Huawei launches 5.5″ Honor 6 Plus w/ dual rear-facing cameras for shooting in the dark

9to5 Staff | Dec 16 2014 - 8:04 am PT

Chinese handset maker Huawei took the stage in Beijing today to introduce its next-generation flagship smartphone, the familiar sounding Honor 6 Plus. The all-new device, which has an unforgivably similar name to the iPhone 6 Plus, has a sleek, metallic design and takes on HTC with dual 8-megapixel rear-facing cameras and another 8-megapixel front-facing camera for added measure.

Engadget reports that the dual-lens Honor 6 Plus is capable of boosting the pixel size to 1.98 microns for improved sensitivity and cleaner looking images, rivaling HTC’s 2-micron UltraPixels. The handset is no slouch under the hood, either, packing a 5.5-inch 1080p JDI negative LCD display, Huawei’s custom Kirin 925 octa-core chipset and low-power I3 coprocessor, 3GB of RAM, up to 32GB internal storage, NFC, a 3,600 mAh battery and more.

Another interesting feature of the Honor 6 Plus is a built-in infrared transmitter for controlling things like your TV, Hi-Fi system and air conditioner. The smartphone runs a highly custom Android ROM called EMUI 3.0 that includes some screen-off features like double-clicking the volume-down button to take a photo and double-clicking the volume-up button to record a voice memo. Huawei is also including 100GB of lifetime cloud storage with the phone for free.

The Honor 6 Plus starts at CN¥1,999 or about $320 unsubsidized, although the base model is only 16GB and lacks both LTE and NFC chips. The LTE-equipped version is CN¥2,499 or about $400 and is available in an exclusive gold color alongside the traditional black and white offerings. While not a bad smartphone for its price, it’s unlikely we’ll ever see the Honor 6 Plus have much of a splash in the Western world.