Honor has announced the Honor 6 Plus, a 5.5in smartphone with the world's first bionic parallel dual-camera. Rather than use a single camera sensor, the Honor 6 Plus has two rear 8-megapixel sensors that sit just 0.5mm apart in the top left corner of the handset.
It's a similar idea to HTC's Duo Camera on the One M8, but whereas HTC's camera only produced images that were 4-megapixels in size, the Honor 6 Plus' cameras combine to create 13-megapixel pictures. Of course, we've seen plenty of single lens smartphone cameras with much higher megapixel sensors – Nokia's Lumia 1020, for instance, still holds the record with its massive 41-megapixel sensor – but Honor believes the 6 Plus' increased light sensitivity will help users create more professional looking photos by reducing the amount of image noise and maintaining a greater level of detail.
Unfortunately, we couldn't take away any of our test shots from the show floor, but the Honor 6 Plus certainly seemed to cope very well with the low lighting conditions at Honor's launch event. There was still a fair amount of noise to be seen when we zoomed in up close in the phone's gallery, but we'll have to wait and see how it copes with brighter conditions once we get our hands on a review sample.
Like the HTC One M8, the Honor 6 Plus also lets you adjust the focal point of your photos after you've taken them. You'll have to use the camera's special Wide Aperture mode to take advantage of this feature, but all you need to do is tap the area of the photo you want to blur or bring into focus and you'll be presented with an onscreen slider that lets you change the aperture from f/0.95 to f/16.
The depth of field effects were impressive, as objects in focus really stood out against softer background areas. Admittedly, it was a little difficult to see how the camera coped with less distinct outlines, such as hairlines and clothes textures when adjusting the focal point onscreen, but we'll be keen to see how it fares under more rigorous testing nearer the phone's launch date in a few months time.
HDR is another key camera mode that really helped brighten up all the dark areas in our test photos without making the image look too harsh and grainy. We did notice a couple of unnatural-looking shafts of artificial light beginning to creep in a few of our photos, but otherwise we were very pleased with its accurate colours and fine level of detail.
Honor's included a Super Night Mode as well, which can take exposures up to 32 seconds in length, which should hopefully help create better low light photography. It's not well suited for taking quick snaps of your mates on a night out, though, as it recommends you either use a tripod or something to help steady the device before you start taking pictures.
Honor hasn't forgotten about the front-facing camera either, as this is has a single 8-megapixel sensor to help set it above the now-common 5-megapixel cameras you'll find in several other top smartphones. With a 22mm wide angle lens as well, it should be more than enough to keep even the most demanding selfie fan happy.
Like its little brother, the Honor 6, the Honor 6 Plus uses an octa-core Kirin processor that utilises ARM's big.LITTLE architecture. Whereas the Honor 6 used the Kirin 920 chipset, the 6 Plus has the faster Kirin 925 chipset, which is made up of a quad-core Cortex A15 chip and a quad-core Cortex A17 chip.
This should provide plenty of speed for multitasking and everyday web browsing, as Honor was keen to show off how it compared to other top flagship phones in the Geekbench 3 application. With a claimed score of 3,286, this puts it much higher than Samsung's out-going Galaxy S5, which scored 2,836. However, when we ran an initial SunSpider JavaScript test, the Honor 6 Plus only returned a score of 1,003ms, which is disappointingly slow for a handset of this calibre, so we'll have to keep a watchful eye on the Honor 6+'s performance during our in-depth tests.
As mentioned above, the Honor 6 Plus has a 5.5in screen with a 1,920x1,080 resolution display. While we've yet to put it through our calibration tests, blacks looked reasonably deep and colours were bright and vibrant. Honor claims its contrast ratio reaches up to 1,500:1 as well, so images and video should have plenty of detail present. We were pleased with the phone's viewing angles as well, as we were able to see the screen clearly no matter how far it was from our line of sight.
With a huge 3,600mAh battery on board, Honor claims this should give you 2 days of moderate use or 23.4 days of standby time. If true, this could potentially give the Honor 6 Plus one of the best battery lives we've seen, as our current reigning champion is Sony's Xperia Z3 Compact, which lasted just over 22 hours in our continuous video playback test on half brightness. The phone comes with two SIM card slots as well – one for a micro SIM and another for a nano SIM that doubles up as a microSD card slot that can take cards up to 128GB.
The only slight worry we have about the Honor 6 Plus is its fibreglass rear panel, which we felt didn't provide a lot of grip when using the phone in one hand. It's a small complaint overall, though, as its angular edges and part-metallic frame were still comfortable to hold regardless of whether we were using the phone single or dual-handed.
The Honor 6 Plus is an intriguing addition to Honor's UK line-up, and we'll be interested to see how its camera holds up against the very latest smartphones also announced at MWC this week such as the Samsung Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge and HTC One M9. While Honor's yet to announce UK pricing for the Honor 6 Plus, we wouldn't be surprised if it ended up costing more than its little brother, the Honor 6, which currently retails for £249 SIM-free.
However, you'll soon be able to buy the Honor 6 Plus on contract as well, as Honor also announced an exclusive tariff partnership with UK network Three yesterday evening, making it the first Honor handset you'll be able to buy on shop floors. Honor previously sold its Honor 6 and Honor Holly smartphones exclusively through Amazon as SIM-free only handsets, but now you'll be able to see the Honor 6 Plus and try before you buy in Three shops up and down the UK. There's no set UK release date for the Honor 6 Plus just now, but it's expected to launch in Europe before the end of Q2 this year, so we shouldn't have to wait long before we can bring you our final verdict in our full review.