Huawei Honor 8 – Review

Not everyday, we come across a unique design in the mobile market these days. While other companies are trying really hard to give a differentiating factor to new mobile models, Huawei decided to pay more attention to design with the Honor 8. The Honor 8 has one unique selling point and that is the “design”. I would say that this is one among a million design and it stands out to be the prettiest mobile I have ever held in my hands. So we will talk a lot about the Honor 8’s design and also check if its worth the price.

Design

The Honor 8 is the second mobile from Huawei’s stable to come with a dual camera arrangement. The Honor 8 has a dual 12 MP camera arrangement at the back with laser focusing sensor and dual tone LED flash. We will talk about the camera in detail later. The front and the back is made of glass with 2.5D curved edges meeting the metal rim. My review unit is the sapphire blue color which is the prettiest of the lot. The rim is also blue color coated, giving it a classy look. Yes, the glass back and metal rim makes the mobile slipper, fingerprint magnet and also less durable. But you get a device whole style factor is a step above among all the similarly priced and designed mobiles in the market.

The dual camera arrangements sits flush and flat with the back. The circular fingerprint sensor is at the back. It is also a tactile mechanical button. The back glass is the highlight of the mobile. It has about 15 layers of materials to give a 3D shining feel to it. The mobile feels luxurious to hold and stylish to flaunt. It has a thin profile. The power and volume buttons are on the right and the left has a SIM tray. The USB C port and 3.5 mm audio jack are at the bottom. The top has the IR blaster and a noise cancelling mic.

The front has the 8MP camera, sensors, notification LED and the earpiece above the display. There are no physical navigation keys. Overall, the mobile is more of an art piece fused with technology. It is very comfortable to hold in the hand, though slippery. The rounded corners, the slim form factor and the solid build quality makes the Honor 8 a premium device.

Display

Honor 8 has a 5.2 inch Full HD display with a pixel density of 423 ppi. The color saturation seems to be a bit on the higher side. It has good black levels and the brightness is accurate as well. But the color saturation seems to be bit off. I tried playing with the setting to change the color saturation, but never did I find the sweet spot where the white remains white. The ambient light sensor is not quick to change the screen brightness. Also when the brightness is set to auto, you can still control it manually, which was confusing. There is an “Eye comfort” mode which increases the warmth of the screen, but I found it to be too strong and never used it. I figured out that there is a mismatch in the screen calibration. Otherwise, the display is decent with good viewing angles and decent direct sunlight readability. Overall, the display is just about average and I was expecting it to be a bit more accurate, given the price point of this mobile.

Hardware and Performance

Under the hood, the Honor 8 is powered by HiSilicon Kirin 950 Octa-core (4×2.3 GHz Cortex-A72 & 4×1.8 GHz Cortex A53) processor with Mali-T880 MP4 for GPU. It has 4 GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage. Honor 8 is a snappy device. It can handle resource intensive apps and complex UI interaction with ease. The UI transition animations are smooth and snappy. I loaded a few games that are heavy on graphics and Honor 8 had no problem handling those games. The 4 GB of memory does not keep all the apps and games in the memory. It started closing apps on it own after I loaded 4 of them. But that is not a big concern, since it is not a day to day task. I pushed the graphically intense games to the max graphics levels and Honor 8 handled them with no frame drop or screen stuttering. Upon continuous gaming or video shooting, the device does get hot. On regular usage, there is no heating issue. Overall, Honor 8 has a pleasing performance in store for you.

Telephony

The mobile supports 3G/4G but does not support VoLTE as of now. As VoLTE is just a software stack, I expect Huawei to roll-out an update soon. Call quality was superior as I found the ear piece speaker to be refined. Network latching was not a problem and there was no call drops.

Fingerprint sensor

Huawei has always been a step ahead in terms of fingerprint sensors. It is fast, accurate, reads from all angles, reads from wet or oily fingers and it is very versatile. It can click pictures, answer call, stop alarm, bring down the notification shade and browse photos. It also has “Smart key” function. The sensor is also a mechanical button. Under smart key function, the finger print sensor button can be configured to perform multiple actions on press, double press or long press. Huawei does not talk about this feature a lot and I discovered it by accident.

