The Chinese Telecommunications Company has been manufacturing mobile phones since 1997. It is also the largest telecom infrastructure maker in the world. Huawei struggled in the past to make its brand appealing to customers, but this year noticed a massive surge in popularity. Huawei completely changed its focus in 2015, launching a range of high-quality, all-metal devices including the G8, Mate S, Mate 8 and P8. The telecommunications giant went from a middle of the pack manufacturer to the best seller in China and revealed 100 million Smartphone sales in 2015.
Recently Honor celebrated its 2nd anniversary in India and the brand hosted an exclusive preview of its latest flagship Honor 8 in Goa. We spent some time checking out the new Honor 8 dual camera system that Huawei started with Honor 6 Plus.
Look and Feel:
The Honor 8 features an aluminium frame that is sandwiched on both sides by Corning’s Gorilla Glass, Huawei states that there is a very detailed process involved in making the glass with a 2.5D effect that sits on both the front and the back of the device. But it doesn’t include water-resistance or splash protection; also it is quite a delicate device as it is prone to scratches. On the backside it has two 12MP cameras stacked side-by-side and a fingerprint reader, on the left side of the frame features a SIM tray that can accept one nano SIM along with a microSD card and on the right is the volume rocker and the power button. On the top it has a secondary mic and an IR blaster while the bottom features a 3.5mm headphone jack, a USB Type-C port and a speaker grille. Overall the device has a high quality feel, seamless design, looks impressive and feels good in your hand.
Features:
The highlight of the Honor 8 is the dual-camera setup on the back and a fairly attractive metal unibody design. Honor 8 comes with two 12MP cameras on the back. Huawei is using f/2.2 sensors here, an 8MP front camera (f/2.4) on the handset. The Huawei Honor 8 features a HiSilicon-designed Kirin 950 chipset. The chipset is paired with the Mali-T880 MP4 GPU and 4GB of RAM. The device features 32GB of internal storage which can be further expanded up to 256GB via the microSD card slot. Honor 8 features a 5.2-inch display that features an LTPS display at Full HD resolution and this delivers a pixel density of 423 PPI, which is pretty good for a mid-range device. The Honor 8 packs in a non-removable 3000 mAh battery, 4G bands, Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (dual band), Bluetooth v4.2, GPS, NFC and an infrared port also.
Camera performance:
Got a chance to test the camera in Goa which is one of the favorite places on earth. Had a great time with the Honor 8, very consistent and most of the time I got the desired output, the colors and details are excellent in day and night. The Honor 8, like the Huawei P9, is equipped with two main cameras, one of the Sony-brand IMX386 sensors captures only in black and white and helps provide brighter pictures. Secondly, focus can be adjusted in 12 MP pictures. It has a number of customizable features including an exposures dial for shooting at night or light painting. The main cameras have an f / 2.2 aperture, while the front camera makes use of an 8 MP sensor with f / 2.4 aperture lens. The camera also allows you to capture in Pro mode if you want to do more creative stuff like light painting, etc.
Sample shots:
Overall performance:
The Honor 8 is fast and gives us good benchmark scores. Delivers fast booting speeds when you turn on the Honor 8, great image processing and web surfing performance. Not enjoyed much with its gaming performance though. Not much heating issue during usage and overall gives us a very stable performance.
Verdict:
Though Honor 8 packed all the key ingredient, the price tag of Rs.30,000/- may push consumer to opt for OnePlus 3, which is still going strong in this price segment. But we really feel that Honor 8 is much more attractive, specially the blue variant and much comfortable and easy and great if you care about one hand usage.
TYPE: Phone
MODEL: Honor 8
MANUFACTURER: Honor
DIMENSIONS: 145.5 x 71 x 7.45 mm
WEIGHT: 153 g
BATTERY SIZE: 3000 mAh
SCREEN SIZE: 5.2 in
DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY: LCD
SCREEN: 1920 x 1080 pixels (424 ppi)
FRONT CAMERA: 8 megapixels
REAR CAMERA: 12 megapixels
FLASHLIGHT: Dual-LED
ANDROID VERSION: 6.0 – Marshmallow
USER INTERFACE: Emotion UI
RAM: 4 GB
INTERNAL STORAGE: 32 GB
REMOVABLE STORAGE: microSD
CHIPSET: HiSilicon Kirin 950
NUMBER OF CORES: 8
MAX. CLOCK SPEED: 2.3 GHz
CONNECTIVITY: HSPA, LTE, Dual-SIM, Bluetooth 4.2