Hands-on with Huawei's Honor 5X smartphone, available in US for preorder now for $199.99, ships January 31
Sam Byford / The Verge :
Context & Ripple Effects
The December report that Huawei would use CES to bring the Honor 5X stateside [[a:837860]] has now turned into a concrete launch: a $199.99 unlocked preorder shipping January 31. That price point makes this Huawei's budget beachhead in the US, well below where its later hardware landed.
The playbook escalates quickly from here in the coverage arc — the Honor 8 dual-camera phone arrives that August at $399, the Mate 9 follows at $600, and by 2018 the Mate 10 Pro sits at $799 with a two-year security-update commitment. The 5X is the first rung of a deliberate climb up the US price ladder.
First-order effects
- US buyers get a sub-$200 unlocked Android option straight from Huawei with no carrier involvement, and Huawei gets direct US retail presence and preorder data ahead of its pricier launches.
Second-order effects
- Midrange incumbents face a new price floor: HTC's subsequent $699 flagship pricing shows how much headroom Huawei leaves itself to undercut on value while its own Honor 8 at $399 brackets the mid-tier from above.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Huawei's US strategy is carrier-free unlocked distribution first — building brand recognition at the low end before pushing flagship prices upward, a structure visible across the Mate 9 and Mate 10 Pro launches that follow.
The trend: Huawei's US entry runs bottom-up: cheap unlocked phones like the Honor 5X establish the brand before each successive model climbs the price ladder toward flagship territory.