Honor 300: three smartphones to renew the 200 series without madness
A few months ago, Honor stood out in the segment of smartphones positioned between mid-range and high-end, with a 200 series benefiting the first of its partnership with the Harcourt photo studio. It succeeded, for the French market, the 90 series, the 100 range models having been reserved for the Chinese market. It is impossible to date to ensure that the firm will continue to market every second generation internationally, reserving its next launch on the Old Continent for the Honor 400; while waiting to find out more, let's focus on the 300 series recently made official by the manufacturer.
Three terminals make up the range to date: the Honor 300, the 300 Pro and the 300 Ultra. The latter two are virtually identical, except for one of their photo modules – the Ultra offers a longer focal length telephoto lens – and their storage configurations. The Pro and Ultra models are a slight upgrade compared to the 200 Pro, which was based on a Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip; the newcomers are banking on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, the star chip of 2024 and recently replaced by the Snapdragon 8 Elite, itself used by Honor within its Magic 7 Pro.
A minimum update
The two smartphones are intended to be more or less equivalent to the premium models of 2024, except that they immediately run Android 15 with MagicOS 9.0. They therefore offer a 6.78-inch Oled screen promising a brightness of up to 4000 cd/m². Within the two smartphones we find at least 12 GB of RAM, a triple photo module (three 50 Mpx sensors, with a wide-angle, an ultra-wide-angle and a telephoto lens), but also a 5300 mAh battery compatible with fast charging at 100 W. The smartphones inaugurate a design of which we mainly remember a triangular photo block which is reminiscent of that of Huawei's Pura 70, and overall present minor developments if we compare them to the 200 series currently available. Note that the Honor 300, roughly similar to the 300 Pro and Ultra, however adopts a slightly smaller Oled screen (6.7 inches), and mainly switches to the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chip, for its part resolutely positioned in the middle of range. Finally, it ignores the photo module with telephoto lens of its two brothers Pro and Ultra and, due to a change of chip, does not obtain compatibility with wifi 7.
Price-wise, count on a minimum of 2299 yuan (around €300) for the Honor 300, 3399 yuan (€445) for the 300 Pro and 4199 yuan (€550) for the 300 Ultra, all of these prices are 'hearing without taxes and miscellaneous fees. Given their technical sheet close to the Honor 200, we can reasonably doubt their future on the international scene. This series could nevertheless contribute to stemming the brand's decline in its domestic market where, despite an increase in sales of mobiles across all brands and its performance in the folding smartphone niche (see the latest figures from IDC firm), it shows a decline in its market share.
