The Honor X40 is a very thin sub-$250 phone with a big battery, 50MP camera

What you need to know

• Honor X40 is the latest mid-range smartphone to launch in China.
• It is priced below $250 for 6GB of RAM and features a 120Hz curved AMOLED display.
• It is powered by the Snapdragon 695 5G chipset and has a large 5,100mAh battery.

Honor X40 has been made official (opens in new tab) in the company's home ground. It is the next mid-range smartphone from the company after the recent global launch of Honor 70 at IFA 2022 early this month. The device starts at CNY 1499 (~$214) for the base variant featuring 6GB of RAM and 128GB of onboard storage.

The Honor X40 comes in a slim form factor (7.9mm in thickness) and is available in three colorways. The key takeaways of the device include its unique ring on the rear that houses the camera system. On the front, a large 6.67-inches display is curved at edges all around. It is an OLED panel with up to 800 nits of peak brightness. It further supports 120Hz refresh rates with a 300Hz touch sampling rate. For authentication, there is an under-display fingerprint sensor.

The Honor X40 is powered by the Snapdragon 695 processor, the 5G chipset we've already seen in other budget Android devices like the OnePlus Nord CE 2 Lite 5G. The device is sold in multiple storage variants featuring blends of up to 12GB of RAM and 256GB of onboard storage, the top model coming in at CNY 2299 (~$328). Also, an additional 7GB of virtual RAM is available for power-hungry users.

The mid-range device ships with Android 12-based Magic UI 6.1 out of the box and is set to take on other cheaper Android phones whenever it makes its global entry.

As for that one-of-a-kind-looking ring camera module, it packs a dual rear camera setup with a 50MP primary lens coupled with a 2MP tertiary shooter. The primary camera can shoot up to 1080p for video and supports up to 8x digital zoom. The front hole-punch camera carries an 8MP f/2.0 sensor for selfies.

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(Image credit: Honor)

(Image credit: Honor)

The Honor X40 draws power from a rather decent 5,100mAh battery with a promise of two-day use and supports 40W charging.

While we've seen a couple of mid-range device releases this month from Honor, the company has bigger plans for its flagships in the near future. Tony Ran, President of Honor Europe, recently conversed with our Harish Jonnalagadda to speak about the company's plans for the future.

After splitting from Huawei, Honor is trying to expand its reachability again into global markets. Ran further discussed plans for a dual flagship release strategy, which will include Honor's next foldable device.