After weeks of rumors and leaks, the Honor Smart
Screen and Smart Screen Pro have finally seen an official launch! We already
know that the company is extremely proud of the product, but now we finally get
to take a closer look at what Honor considers to be a revolutionary product.
So, let’s take a look at what makes the Honor Smart Screen special.
The Honor Smart Screen and Smart Screen PRO both
come with 55-inch 4K HDR displays. These feature an NTSC 85% wide color gamut,
360nit brightness and wide viewing angles. There are 8 interchangeable display
configs, including standard, soft, cinema, sports, children, games, pictures
and bright, which should make things simpler for the average consumer. On top
of that, the display also has German TUV Rheinland low blue eye protection.
When it comes to design and build, the Honor Smart
Screen is pretty excellent all around. The displays are contained within a
three-sided, borderless frame, with an impressive screen-to-body ratio of 94%.
The chassis is also nice and thin at 6.9mm, with a diamond textured “beauty
back” and colourful breathing lights for aesthetic. Honor also touts their
seamless 3D arc full metal bent middle frame, which should allegedly improve
stability and durability.
Software is one of the big selling points of the
Honor Smart Screen and Smart Screen PRO as they’re first commercial devices
officially running Huawei‘s own HarmonyOS. It’s one of the most interesting
things about the Smart Screens. Honor claims HarmonyOS will users to integrate
their devices better, and the company plans to do this through a feature called
Magic Link and their own AI assistant, YOYO.
Now, Magic Link is, to put it simply, an advanced
version of syncing and casting. By connecting your smartphone the your Smart
Screen with NFC, you can sync downloaded apps, cast content and use your phone
as a remote. What takes Magic Link further is its ability to integrate itself
as a smart home system. The Smart Screen can be used to control and utilize
almost anything in one’s house, from security cameras to computers.
In terms of specs, both Honor Smart Screens come
running the brand new Honghu 818 SoCs. The Honghu 818 features a quad core CPU,
with 2 A53 cores and 2 A73 cores, paired with a 4-core Mali-G51 GPU. It
supports 8K@30fps and 4K@120fps super video decoding. In graphics decoding, the
chip supports 64MP image decoding ahead of time, which is beyond the highest
resolution that can be captured by the current smartphones.
On top of all this, Honor also claims that the
Honghu 818 also brings dynamic image compensation (MEMC), high dynamic range
imaging (HDR), super-segmentation (SR), noise reduction (NR), dynamic contrast
enhancement (DCI), and automatic color management (ACM), as well as 7 image
quality technologies such as zoning control (LD), picture clarity improvement,
contrast, and color performance.
That’s not even the end of it. In addition to
everything already mentioned, Huawei’s Honghu 818 allows Honor to integrate
what they’re calling “Histen” into the device. Histen is essentially a sound
optimizing algorithm that’s meant to simulate a cinema sound quality experience
via the usage of field expansion, transient distortion correction, dialogue
enhancement, loudness adaptation, and intelligent bass.
That’s about it when it comes to the Honor Smart
Screen, but the Smart Screen PRO has a few more tricks up its sleeve. While the
Honor Smart Screen has 4*10W speakers, the Smart Screen PRO has 6*10W speakers.
The PRO’s main advantages however are its bigger 32GB of internal storage, and
the built-in AI lifting camera.
The “AI lifting camera”, as Honor puts it, is
powered by the company’s own HiSilicon Hi3516DV300 NPU chip. As you’d expect,
the chip allows the device to learn and recognize faces and improve image
taking capabilities. The camera also uses Honor’s patented pop-up mechanic, as
it slides back in when not in use to give users a sense of privacy.
So, what about pricing? The regular Honor Smart
Screen comes in at a price of 3799 yuan, which is roughly $538. The Honor Smart
Screen PRO on the other hand will set you back at 4799 yuan, or about $680.
Both come with support for Huawei video, Tencent Aurora TV, Youku Cool, Mango
TV , and has exclusive music channels that feature lossless audio. We’re very
excited to see the Smart Screen launch, and we hope to hear more in the future.
