HarmonyOS

You may be aware of Huawei thanks to the recent wranglings between a certain President and China. The resulting debacle has seen Honor and Huawei launch its own proprietary operating system, HarmonyOS, to work as a safety net in the face of losing access to Android amid a US-imposed trade ban.

Here you might be thinking “Yeah? And what's that got to do with AV?” Well, astute reader, the Chinese tech comapanies have announced the Honor-branded, HarmonyOS-packing smart TV dubbed Honor Vision.

Smart Screen

Huawei states that it still intends to work with Android as far as its phones are concerned, but we can expect HarmonyOS to be rolled out on similar 'Smart Screens' as the Honor Vision.

The term 'Smart Screen' is pretty important here as Huawei and Honor see the new telly slotting into the same category as Google's Home Hub or Amazon's Echo Show, for instance. Furthermore, the Vision will be able to display the weather and news, etc. on command - just like those other bits of smart tech.

A Smart Screen actually makes sense. How much scheduled television do you watch? Personally, it's usually catch-up, box sets, or finding a movie to stream. If we've missed a film at the cinema, we might even dip our hand in our pocket to rent a movie from somewhere such as Amazon Prime.  

That said, the Honor Vision has some up-to-date telly specs. Here you have a 55-inch 4K HDR display that boasts a screen-to-body ratio of 94%. Looking at it end-on, its triangular form is 6.9mm at its thinnest point.

The screen has a claimed 87% NTSC colour gamut coverage, 178-degree viewing angles and 400 nits brightness.

Under the hood, everything is pushed along by a quad-core Honghu 818 processor.

Huawei's Histen sound algorithm is employed to get the best out of the screen's four full-range units and silk diaphragm tweeter duo. Upgrade to the 'Pro' version, and you get six 10Watt speakers instead of the four. Additionally, the Pro also gets a pop-up 1080p webcam which has facial recognition as well as posture detection.

Phone Smarts

As Huawei is a top phone brand, it is no surprise that the Honor Vision plays well with mobile kit. Through NFC-connecting Magic-link, there's phone mirroring that enables you to interact with the screen through your touch display instead of the remote control. Also, you can use your smartphone as a sound receiver for your TV. The upshot of this is that if you don't have Bluetooth headphones (oh, the Vision has Bluetooth 5), you can either listen to a movie or show on your phone's speakers or opt to plug in wired headphones to your phone. Additionally, the phone can act as a keyboard, so no cursoring (and cursing) around the screen.

Price and availability

When they go on sale on August 15th, the Honor Vision will cost ¥3,799 (approximately £450), while the Honor Vision Pro will retail at ¥4,799 (approximately £680). There is no mention of a UK release yet and, unsurprisingly, nothing said about sales in the USA.