Honor 8C

The Honor 8C is a modification of the Honor 7C and comes with some exciting additions. At a mid-range price of Rs. 9,999, the phone comes with one massive battery, tackling the problem of battery anxiety among modern smartphones.

However, just tackling the problem of battery is not enough to stay afloat in the competitive market. Due to the poor performance and weak camera, Honor 8C falls short on many aspects that many mid-range phones provide. It lags behind its competition and fails to give a competitive fight to become a mid-range marvel.

Honor 8C is a plastic build phone, but that doesn’t make it any bit less durable. The phone is a bit tall, but it can still fit in your hand comfortably. The display has a notch and is almost borderless except for the broad chin that takes up part of the bottom screen. There is an option to disable the notch, but that will make that part black, lowering the screen space to work with. The rear panel holds a vertical camera module and has a fingerprint sensor placed in the centre. Honor tries to go premium by replicating the gradient design that is a speciality of Honor phones but makes it look more garish. The volume and the power button is well-placed on the right side of the phone and easy to reach. The micro USB port is at the bottom. It is quite a disappointment that the phone has not moved to the new USB Type-C port. However, it has not ditched the 3.5mm headphone, which is lovely.

The Honor 8C arrives with a 6.26-inch TFT IPS LCD screen with an HD+ display going for vibrant 720×1520 pixels. The colours come out accurate, and the viewing angles are quite right. It has 19:9 aspect ratio, which is quite decent. However, maximum brightness is not adequate and tends to distort the text or images. Plus, outdoor legibility is not very good.

The Honor 8C is fitted with the Snapdragon 632 chipset. It is known for its efficiency. The phone comes with a 4GB RAM which is quite good, thought the performance turns out to be mixed. Daily applications can run well on this phone, but it does struggle when it is pushed. For examples, heavy websites on Chrome made the phone lag. However, it could be because of optimisation problems from Huawei since the chipset is efficient enough to perform such functions. PUBG and Asphalt 9 can run on this phone well enough, but they do experience some rare stutters. The phone gets at 2465 points on Geekbench which is excellent for the price it comes in. When there is adequate light, the face recognition words fast though it has to be aimed directly at your face. On the other hand, when you are in the low light situation, then, you can use the screen light to brighten up your face. The fingerprint scanner is more accurate and fast.

The Honor 8C comes with a 13MP primary rear camera with an aperture of f/1.8. Plus, the phone has a 2MP depth-sensing camera with an f/2.4 aperture. The iOS-inspired app is quite good and has a lot of options, including the pro mode. The phone has AI integration and can detect about 22 different objects along with 500 different types of scenes. However, the AI enhancements make the photos oversharpened and a bit saturated. In adequate light conditions, without AI mode on, the phone provides a good amount of detail. Even edge detection is decent. However, in low light conditions, the pictures come out murky with a lot of noise. The details suffer too.

In the front, the phone has an 8MP camera with an f/2.0 aperture. The images turned out to be soft and quite overexposed. Low-light shots are inferior. While the LED flash tries to minimise the noise, the images still lack details and have inaccurate colours.

Regarding videos, the front camera can record up to 720p while the rear records up to 1080p. There is no stabilisation, and so, you get jerky footage.

The smartphone has a massive 4,000mAh battery. In an HD video battery loop, it was able to last for about 14 hours and 30 minutes, which is quite satisfying. Plus, the phone has some battery saving features like reducing screen resolution when the power gets low. The phone does not have quick charging, and the large battery takes a lot of time to fill up its juice – about 2 and a half hours.

The Honor 8C does not stand out among competitors like Asus ZenFone Max Pro M1 or the Nokia 5.1 Plus. It tries to be an all-rounder but does not excel in any particular area. The phone is not premium in its looks. The camera tends to disappoint in low-light. The performance struggles as well. Only the battery of the phone stands out, but that cannot be the sole USP of a phone. It is not a recommended buy, and one could do better by getting a Nokia or Xiaomi phone.