Honor 8

Honor is expanding its portfolio with the honor 8. The Huawei owned company wants to bring you a premium feel flagship without the flagship price. The Honor 8 CPU comes from the six-inch Huawei Mate 8 and has the same dual-camera setup as the Huawei P9. The dual blast design is new for both Honor and Huawei as phone makers. 

The Huawei Honor 8 in Sapphire Blue, with 32GB internal memory and 4GB RAM runs for Rs. 28,499. It comes with a 6 inch 3.2 centimetres (5.2-inch) LTPS capacitive touchscreen display with 1920 x 1080 pixels at 423 PPI (pixels per inch). This flagship is powered by HiSilicon Kirin 950 (16 nm) octa core processor and comes with 4 GB RAM. It also has 32/64 gigs of internal storage that can be expanded up to 128GB with a microSD card. The phone runs Android 8.0 and has a 3000mAh non-removable battery. It measures 145.5 x 71 x 7.5 mm and weighs 153 gm. Further, it also houses a 12-megapixel primary camera on the rear and an 8-megapixel front shooter for selfies.

The Honor 8 is stunning to look at – with its 15 layers of glass exterior it reflects lights in an almost unique fashion as it gets captured from every angle. The resulting appearance is something that photos can’t possibly do justice to. Both sides of the Honor 8 are made up of 2.5 D glass which gives both sides a slight curvature to let the glass fit the frame more seamlessly. Inadvertently, however, this also means that the Honor 8 is very slippery.

The back of the phone houses two 12 megapixel cameras with laser-assisted focus, a dual tone flash and a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner with a smart key. The fingerprint sensor can also be used as a button which can configure up to three apps or shortcuts that need to be accessed on the fly.

On the front there is a 5.2 inch LTPS capacitive touchscreen which makes the phone comfortable to use with one hand. The bottom houses a large speaker grill next to a USB type-C port and at the top is an IR blaster, a feature that used to be on Samsung and HTC devices for a few years, but has since then been shelved. 

The Honor 8’s display looks great with vivid colours and saturation not being a major problem, however it does fall short with the brightness of the screen. The display doesn’t seem to make it past 400 nits, and it usually takes about more than 500 nits to see reasonably well in sunlight.

The Honor 8 runs the latest Android with Huawei’s EMUI 4.1 skin-comm and offers advanced users an extensive amount of options and menus. The EMUI doesn’t come with an app drawer though, but you are allowed to change the launcher to your heart’s content. The same can be said for the notification shade or quick toggle menu which are a bit of an eyesore and only allow for nine shortcuts, forcing you to make these limited choices wisely. The Honor 8 is powered by a 3000 mAH battery, and with EMUIs extensive power saving tool you can enable or disable apps from running in the background usually.

The Honor 8’s dual camera uses two 12 megapixel sensors to take an image. A black and white photo is blended with another photo in colour, essentially letting the camera take two photos in two different exposures at the same time, minimizing noise while maximizing details and textures. The selfie camera works quite well, with the 8 megapixel front-facing camera getting some excellent photos in bright light. Taking shots at night is an entirely different story though. For a smartphone that has two cameras, it doesn’t take photos as nicely as other 12 megapixel shooters. The Honor 8’s camera makes up for it though, with some exciting night-time modes that work best on a tripod. There’s a light painting mode, which is one of the more unique camera features, and a night mode which lets you take some spectacular night-time shots. The video recorder is capable of up to 1080p video at 60 frames but only the 30 fps option offers image stabilization.

The front-facing camera took some pretty good video as well so it works great for Snapchat or Instagram. The AA rates price point puts it in line with other premium value smartphones like the Oneplus 3 and the Alcatel Idol 4s. 

The Honor 8’s battery scored 70 solid hours in the endurance battery-life tests. That being said, the Honor 8 should easily last a full day without needing to be charged; there’s even a battery optimisation tool which scans the settings for potential battery saving options that can help squeeze every bit of juice from the 3000 mAH battery.

The Honor 8 starts at Rs 28,499 for the 32 gigabyte version. If the Honor 8 were priced only Rs 4000-5000 less we wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it, but the cameras average low-light performance and underwhelming screen brightness don’t justify the additional amount. Still, the Honor 8 has a super-fast fingerprint scanner, excellent battery life, and a comfortable 5.2 inch screen all wrapped in a beautiful package that’s sure to please any smartphone fanattic!