It's official: the Honor 9X is coming. A Weibo post from the official Honor account revealed the mid-range handset's 23 July announcement event date, which will take place in China.

In late 2018 we reviewed the Honor 8X and found it to be a solid mid-range handset. The 9X is rumoured to up the ante, being the first handset to feature the company's Kirin 810 chipset (which was officially announced a couple of weeks prior). The focus of that chipset is to deliver high on artificial intelligence (AI) tasks.

So what else can we expect to see? Well, for now it's all rumour and conjecture. There are official box images of the device, also posted by Honor on Weibo, set in the style of the phone-maker's current design language, but we're yet to see any leaks of the device itself.

Honor 9X launch image 2
Honor

Will the 9X come with a 9X Pro variant, ditching the naming convention of the 8X Max from before, and instead opting for more cameras? Will the 9X do away with the notch for a punch-hole solution, like the Honor 20 series, or will it opt for a smaller dewdrop-like solution?

Honor being competitive, this ought to be a mid-range phone with distinctive design and spec clout for a low price point. After all, with competition from Xiaomi in the Redmi Note 7, as one example, this market is increasingly busy. We'll have to wait until the 23 July to see exactly how the 9X will stand-out from the crowd though.