Honor has used its press conference at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to announce a new mid-range device going by the name of the 4X, as well as launch its previously announced Honor 6 Plus smartphone in the European market. 

The Honor 6 Plus was originally introduced at the end of 2014 but it was previously unavailable in these lands. The company has now said the 5.5-inch smartphone will be coming in Q2 so we got our hands on it in the run up to the conference to see if its something worth getting excited about.

The Honor 6 Plus comes with a lovely premium design, featuring a brushed aluminium frame on the top and sides that looks great. The bottom of the device is finished in black and the Honor 6 Plus measures 150.46 x 75.68 x 7.5mm overall, meaning it's not only a good size for one-handed operation, but is nice and slim too.

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Made from a fibreglass base, the Honor 6 Plus offers a white or black glass rear, which has a similar look to Sony's Xperia Z smartphones - although you don't get the waterproofing with the Honor 6 Plus. It's a good look though and one that helps give the Honor device a premium appeal.

The Honor 6 Plus is a Dual-SIM device, like the newly-announced Honor 4X and you'll find the two SIM slots on the right-hand side of the device, along with the power button and the volume rocker, all of which blend seamlessly with the frame itself. The left-hand side is feature free like it is on the 4X smartphone, offering a simple, clean finish.

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A Micro-USB port sits at the bottom, while the headphone jack is found at the top and like other Honor smartphones, the display is slightly raised above the frame of the device by around a millimetre. It's a different approach to the one Apple has taken with the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus for example but sometimes different is good and the raised display seems to work well for the Honor 6 Plus.

It's a 5.5-inch JDI LCD screen that features a 1920 x 1080 resolution, offering a pixel density of 401ppi and from what we could tell in the conditions we were in, the display was good. Colours were nice and vibrant and the detail was sharp, while the viewing angles also seemed good, but we won't pass a final judgement on it until we come to review the device in full.

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The camera is the exciting part of the Honor 6 Plus however, and the element in which Honor is pushing with the tagline "Two Much". There is an 8-megapixel front-facing camera so those that are keen on taking pictures of themselves should be more than happy. And on the rear, things get even more interesting.

Honor hasn't opted for just one 8-megapixel snapper on the back, but two. Two modules and two lenses, which it claims enables you to get a 13-megapixel image when combined. It also offers a wide aperture mode, and it enables you to readjust, refocus and retune the aperture after you have captured the image. The aperture can be altered from F/0.95 to F/16 and it's a pretty cool feature that seamed to work flawlessly from what we saw in our demo.

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The company claims the parallel cameras and their algorithm, processing engine and independent ISP can shoot photos "outperforming a DSLR". We couldn't judge whether this was true in our demo but it will certainly be something we will be keen to see in action when we come to review it in full.

When it comes to the other specs, the Honor 6 Plus doesn't lack here either, offering an octa-core 1.8GHz Kirin 925 processor, supported by 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage that is expandable via microSD. It's worth mentioning the microSD would be instead of a second SIM so you can't have both.

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Everything ran lovely and smoothly and we experienced no lag when we tried it out, but as usual, we will pass our final verdict when we have used it in the real world. So far so good though, especially if the 3600mAh battery delivers the two to three day battery life we were told it would.

The Honor 6 Plus has Android 4.4 with the EMUI 3.0 interface over the top but the company has said it will be getting an upgrade to Android 5.0 Lollipop in the summer. 

No specific UK pricing has been announced yet, but as it is $320, we would expect it to be around £200 to £250. Three has announced it will be the exclusive network partner so if you want your hands on the premium-looking, two-timing camera smartphone, that's where you'll need to be heading.