It feels like the whole world is obsessed with Labubus. You can’t walk around a major city like London without spotting countless little grinning monsters dangling off the straps of handbags or clipped to the back of rucksacks. Dodgy street markets are filled with racks of unconvincing fakes (or 'Lafufus’ as they’ve come to be known), and every time you walk past one of manufacturer Pop Mart’s many shops, you’ll inevitably see long queues as shoppers race to get their hands on the originals.
The plush toy’s trademark—slightly creepy—smile is inescapable, but there’s another, less disconcerting face that you might have seen around. Designed in 2006 by Hong Kong creative Kenny Wong, Molly is a child-like mascot with big blue eyes and a playful pouting expression. She was Pop Mart’s top-selling character before the Labubu craze and has appeared in collabs with some of the most prominent pop-culture brands.
You can find figures of a Squid Game Molly, a Donald Duck Molly, a Zootopia Molly, and now she’s bursting into the tech world via a new limited-edition phone made by Chinese smartphone giant Honor.
Fit for the 'gram
The Honor 600 Pro Molly Limited Edition is one of the best-looking special-edition devices I’ve seen. Its sleek, iPhone-like design is perfectly on trend, and the Golden White color exudes an understated luxury. Some might say the phone looks like a dupe, but Apple could never make something this cute.
Although you can buy the regular Honor 600 Pro—which we described as “a classier and more composed alternative to the usual flagship brigade” in our review—in the same colorway, this edition is marked by the glittery Molly illustration; the character is printed on the phone’s rear panel, outfitted in a fetching beret and puffy dress. It’s a phone that you would expect to see clasped in the hands of someone wearing a princess-inspired hime lolita dress as they take yet another selfie for their thriving Instagram page.
Honor obviously knows this too, as plenty of the phone's unique software features are centred around photography. Every Honor phone comes with a selection of optional photo watermarks (so you can show your followers exactly which device your shots were taken with) and the Honor 600 Pro Molly Limited Edition gets a bunch of exclusive picks.
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There are three basic designs to choose from—Molly Paradise, Molly Planet, and Molly’s Adventure—but countless customization options are available for each one.
Molly Paradise, for example, adds a basic Polaroid-like frame to your snap in the color of your choice, complete with a Pop Mart logo and some ‘Molly 20th Anniversary’ branding (the character is celebrating 20 years since its creation, after all).
You can decorate the frame with some little art of Molly in a tap, in a range of outfits and poses to fit your desired theme. For a casual vacation pic, you might want to add the flight attendant Molly dragging her little suitcase, while Molly wearing scuba goggles and carrying a big fish would be perfect for a photo taken on your latest beach outing.
Fashion meets serious specs
The phone comes pre-loaded with a Molly theme, which consists of a gold-patterned wallpaper and a lock screen featuring the same illustration as the rear panel. As with the watermarks, there’s an impressive level of customization here.
The always-on-display, for example, can be adorned with Molly if you wish. There’s another theme on offer too, which actually lets you create your very own unique Molly wallpaper by dragging and resizing little illustrations and logos.
No, the overall software experience isn't completely transformed. This is still very much an Honor 600 Pro running the company’s MagicOS 10 software (which is based on Android 16), but these little touches show an impressive level of attention to detail and make the phone feel that much more special.
The same is true of the unboxing experience, which is simply a delight. The Honor 600 Pro Molly Limited Edition comes in a mammoth Molly box that’s designed to look like a briefcase, complete with a functional carrying handle. Inside, you’ll find the phone itself in a unique Molly-fied version of the regular packaging, in addition to an adorable handbag-style phone case that looks a bit like an old-fashioned camera, a colorful lanyard to attach to it, a commemorative print, a pin badge, and more.
Considering it only costs an extra £100 to upgrade from the regular Honor 600 Pro (which retails for £899.99 in the UK), I was pretty impressed with the sheer number of extra goodies thrown in with the Molly Limited Edition model. You can also take advantage of a £300 discount coupon at the time of writing if you buy through the Honor store. As ever, though, the phone isn’t available in the US or Australia.
Under the hood, the Honor 600 Pro Molly Limited Edition has the same formidable specs as the regular 600 Pro. That means you’re getting a staggeringly bright 6.57-inch AMOLED display, 512GB of storage (so you won’t have to worry about running out of space), the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC paired with 12GB of RAM, an all-day 6,400mAh battery, and a three-camera setup that includes a capable 200MP main shooter, plus a 50MP periscope lens and a 12MP ultra-wide.
I’ve been using the phone for the last couple of days, and while there are some minor frustrations — you’re only getting the slow USB 2.0 standard with its Type-C port, and its dual speakers are a noticeable downgrade compared to those on my usual flagship Honor Magic 8 Pro — it’s hard not to fall in love with a device that just looks this good.
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