A year later, the company now upgraded its upgraded varieties Honor 8 Has launched Like the previous phone, the new handset also makes its place in the upper mid-range segment. So that this phone OnePlus 3 ,Review) And Asus Zenfone 3 (ZEE 553 KL) Will compete
At present, our suggestion remains in this price segment. But will Honor 8 be able to change our thinking? Will this phone be successful in gathering praise with attractive features and specifications on paper? Learn the characteristics and shortcomings of this phone in our review.
Design and texture
Honor has completely changed his design and the new handset looks attractive. This phone shows a glimpse of Samsung’s 2016 variants of A series. The phone has a metal frame between two curved glass sheets for beauty. With this look, Honor 8 gives a fully premium look but the fingers on it look very bad. If you do not take care, then there is a fear of slipping from the phone’s hand.
Honor 8 has a 5.2 -inch display and the text looks quite sharp due to full HD resolution. The quality of the display panel of Honor 8 is good and colors also look good on it. The viewing angle is good and it is easy to use the phone in sunlight. You can go to the setting app and togle color temperature and a blue light filter. The phone is easy to use with one hand from the thin border given on the edge of the display. It is a light phone with a weight of 153 grams.
The buttons given in the phone are easy to use. The earpiece grill also has a hidden notification LED, a USB Type-C port at the top, a SIM and a microSD card tray (up to 128 GB). Although a cutout is made for the second Nano SIM in the SIM slot, the phone does not record it.
The rear of the phone has a dual camera, laser autofocus sensor and a dual tone LED flash. The fingerprint sensor is quite sensitive and it unlocks the phone rapidly. Apart from this, fingerprint sensors can also be used to lock the app, access the hidden file and answer a call as a gesture, to take selfies and look at the notification shade. Honor, moving one step ahead, has given a sensor on the physical button, which the company has named Smart. You can launch several functions such as voice recording, flashlight, taking screenshots or an app according to the finger pressing on this (once, twice and late).
The box with Honor 8 has an 18 watt charger, data cable, SIM projector tool and a guideline leaflet.
Specification and feature
Honor has given the processor of Huawei in this smartphone. Kirin 950 octa-core processor is a useless processor for most popular apps. In the benchmark test, we got good figures from this smartphone. However, these figures are better than any other smartphone with Snapdragon 820 processor. But at the time of real use, it is quite difficult to tell the difference between the two phones.
Honor 8 has 4 GB RAM. The phone has 32 GB inbuilt storage. Apart from this, features like dual band Wi-Fi B/G/N/AC, Bluetooth 4.2, USB OTG and NFC have been given for connectivity. This phone has not given FM radio which may be disappointing for some people. Honor supports 4G LTE for 8 FDD and TDD bands. VoLTE support is not available in India right now. But the company says that this feature will be available through software updates in future.
The biggest feature of this smartphone is the custom UI of the company given on Android Marshmallow. An Android’s Now-on-Tap feature is also provided with the latest version (4.1). Apart from this, there are many new customization features. It is a single layer interface that comes with its icon, setting app and notification shed. The layout of the onscreen button can be changed anytime which is good.
Improvements such as link+ section in ‘Wireless and Network’ can be improved as better signals from the section, to connect the network quickly, enabled auto update and Wi-Fi+ (Automatic switch between Wi-Fi and mobile data).
The EMUI also has several gesture based features and a voice control feature can also be accessed in ‘Smart Assistance’. Navigation can be swapped on the right side and can be activated for a dial pad or a single-handed mode for the entire display. Apart from this, if you speak ‘Wharer RU’ through voice control, the phone ring, vibration and LED flash light will turn on from which you can easily find the phone. Voice control works well and most of the time it was successful in identifying our command.
Apart from this, the phone also has another gesture feature called copying sense that you can take a screenshot or touch the screen with the tips of your hands or make a circle. It is okay to tap on the display with tips but we had to put a lot of emphasis to make a circle which is quite strange. Apart from this, there is a floating dock for normal work which is similar to the quick ball of MeIUI.
Many apps in Honor 8 do not appear pre-install. But you will find Google app suits, smart controllers in the phone who work well for basic function with IR appliances.
Performance and Battery Life
Multitasking can be done very easily in Honor 8. Popular games like Mortal Combat X Work in the phone also run easily. We did not have any warmth problem in the phone. But in our review unit, we faced the problem of the phone getting very hot while using the camera. Honor says that this is the only incident because it was a preproduction unit and a retail device will work normal.
This phone has a very good experience of media playback due to the support for the display and high-resolution video file (including 4K). Stock music and video player’s design is sleek and it supports DTS audio (only for headphones). The mono speaker at the bottom makes a loud sound but it looks weak when using apps like YouTube. The audio quality from the headphones is good but the voice could have been better.
The company of the company Honor 8, which is presenting the most special feature, is its dual camera. The dual camera has a 12 megapixel color and monochrome sensor. The rear camera has F/2.2 aperture while the 8 -megapixel camera comes with aperture F/2.4. Landscape and macro photos come with good details and colors are also good in natural light. The camera gets a good background blur but it can be improved with wide aperture mode. Apart from this, the blurred background can be adjusted using a slide near the focus. There is a lack of detailing in the pictures taken in low light, but still the quality is good.
Features given in the camera app can be easily controlled and the camera app gets used to use soon. Pre mode is available for videos and photos. Controls such as HDR, panorama, slow motion, light painting (slow shutter), time laps and beauty are given. The recorded video quality is also good. The video can be recorded at a maximum resolution of 1080 pixels at 60 frames per second. But 4K video recording cannot be done from the phone. We liked the quality taken from the front camera, which also brings pictures with good details in low light.
Honor 8 has a 3000 mAh non-removable battery that supports fast charging. With the use of adapters and cable coming with the phone, we could charge up to 45 percent battery within half an hour. Once charged the phone, we could easily run it for the whole day. The battery lasted 11 hours 7 minutes in our video loop test. ROG Power Saving Mode we found it very useful. On activating it, the display comes to 720 pixels, which reduces the battery consumption.
Our decision
If you have read our entire review, then it is clear that Honor 8 is as good handset as it attracts on paper. It has some shortcomings such as lack of VoLTE support (for now), lack of FM radio, sliding body and poor camera performance in low light.
Talk about the price, Rs 29,999 is slightly higher. Because OnePlus 3 and Asus Zenfone 3 are better phones at a lower price. But like most other smartphones, we hope that they may fall slightly after the prices of launch time.
Honor 8 is a great all-rounder in every way. And if you are looking for something different then OnePlus 3 and Zenfone are better than 3. It has many features such as strong processor, work software trick, extremely good display, capable camera and battery lasting all day.