Honor 8 : Review "Great Value For Money"
Huawei has offered some good-looking and interesting budget smartphone in the past but no other smartphone marked the position of the last year’s Honor 7. The smartphone was a well-crafted device with power packed performance. And soon after a year, the company has unveiled its successor called the Honor 8.
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| Honor 8 : Flagship from Honor |
The Honor 8 smartphone is officially launched in India for a price of Rs 29,999. The smartphone has a dual-camera setup just like the P9 that was launched earlier this year. The dual-camera is the USP of many smartphone devices this year.
Even Apple has introduced its unique dual-camera setup on the iPhone 7 Plus and the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S8 is also rumored to feature similar camera setup. But, does the Honor 8 smartphone stand out in terms of specifications and features above the sub-Rs 30,000 smartphone segment? Let’s find out…
Priced at Rs 28,999, the Honor 8 goes directly against the likes of OnePlus 3 and ASUS ZenFone 3 and LeEco LeMax 2.
Honor 8: Design and Built
Huawei has revamped the overall design of Honor 8, which makes it looks remarkable. The smartphone features a 5.2-inch full HD display which offers a razor sharp view. The device comes with a metal frame design covered with two sheets of 2.5D curved glass. It makes the device looks stunningly premium. However, the display gets covered up with fingerprints very often which is not good.
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| Honor 8 : Design and built |
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| Honor 8 : Design and Built |
The quality of display panel is really good, as the colors look awesome, viewing angles are superior and there’s strong visibility in sunlight. Moreover, you can adjust the color settings from the settings app. The phone is very comfortable for one-handed use thanks to its thin borders and a merely 153 grams of weight.
Honor 8: Hardware and features
The Honor series of smartphones come with Huawei’s own Silicon processors. The Honor 8 sports a Kirin 950 octa-core SoC which accelerates the device for even demanding apps. The device has secured 92,353 points in AnTuTu listing, 18,083 in 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited, and 41fps in GFXBench listing. The points are still lower than those of the Snapdragon 820 powered devices, but in practical usage, the device won’t lag at all.
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| Honor 8 : Specs |
The Honor 8 is equipped with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard storage. The connectivity options on the device include 4G LTE, Wi-Fi, USB OTG, NFC, and Bluetooth. The smartphone has missed the support for VoLTE in India which is mandatory for making voice calls over the LTE network, although the company clarified that the functionality will be enabled via a software update in the future.
The Honor 8 runs on Honor’s own Emotion UI or EMUI based on Android Marshmallow OS. The new UI offers Android features such as Now-on-Tap and others, but at the same time adds a set of customizations on it. The device witnesses a single-layered interface with custom icons, notification bars, and settings app. Users get the freedom to customize the onscreen button layouts if needed.
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| Honor 8 : Specs |
The EMUI also offers quite a few gesture-based actions alongside a ‘Smart Assistance’ feature which allows voice controls. If the user asks the Honor “where are you?” the device starts ringing, vibrating and flashing the LEDs which help you find your device. Isn’t it an interesting function?
Honor 8: Performance
The Honor 8 smartphone is packed with Kirin 950 octa-core SoC and 4GB of RAM which together accelerates the device quite easily. The smartphone works smoothly even when most demanding games like Mortal Kombat X are working. The device stays cool even during gaming, however, the phone get hot when the camera is in use for a long time. The heating issue might have caused due to a bug which might get fixed via software update.
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| Honor 8 : Benchmark Scores |
The display of Honor 8 nails incredibly good media playback, as the device supports high-resolution video files playback, including 4K. The audio playback is also good on Honor 8. The mono speaker which is placed at the bottom side is loud enough for normal music listening, but it feels weak and a bit flat in some incidents where high-definition audio playback is demanded. However, the device supports DTS audio for the headphone output.
Honor 8: Camera
The dual-camera setup on the Honor 8 is the key highlight feature which the company is pushing. The primary rear camera setup includes two 12MP sensors where one captures color and the other captures monochrome image. The cameras support for f/2.2 aperture. The device has also offered an 8MP selfie camera with f/2.4 aperture.
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| Honor 8 : Dual Camera |
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| Honor 8 : Sample Shot |
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| Honor 8 : Sample Shot |
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| Honor 8 : Sample Shot |
The Sensors captures landscapes and macros with details and near-accurate colors under the natural light conditions. While so, the low-light still captured from Honor 8 displays some noise and miss the details; however, the quality of images is still good even in low-light. The device offers popular camera features such as HDR, light painting, panorama, time-lapse, slow motion, and Beauty.
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The maximum resolution for video recording on Honor 8 is 1080p at 60fps. The videos recorded on the device are pretty decent.
Honor 8: Battery
The Honor 8 comes with a non-removable 3000mAh battery that supports fast charging. The device manages to get charged around 45 percent within 30 minutes with the help of the adapter and cable shipped with the device.
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| Honor 8 : Battery Performance |
The smartphone could easily last for the entire day after normal usage on a single charge. While playing videos on the device, it survived for about 11 hours of runtime. In addition, the smartphone has ROG power saving mode which is quite useful which renders the full HD display to 720p for power optimization.
Verdict
The Honor 8 smartphone is almost as good as it looks on the paper. The device offers everything possible at the price of Rs 29,999; however, the Smartphone misses out the VoLTE support and FM Radio. The camera of the device is capable of capturing really good images but the low-light imaging seems a bit underwhelming.
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| Honor 8 : Great Value for Money |
Looking at the price of the Honor 8, it is a bit expensive than the Asus Zenfone 3 and OnePlus which showcases similar functions apart from the dual-camera setup. But, the price might get normalized soon.
The Honor 8 smartphone is an all-rounder in every term. And, if you are looking for a solid processor, decent display, useful software tricks, competent cameras and powerful battery power, then Honor 8 must be your pick!
