Honor photocopies apple's iphone 17 pro and slaps in a 9 000 mah slab
Honor has stopped flirting with inspiration and moved straight to identity theft. Fresh renders show the upcoming Honor 600 and 600 Pro wearing apple's still-unannounced iPhone 17 Pro wardrobe: a raised glass plateau that swallows the entire upper third of the rear shell, triple-lens symmetry, even a side-mounted camera button apple hasn't shipped yet. The difference? Inside the Pro clone sits a 9 000 mAh cell—nearly double the combined capacity of both iPhone 17 Pro models.
The photocopy arrives before the original
apple's next flagship won't reach store shelves until autumn, yet Chinese social media is already dissecting its doppelgänger. The Honor 600 Pro copies the camera island down to the millimetre, swaps stainless steel for aluminium, and undercuts whatever price Tim Cook announces by half. Winfuture's leaked images leave no room for doubt: the 600 Pro is a forensics-grade replica, save for the microscopic logo.
Inside, Honor diverges. A 6.57-inch 1.5K OLED panel refreshes at 120 Hz, Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 8 Gen silicon keeps the throttle open, and a 200 MP Samsung sensor headlines the optics. The vanilla 600 loses the periscope but keeps the mega-sensor; both models inherit the 9 000 mAh brick. Fast-charge wattage remains under wraps, yet even at 66 W the maths is brutal: fill once, endure three days of 5G, GPS and binge viewing.
Why battery suddenly trumps silicon
apple's silicon-plus-software ballet still squeezes admirable endurance from sub-5 000 mAh cells, but physics is a merciless auditor. Honor's wager is simple: brute capacity beats optimisation when the gap grows this wide. A 9 000 mAh reservoir turns the phone into a pocket power station; pair it with an efficient LTPO panel and the Android scheduler suddenly looks frugal instead of thirsty.
Industry rumour mills say Samsung is stress-testing 20 000 mAh prototypes, and niche brands have already shipped 10 000 mAh bricks. The calculus for apple becomes uncomfortable: either keep shaving nanometres off die size or admit that millimetres of extra thickness buy hours of real-world use.
Honor's move also exposes a softer flank in Cupertino's armour. Design leaks used to travel one way—from Foxconn to Shenzhen knock-off shops. Now the cloners publish first, test market second, and ship third, all before Apple's keynote rehearsal. By the time Phil Schiller steps on stage, the visual surprise is yesterday's meme.
Europe gets the knock-off first
Retail channels in Slovakia and Malaysia have already primed SKUs for the 600 Lite; the full duo is slated for continental Europe within weeks. Import duties and 5G band compliance are solved problems for Honor, meaning a Parisian buyer can own iPhone 17 Pro aesthetics before any Parisian Apple Store stocks the genuine article.
The pricing strategy is surgical. Last year's Honor 500 series opened at €399; expect the 600 Pro to land below €600 while carrying flagship guts. Apple has never acknowledged these raids publicly, but internal briefings reportedly track clone shipments as a leading indicator of desirability—free market research scraped straight from Weibo.
For consumers the moral quandary is thin. If industrial design is a commodity and the spec sheet outguns the original, loyalty becomes an expensive habit. Honor bets the crowd will choose two-day screen-on time over iMessage blue bubbles.
Either way, the photocopy is already in the window. Apple's response window closes the moment Honor's pallet hits European customs—and the battery inside doesn't care about brand allegiance.