toggle on Honor has been pushed to the side. It feels like the textbook definition of —
" Yes, feel free to copy but, just make sure you change it up a bit so no one notices."
And also, the core technologies are the same. Look at these two charging bricks — one is using Honor's supercharged technology, while the other is using Huawei's supercharged technology. But I'd be willing to place quite a significant wager in the fact that these two bricks are identical that they're manufactured in the same location with the same components, and the same technologies behind them. The two companies even share staff members at the point where Honor was cut off from Huawei they took 8000 employees from that company. So even though they may not have "separated" management teams, they are largely functioning with the same people. You're probably starting to get the idea - Huawei has been banned, Honor has separated to allow themselves to be unbanned, but even a year later, you're still effectively just getting a re-skinned version of the same phone from both companies. I did reach out to a Huawei executive to try and clear this up, and she said the design process for a phone us lengthy, and this one started before the companies went their separate ways. So, according to her, these designs were finalized over a year ago, and that's why they look so similar. It seems like a long but maybe this is true. What makes this stranger, though is that both of these phones were announced days apart from other the only hardware difference is that Huawei has a slightly better main camera sensor, and yet the Huawei costs €499, the honor costs €529. So, it's almost like these two companies have switched places. Instead of being the lower tier sub-brand, Honor has kind of become the premium brand. Effectively, just flexing the fact that they now have Google play services again.
This Honor 50 came out before the Huawei Nova 9, which is the opposite of how they used to release later than their Huawei counterparts. Honor is serving more countries globally, and they're now branching out into, not just budget phones but also top-tier flagship phones like the Honor is trying to be the new Huawei. However, the unfortunate consequence of this whole situation is that they will struggle to follow through with this. And that neither of these phones makes sense as a result. They make a good first impression like - before their midrange prices, I was pleasantly impressed by how they have the character and general feel of hiring devices, but using both of them feels lacking for different reasons. You see, before the US there is a reason that Huawei was steamrolling the smartphone market. This is a giant tech company that has not afraid to invest billions into R&D every year, making sure that every new generation of phones introduced at least two or three features that were significantly ahead of the others. And they had the budget to make sure that this feature was tested properly, and we're reliable. Huawei pushed the entire industry forward. But literally, the minute this ban came to effect, Huawei was completely cut off from its. US suppliers and so, that innovation instantly halted; their latest P50 Pro smartphone is the first time in years that they haven't been able to upgrade their main camera sensor. They weren't able to implement 5G and at the same time, this lack of Google services like the play store, Gmail, and maps have made these phones all but reluctant for a western audience. So, this Nova phone does feel quite smooth and polished but, I just can recommend it. And then you've got Honor, who has a different problem. That while cutting cost with Huawei has unburned them from regulation. It's also meant that they've lost their biggest asset. Like think about it, as an independent brand now, how on earth is Honor going to do the job of a company that has an independent brand now? how on earth is Honor going to do the job of a company that has 200,000 employees, huge research and development centers, and a literal city of their own with a merry band of 100,000 people? They can't. And you can feel this when using these phones; same hardware as the Huawei, same cameras in the bottom rear here, and yet the Honor performs consistently worse!
Check this out, on the home screen — super-smooth scrolling, but the second we winter the play store, boom! It just starts lagging. Like here in the settings, my scrolling is nice and buttery, and then the second I open this menu, there's a disconnect. Like what?! And this camera system, it's a 108-megapixel quad-camera but it's not good. Of course, I wasn't expecting to say that the camera, on the Huawei phones, and by the implication also, Honor phones have the phone's highlights. But something feels off here. And I guess it becomes more clear when we compare the two phone ultra-wide cameras — they should be the same but I prefer Huawei's image processing about 95% of the time. The difference in selfies is enormous even though both are using the same 32-megapixel sensor. And my guess as to "why" is that Huawei might have retained certain patents or certain image processing algorithms that, because Honor is not separated from them; they can no longer access or maybe, just didn't share with Honor in the first place knowing that they were going to sell the company. Whatever it is, something feels missing here. This Honor is not producing 2021 quality photos. As a prospect, it might initially appear just like a Huawei phone as if nothing ever went wrong — you have a Google search bar on the homepage, a folder for Google Apps; you swipe up, you get Google assistant but, behind the scenes, it is not quite there. The point I'm getting to is this, in its current state, this whole US ban no longer made sense to me. Even as an independent company, Honor is still effectively acting as an extension of Huawei. Like, they've done right from the beginning with a lot of the same manufacturing; the same technologies, except for some reason, with the current rules, one of these companies is banned, the other isn't.
Now, I'm not saying that I think Honor should be banned, it's not my place to say, but what I'm saying is that I can't see why Huawei is banned if Honor isn't banned. And likewise, it doesn't make sense to me that given that Honor isn't banned, why Huawei is banned. It's got to both or neither, right? Like, if the entire premise of the US ban was that Huawei was spying, then as it is right now, it's not preventing that. The only thing it's done is make Huawei have to jump through a weird loophole that's made the new Huawei, and independent Honor worse for consumers because the team has been broken up and effectively to start from the beginning in a lot of ways. You've got to remember that if Honor is going to truly get and differentiate themselves, which they have. Because of growing pressure., then they're going to need to find new offices, they're going to need to build new research centers, they're going to need to find tens of thousands of new employees, and then spend time coming up with their own new brand identity and their unique software skin. I have no idea how they're going to be able to do that, and then find a way to make themselves price competitive against bargain-basement brands like Poco and Realme. Very curious to see what comes next, I think Honor's move will be quite indicative as to how this is going to play out.
