As famed YouTuber Marques Brownlee said late last year, good phones are getting cheap and cheap phones are getting good. We might like the $700+ flagships that are being pushed out onto the marketplace, but more affordable options are becoming even more compelling with each passing day. A prime example of this is the newly announced Honor 5X, a $200 smartphone from the same company that produced the highly praised Google Nexus 6P.

To be fair, Honor is a sub-brand of Huawei and it’s not really Huawei itself (except it really is). The Honor 5X, not to be confused with the LG-made Google Nexus 5X, is an Android 5.1.1 smartphone that actually packs much more of a punch than its weight class would lead you to believe. Even though it’s only going to cost $200 when it ships later this month (and yes, that’s to the US via stores like Amazon and Newegg), it comes with features from phones possibly twice its price.

There’s a 5.5-inch 1080p IPS LCD, Snapdragon 615 SoC, 2GB of RAM, 16GB storage, microSD expansion up to 128GB, 13MP f/2.0 rear camera with a 27mm wide-angle lens, 5MP f/2.4 selfie cam with a wider 22mm lens, and a full metal body unheard of in this price range. And like its much more expensive Huawei Mate 8 cousin, the Honor 5X boasts a fingerprint reader on the back too. Rounding out the spec sheet are LTE and dual SIM slots.

And yes, it really is just two hundred bucks, unlocked and ready to go. The folks at Android Central had a nice hands-on session with the phone if you want to take a closer look. If phones like this, along with devices like the newest Moto G and offerings from fellow Chinese company ZTE, are any indication, 2016 is going to be an even better time to be a cheap smartphone user than ever before. It’s no dishonor to be on a tighter budget.

Via GSM Arena

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