We are mere days away from the launch of the Galaxy S24 series, but one of Samsung’s Android rivals has popped up to try and steal its thunder with an affordable new smartphone that looks like it has enough under the hood to keep most tech fans happy without breaking the bank.
The £349.99 Honor Magic 6 Lite costs far less than the Galaxy S24 phones are expected to be but has very solid specs for the price, with a Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 chipset, a big 6.78-inch OLED screen with smooth 120Hz refresh rate, a generous 256GB of storage, and a very large 5,300mAh battery.
That should be enough to keep this mid-range 5G Android phone going well into two days of use, plus there’s fast 35W wired charging with the included charger in the box. The battery is rated for 1,000 cycles, so it should still be performing great well into its third year of use.
On the back of the phone you’ll find triple cameras, the headline lens being a 108Mp sensor, flanked by a 5Mp ultra-wide and 2MP macro camera. Given those numbers, it’s all about the main camera here, which we hope will be punching above its price.
The new phone runs Android 13 and is available in emerald green, midnight black, and an eye-catching sunrise orange version that has a textured finish to hide fingerprints and add extra grip.
If that weren’t all enough, if you snap up the Honor Magic 6 Lite between 11 and 16 January, you’ll get a free Honor Pad X8 Neo tablet worth £99.99, plus 12 months free screen protection where Honor will fix your screen in store once if you smash it in that time.
Honor thinks you may not need that though, as the Magic 6 Lite’s screen has Honor’s Anti-Drop tech that is supposed to better absorb shocks, so hopefully it’ll stay in tact if it takes a tumble onto a hard surface.
Not only that, but if you buy the phone before 16 January you will also receive a £35 off voucher for the phone that you can apply at checkout, so you’ll get the phone, tablet, and the extras for £314.99. That is quite the deal.
Honor is ticking along nicely in the UK phone market after splitting up with parent company Huawei, whose phones were hobbled by US sanctions. By becoming its own firm, Honor phones run the Google Play Store and have no such restrictions, making them fine Samsung Galaxy alternatives.