Software

Honor 8 runs on Android 6.0 with Emotion UI or the EMUI running on top. The visual design language of EMUI is flat and simple. The UI has a lot of transition animations, which could have been avoided. It offers a lot of customization options. There is no app drawer and it has app desk like iPhone or MIUI. The EMUI has a bunch of features which come in very handy. Though the Honor 8 is a 5.2 inch mobile, long press on the multi task button and you will get dual screen mode. In this mode you can use two apps at the same time. Swiping down the home screen with open the search bar on which you can search for any apps on the mobile.

In Ultra power saving mode the screen is black with large white icons. These icons point to only the critical apps in the mobile while data and other connectivity is disabled. There are other useful features like floating dock, motion control gestures, One Hand UI, voice control, etc… The mobile has an inbuilt activity tracker application, which is always on and tracking your steps. It can also track activity by GPS location. Though the tracker app is not very accurate and it cannot be disabled, it is a very handy feature. Scrolling screen shot and screen recording feature (with voice) is very handy. It comes with a few applications loaded, but I did find them useful. It also offers a customization options with themes and wallpapers. Overall, I like EMUI and I never get bored of the EMUI.

Camera

Honor 8 shares the same camera platform as the P9. It has two 12 MP sony IMX286 sensors. Like the P9, one sensor captures RGB information and the other sensor captures black and white information for contrast, depth and details. The captures images from both these sensors are merged into a single 12 MP image by the dedicated dual core image signal processor in the Kirin 950 chip-set. But unlike the P9, the H8 camera setup does not have Leica lens and image processing algorithm. It also does not have a dedicated black and white mode. The image quality from the H8 camera is good, but not as good as the P9. The dual camera setup gives the images a right exposure curve. The color saturation and reproduction accuracy is good as well. The dual sensor aids in low noise and high levels of details in the images. The Honor 8 matches the quality of images from ZenFone 3, but it falls short when compared to the Huawei P9 or the Samsung S7 edge.

Check out some of the sample images below

Honor 8 can shoot 1080p videos at 60 fps. It has Electronic Image Stabilization and it does not support 4K video. The front camera can also shoot 1080p videos but at 30fps. The rear camera can shoot stunning slow motion videos at 720p, but cannot be exported as slow motion video. You will have to use a video editing tool like Adobe Premier Clip to export slow motion videos. The quality of videos shot is very good. My review unit is is not the Indian retail unit. Hopefully the retail unit get the slo-mo export feature, like in the P9.

Check out this video shot with Honor 8 and edited in the mobile. It is a composite video created by combing slow motion videos, time-lapse videos and images shot with Honor 8.

Battery

Honor 8 is equipped with a 3000 mAh Lithium Polymer battery. With moderate usage, it lasts for little less than a day. With intensive usage, I get a screen on time of 3 hours and 10 minutes.

Verdict

The Honor 8 is a stylish mobile with good photographic capabilities. It has a stylish appeal to it, that I find very difficult to explain in words. It makes heads turn and makes you get noticed. Frankly, I have never handled such a beautiful mobile before. But it is an expensive affair. Priced at Rs 30k, it is both expensive to buy and maintain as well. I have dropped the mobile a couple of times and it luckily it stood the test of fate without any fatal damage. But if it breaks, the rear panel or the front display replacement could cost you a bomb. If you end up puting a protective case, you are spoiling the beauty of this mobile. I asked my twitter followers, if they would prefer a stylish glass panel mobile or a durable work-horse and most of them preferred a durable mobile. For Rs 29999, you get the most stylish mobile in the market, with average display, good camera, exceptional performance and a decent battery life. While you can get the rest of the parameters from other mobiles like Asus Zenfone 3 or the OnePlus 3, if you are buying the Honor 8, you will be buying it only for its killer looks. I would still recommend the Huawei P9, if you want the best camera in a smartphone.

I would like to extend my thanks to my unnamed source for lending us the review unit, though she/he knew that my review would be brutally honest.