Apple and Samsung don’t put secondary displays on the backs of their mainstream slab phones. Honor does, and it’s doing so across an entire lineup rather than a single showpiece device.
The company has officially revealed the Honor 700, Honor 700 Pro, and Honor 700S, all targeting the Chinese market, all carrying a compact square display embedded inside the rear camera plateau. Pre-orders are open through Chinese official channels, though Honor has not announced a launch date or published complete specifications.
What That Second Screen Is Supposed to Do
Honor’s promotional material confirms the rear panel handles glanceable information and camera previews, though the full software feature set remains unverified.
Honor’s promotional material shows the rear panel displaying time-related information and animations. It can also serve as a live viewfinder for selfies taken with the main cameras.
The display’s size, reported by tipsters at approximately 1.72 inches, has not been confirmed by Honor. Reported use cases for the rear panel include:
- Live viewfinder for selfies using the main cameras
- Time glances and decorative animations
- Music playback controls
- Notification and quick-information displays
Weather support, music controls, and notification access appear in secondary reporting as expected capabilities, but Honor has not officially documented them.
Honor’s Version Is Smaller Than Xiaomi’s
Xiaomi already ships a confirmed rear display on a flagship device; Honor’s approach is more compact and potentially more affordable.
Xiaomi already ships a rear display on the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max: a 2.9-inch LTPO AMOLED panel running at 596×976 pixels and 120Hz, confirmed by GSMArena’s review. Honor’s panel sits inside the camera module rather than spanning most of the camera island, making it notably more compact.
If Honor prices the 700 series well below Xiaomi’s flagship territory, it has a reasonable shot at turning rear displays from a premium experiment into a midrange selling point. Pricing has not been announced.
The Specs That Aren’t Official Yet
Leaked chipset and hardware figures deserve caution: Honor has confirmed none of them.
Leaks associate the Honor 700 Pro with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset. The standard Honor 700 is expected to run a Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 processor, though the 700S chipset has not been reliably established in the supplied reporting.
Other figures circulating in leaks, primarily linked to the Pro model, include a 6.57-inch main display, a 200MP primary camera, and a battery near 9,000mAh. Honor has confirmed none of these.
What Honor has confirmed: color options in Blue Tone, Cold White, Clear Sky, and Pink Mist. Storage configurations start at 12GB of RAM with 256GB of storage. The 700 and 700 Pro reach up to 16GB of RAM with 512GB, while the 700S is reported with 12GB configurations only.
Where Apple and Samsung Stand
Adding a rear display introduces manufacturing and software complexity that established players have not pursued in their mainstream lines.
Neither company currently offers a rear secondary display on mainstream slab phones. Adding one introduces potential tradeoffs: greater manufacturing complexity, durability concerns around the camera island, and a larger power-management burden. These are plausible engineering considerations, though the supplied evidence does not quantify them specifically for the Honor 700.
The feature’s staying power will depend on whether software support runs deeper than a clock face and animations.
What Still Needs Answering
The practical test for the rear display comes after pricing, availability, and a launch date are confirmed.
Final pricing, global availability, confirmed hardware specifications, and a launch date all remain unknown. The more consequential open question is whether a rear display at midrange prices earns a place in daily routines, or stays a feature that looks better on a spec sheet than it performs in a pocket.
