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Honor's latest dual-camera smartphone comes to Europe

The Honor 8 is much like Huawei's P9, but cheaper.

After Asia, Europe is typically the next destination for new devices from Huawei's Honor brand. Though the new Honor 8 was recently announced for the US market (read our full hands-on here), the smartphone is actually launching first in Europe, where it's available today for €399, or £370 if you hail from the UK. The handset may look significantly different to Huawei's flagship P9, but there are more than a few similarities on the spec sheet. A 5.2-inch, 1080p display, for example, as well as a dual 12-megapixel camera arrangement (one RGB sensor, one monochrome) and 8MP front-facer.

The dual camera setup might not be endorsed by Leica this time around, but it affords many of the same features. These include being able to play around with focal point and background blur in post-processing, as well as take native black and white shots. Like the P9, the Honor 8 also runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow with Huawei's Emotion UI on top, and hosts a fingerprint sensor on its back.

The Honor 8 is another play for those who have high expectations and mid-range budgets. Clad primarily in glass with an aluminum rim holding everything together, it features a Huawei-made, octa-core Kirin 950 chip (four 2.3GHz cores plus four 1.8GHz cores), paired with 4GB of RAM and 32 gigs of expandable storage (microSD cards of up to 128GB supported). The 3,000mAh battery supports fast-charging through the Honor 8's USB-C port, too, reportedly taking you from 0 to 50 percent in half an hour.

Available in blue, black and white, the handset can now be purchased through Honor's vMall online store. In the UK specifically, it'll also land at Amazon and other retailers including Clove, Ebuyer and Expansys in due course. Exclusive UK carrier partner Three will also begin offering the Honor 8 on contracts from September 9th.