Enjoy the iPhone 7's portrait mode, but don't want to shell out for a premium smartphone? Huawei's budget brand Honor is bringing a new dual-camera Android handset to the US and Europe that can give you a similar blurred-background bokeh effect for just US$250.
The Honor 6X looks like a decent little midrange smartphone. It runs Android Marshmallow, with an EMUI 4.1 overlay. It's got a fingerprint sensor on the back, like Google's Pixel phones, a 5.5-inch, 1080p touch screen, 3 or 4 GB of RAM, 32 GB of storage (expandable via MicroSD) and a nice big 3340 mAh battery that the company claims will last up to two and a bit days of use, or one and a half days of "heavy" use.
The key feature, though, is its dual lens rear camera. One of the benefits of using a big, expensive DSLR camera with an equally big, expensive wide aperture lens is that you can get nice sharp photos of your subject, with anything that's not in focus nicely blurred out. It gives photos a lovely creamy effect that makes the subject stand out.
The Honor 6X simulates this effect using two lenses and some clever processing. Even with a wide-angle 77-degree main lens, you can achieve a simulated F/0.95 aperture with a blurred out background. It's a nice effect that you can dial up and down after you've shot the photo.
That kind of functionality is impressive at this price point – US$249 (or €249) for the 3GB version that launches tomorrow in the US and Europe. An upgraded version with 4GB of RAM will launch later for an extra 50 bucks or Euros.
Source: Honor
