Chinese smartphone maker Huawei has already announced the Honor 8 for China, and now the company will launch the handset in the United States on Aug. 16.
Huawei has sent out press invitations for an event in San Francisco where the company will unveil its latest device.
"Smartphone brand Honor will be in San Francisco on Aug. 16 for an exciting product launch, following the success of Honor 5X in the U.S.," says the press invite.
Huawei has a strong presence in China and the company is steadily making its presence felt in the international market, including the U.S. Huawei launched the midrange Honor 5X in October 2015 for the Chinese market but the smartphone also became available for U.S. consumers in January this year. The Honor 5X has a price tag of $199.99.
The mobile phone has received decent popularity in the U.S. market, which has made the company decide to launch the Honor 8 in the country as well.
According to an International Data Corporation (IDC) report, Huawei was the third largest smartphone vendor in the world (based on shipment) in Q1 of 2016 after Samsung and Apple.
"Huawei's continued domestic dominance, combined with a growing presence outside of China, enabled it to capture the number 3 position worldwide in 1Q16. Shipment volume for Huawei climbed from 17.4 million units in 1Q15 to 27.5 million this quarter for year-over-year growth of 58.4 percent," says IDC.
The IDC report suggests that Huawei's approach of focusing on entry-level as well as premium devices has helped the company to expand its sales outside China, in North America and several developed European countries.
The Honor 8 is packed with impressive features, which are expected to attract Americans. The smartphone sports a 5.2-inch screen with a display resolution of 1,080 x 1,920 pixels. An octa-core Kirin 950 chipset clocked at 2.3 GHz powers the device.
The Huawei offering is available in three models: one with 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage, another with 4 GB of RAM and 32 GB of on-board storage and the third with 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB internal memory. Owners of the Honor 8 can also use a microSD card to expand the storage capacity to up to 256 GB.
The Huawei mobile phone is equipped with a dual 12-megapixel rear-facing camera system and an 8-megapixel selfie camera. A powerful 3,000 mAh battery fuels the Huawei Honor 8. The smartphone runs on EMUI 4.1 UI, which is based on the Android 6.0 Marshmallow operating system.
In China, Huawei launched the Honor 8 in five hues: black, pink, blue, white and gold. It is likely that all the color options will also make their way to American shores and entice smartphone lovers.
The Huawei Honor 8 has a starting price tag of about $300 in China. The U.S. pricing of the handset could be slightly higher, which may attract many customers as smartphones with similar specs from companies such as Samsung, HTC and more have premium prices.
Only time will tell if the Honor 8 is able to draw the attention of smartphone enthusiasts in the U.S. at launch.
