Huawei's first Honor phone goes on sale in the US

Huawei has launched its new Honor branded handset, the Honor 5X, in the United States. Starting Jan. 31, the metal-clad smartphone is available at US$199.99 (AU$283).

The Huawei Honor 5X features a 5.5-inch Full HD display with 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution. Under the hood it includes a Snapdragon 616 chip coupled with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of expandable storage.

A 13-megapixel rear-facing camera is also part of the device, along with a 5-megapixel selfie shooter. The smartphone sports a 3,000 mAh battery with SmartPower 3.0 and a fingerprint scanner.

The Honor 5X is shipped with nano-SIM as well as micro-SIM slots, both supporting 4G data. The device runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop with highly customised Emotion UI, reports Engadget.

Huawei has also updated its Honor 7 handset in its home country. The Honor 7 Enhanced Edition runs on Google’s latest Android 6.0 Marshmallow with Huawei's own EMUI 4.0 on top and comes packed with a default 32GB native storage.

Last month, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2016, the company also announced the global launch of the Huawei Mate 8 smartphone. The device will be available in 30 countries including Australia.

Related: Huawei globally launched Mate 8; Huawei GX8 coming to the US

A recent IDC (International Data Corporation) report of smartphone market share revealed that the year 2015 saw a shipment of 1432.9 million units, up 10.1 percent from the 1301.7 million units shipped in the previous year. In spite of the economic slowdown in China, Huawei emerged as one of the few brands successfully diversifying in the international markets.

The company has reigned as one of the top four vendors to exceed 100 million in smartphone shipment . In 2015, the company has consistently expanded in the global market with a healthy combination of high-end flagships and pocket friendly affordable handsets.

Related: Smartphone shipments cross 1.4 billion in 2015, IDC report reveals