A new mobile brand has entered the brutal smartphone arena. Say hello to Honor.

It may seem brave -- or, perhaps, foolish -- to launch a new mobile brand in such a busy market, but it's not really a new brand at all. In fact, Honor is owned and operated by Chinese manufacturer Huawei. Although not a separate company at all, Honor will apparently operate as though it is.

To prove that, it has its first phone. It's called the Honor 6 and it has a full HD 5-inch display, an octa-core processor, Cat 6 4G LTE and a 13-megapixel camera. If that sounds at all familiar, it's because Huawei has already announced the phone as the Huawei Honor 6, in China back in June. Now it's going on sale throughout Europe, the only thing that's changed is the branding -- you won't see the Huawei logo on the phone, I'm told.

Still, that's no reason to not be excited about this phone. It has a solid lineup of specs that would rival many top-end phones, but comes with a price tag of only £250, SIM-free on Amazon. Honor (or Huawei) hasn't said yet whether the phone will reach the US, but stay tuned for more information. It directly converts to around $400.

Design and display

The Honor 6 is most easily described as a cheaper-looking iPhone 4. It has a black glass front and back, with a metallic strip running around the edge, separating the two panels. That strip is metallic plastic, rather than metal, meaning it doesn't have the same luxurious feel as the iPhone 4, but it doesn't feel unpleasant to hold either.

The glass back makes the phone look like a more premium device than its affordable price suggests. At launch, Honor boasted about the back panel's "dazzling, 3D diamond back", which is "inspired by nature". Quite apart from the fact that "inspired by nature" was Samsung's tagline for the Galaxy S3, the back panel just looks plain black -- only under the brightest sunlight at the right angle could I make out the faintest pattern.

With a 5-inch screen stuffed inside, it's not a small phone. It has a fairly narrow bezel though so the body hasn't needed to stretch out too much to accommodate the large display. It's comfortable to hold in one hand, although you'll realistically need two hands in order to type properly. It has 16GB of built-in storage and there's a microSD card slot on the side to expand that further.

Speaking of the screen, that's a full HD (1,920x1,080-pixel) panel, which is a very impressive resolution for a phone at this price. It results in a pixel density of 440 pixels per inch, which casually beats the iPhone 6 (326ppi), Samsung Galaxy Alpha (312ppi) and Sony Xperia Z3 Compact (319ppi). It also trumps the Galaxy S5's 432ppi screen.

Unsurprisingly, text under icons, on Web pages and in magazines looked crisp and high resolution photos looked great too. It seemed very bright in my hands-on time and with strong colours too. I'll be spending more time with the phone over the coming days so will leave my final verdict on the display for the full review. Suffice to say, I'm impressed so far, considering the price.

Android software and processor

The phone arrives with Android 4.4.2 KitKat on board, which is now a few versions out of date. On a top-end phone this would be a big negative point, but with the lower price, I'm more happy to forgive it. You also won't be able to tell that it's not bang up to date as Honor has used the same Android skin you'll find on Huawei phones, which dramatically changes the look of the software.

The biggest change is that there's no app tray, so every app you download will be kept across the multiple homescreens. I'm not keen on this as it can make the phone very cluttered unless you take a strict approach to the layout. The app icons and menu layouts are different too and there are different themes you can choose from to alter the colour schemes.

It's running on an octa-core processor, made up of two quad-core chips clocked at 1.3GHz and 1.7GHz respectively, backed up by 3GB of RAM. That's an impressive engine, even for a high-end phone, let alone one with a budget-focused price. In my hands-on time it seemed enjoyably swift and achieved a very healthy score of 4,272 on the Geekbench test, putting it alongside the Galaxy Alpha's score of 4,350. I'll be putting it through more tests in the coming days.

Battery and camera

Honor has stuffed the phone with a 3,100mAh battery, which the company claims can achieve over a whole day of heavy use or over two days with moderate use. That's a big claim and certainly one I will be putting to the test in the full review.

The back of the phone is home to a 13-megapixel camera, which is a healthy portion of megapixels for a phone at this price. I took it for a quick spin and the results seemed fair. On the below shot of the Shard building in London, the exposure is adequate, although I'd like to see less dark shadows.

I certainly expect the camera to be good enough for some Instagram snaps, although how it stacks up against the competition remains to be seen.

Outlook

Whether you consider it a Huawei phone or an Honor phone doesn't really matter here -- that's really just a branding exercise. What should matter is that the Honor 6 packs a heap of great tech for a very reasonable price. A full HD display, octa-core processor and 13-megapixel camera are not often found at this price.

Sure, it might not be the slimmest, sleekest phone around and the software might have its quirks, but if you want a powerful phone without emptying your bank account, it might be worth a look.

http://www.cnet.com/products/huawei-honor-6/