Honor 8 Review

FEATURE

• Rich Feature and Design
• Glass is Back
• Falls Behind OnePlus 3

Huawei’s sub-brand Honor has released some interesting devices in the two years.

Specification:

Screen: 5.2in full HD LCD (424ppi)

Processor: Octa-core Huawei Kirin 950

RAM: 4GB of RAM

Storage: 32GB + microSD card

OS: Android 6.0 with Emotion UI 4.1

Camera: 12MP dual rear camera, 8MP front-facing camera

Connectivity: LTE, Wi-Fiac, NFC, IR, Bluetooth 4.2, USB-C and GPS

Dimensions: 145.5 x 71.0 x 7.5mm

Weight: 153g,  Priced at Rs 29,999.

Design:

         The Honor 8 brings some major design changes over its predecessor, the Honor 7. It features a unibody design, metal frame with curved edges and a 2.5D curved glass on the front and back, which adds to its premium look and feel. It has a 5.2-inch full-HD screen with ultra thin bezels on the 7.5mm thick, the Honor 8 is a slim phone 7.9mm thick LG Nexus 5X and the 7.4mm thick OnePlus 3. . The curved metal sides are easy to keep a grip of, thanks to narrow screen bezels, while the back has an attractive layering pattern that reflects light at different angles. The blue version is particularly pretty in sunlight. Shame, then, that you’ll probably want to put it in a protective case to prevent smashing both sides. The dual glass panel design is admittedly reminiscent of the Galaxy S7 and even more so of the Xiaomi Mi 4S. The tactile power and volume buttons can both be found on the right edge of the phone. IR blaster at the top of the device which can be used to control TVs and other household appliances. It worked quite well in my testing, and I think it’s a valuable addition. Huawei has designed a few cases that compliment the 8’s beauty, 

Display:

            The Full HD display did not disappoint on sharpness and accuracy. It did however showcase a slightly cooler colours, on the default settings, but this can be adjusted using the colour wheel in the Display settings. The panel offers deep blacks and bright whites, making photos and videos look great. Sunlight legibility is decent as well, but I noticed that the auto-brightness takes a couple of seconds The smaller display size does make handling easier in comparison to larger devices on the market. In fact, the Honor 8’s smaller size may seal the deal for some, as we rarely see this, especially at this price. The colour and temperature of the photographs shot using the camera smartphone looked pretty-much the same when we transferred them to the desktop. There is also a blue light filter that can be activated under Settings and Display. It adds a yellow tint to the screen to ensure less strain on your eyes. The processor is powerful, with four Cortex-A72 cores clocked at 2.3GHz and four Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.8GHz. It is paired with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. There’s also a 3,000mAh battery, and connectivity options such as 4G LTE, Bluetooth, GPS and Wi-Fi 802.11ac are present. The Honor 8 does not support VoLTE, but the company promises that this will be enabled via a coming software update.

Camera:

         Honor 8 is its dual-camera setup at the back, which uses two 12-megapixel sensors of aperture f/2.2 and pixel size of 1.25um, along with laser auto-focus and dual-tone LED flash. The sensor works in a manner similar to the HTC One M8, the QiKU Q Terra and uses two sensors to read different imaging data. One sensor reads RGB (colour) data while the other delivers monochrome data that makes it. The smartphone is capable of recording full-HD videos at 60fps, and slow motion videos at 120fps. While camera played well in daylight, low light was not as impressive as I expected it to be. Long exposures did brilliantly and this was thanks to the Pro Photo mode found in the camera app. There’s plenty of adjustments and they all produce great results. But using this camera in Auto Mode for low light shooting is not a good idea. The monochrome sensor captures as much light and detail information as it can to form a black-and-white image. When you choose monochrome in filters, you get true monochrome images from only the monochrome sensor and it is very useful in low-light where you can capture photos with less noise. All you need is a steady hand or a tripod stand as you can get some amazing photographs from this smartphone. 

Performance:

             The Kirin 950 is a pretty powerful chipset so gaming performance is not a problem. Even when playing demanding, graphics hungry games such as Asphalt Xtreme or Modern Combat 5: Blackout, I didn’t encounter any frame drops. Multimedia performance on the smartphone is also quite satisfactory. The phone was able to play 4K videos without any lag. The stock music player supports playback formats such as MP3, AAC and even FLAC, which has now become a norm on most affordable smartphones too. The combination of Kirin 950 SoC and 4GB of RAM works perfectly to handle daily tasks During normal operation, there were no signs of heating up and the phone remained fairly cool while playing games and running other third-party apps. The fingerprint reader on the back of the Honor 8 is quite good: it’s fast while still being accurate. The USB Type-C charging port is accompanied by the headphone jack on the left and a single speaker on the right. It can program different shortcuts including flashlight, screenshot, or voice recording Android 6 Marshmallow called Emotion UI (EMUI) 4.1. While the underlying apps experience is essentially the same as standard Android you might find on other smartphones from other manufacturers such as Huawei heavily customises the look and feel.

Pros and Cons:

Pros:

• Gorgeous design
• Excellent Fingerprint Scanner
• Great camera performance
• microSD card expansion

Cons:

• Lackluster battery life
• Glass back can be slippery
• software isn’t as good as the hardware

Battery:

          Overall, battery life was very good, however. I could easily stretch out the battery to two days with little effort. With support for fast charging, the 3,000mAh battery manages sail through the day with moderate usage. I have been using the phone with a Reliance Jio SIM (no VoLTE support though), with either Wi-Fi or 4G data on all the time. The smartphone with the 950 Kirin managed to hold the charge with a number of battery management modes. I found myself using the Performance mode a majority of the time and I got a decent 9-10 hours of battery life with some photography, plenty of gaming, some calls, 2 email accounts on sync and of course WhatsApp. With the ROG mode on and the same usage, I was able to squeeze a little more than four hours of screen on time.

Verdict:

         It would be safe to place the Honor 8 second to the OnePlus 3. Huawei has brought what many have wanted from an affordable flagship for a while now: a gorgeous design, a smaller size, and a great camera, ts sheer size or its design The biggest problem with the Honor 8, however, is the software. Huawei’s EMUI is getting better, slowly, but it’s an old version of Android 6 Marshmallow now, and while some may like the look and feel of it. the dual-camera set up gives Honor 8 a significant edge over competitors such as the OnePlus 3, the Asus Zenfone 3 (ZE552KL), and also the more affordable Moto Z Play and the Xiaomi Mi 5. The Honor 8 offers serious value-for-money and an excellent camera at under Rs 30,000. The Honor 8 brings what many have wanted from an affordable flagship with a gorgeous design, a smaller size, and a great camera smartphone would be and base your final decision off of that.