Huawei Honor 8 review: Value for money smartphone, delight for camera lovers

NEW DELHI: The first look at the sleek and stylish Honor 8 will make you fall in love with it. An aluminium frame sandwiched between two layers of glass on the front and back gives the smartphone a premium look. Priced at Rs. 29,999, Honor 8 is in direct competition with OnePlus 3 and Asus ZenFone 3. Design: Honor 8 is available in three colours: Sapphire Blue, Sunrise Gold and Pearl White. The device we received for review was the Sunrise Gold variant. The smartphone weighs 153 grams and sports a compact 5.2-inch full-HD display with bright vivid colors and good viewing angles. It has 2.5D beautifully crafted glass on both sides which gives it an attractive look. However, glass at the back of the device is a fingerprint magnet but the slippery surface helps keeping this smartphone scratch free. It easily slides off slanting surface, so be careful. It’s a kind of phone you would never want to cover with a case. Honor 8 has a flat back with no camera bump. The Honor 8 has the volume rocker and power button on the same side making it easy for one-handed use. The fingerprint sensor, which is a physical button, placed at the back is very responsive and quickly unlocks the phone. Honor 8 also allows you to program the fingerprint sensor- touch and hold it to answer a call, stop alarm; slide down your finger over it to display the notification panel, swipe left or right to switch to previous and next photo. It can be used for variety of functions and you can program it to open any app and make life easy for you. At the top edge, we find one of the microphones in addition to IR blaster. At the bottom, there is a USB-C connector, single bottom-firing speaker and a headphone jack. The smartphone also has the ‘eye protection’ mode which minimizes the blue light. Camera: The camera setup at the back is pretty similar to Huwawei P9 and it's the biggest selling point of this device. Honor 8 comes with dual camera setup and each camera has same specs -12 megapixels with 2.2 aperture. One camera is used for luminescence and the other is for color information. Though these cameras do not possess optical image stabilization but it sports laser assisted auto focusing. Image compressed for Website One of the outstanding features the Honor 8’s camera has is the aperture mode. Tap on the subject you want to click, snap the picture and you can change different depths of field after clicking the photo. The camera is loaded with different other features like pro mode, beauty mode, pro video, beauty video, light painting, document scan, etc. Pro mode offers users full control over the camera's ISO, shutter speed, exposure compensation and more. Image compressed for Website Honor 8’s dual camera system captures more light and gives a crisp picture with vivid colours. It’s able to bring up the details and shadow and preserve the color information. Image compressed for Website In artificial lights, in our review, its camera even surpasses Samsung Galaxy S7’s 12MP shooter and captures really good photos. Unfortunately, there’s no 4K video recording in the phone. Though in extremely low-light condition, the images remain little dark but better than average. For selfies, the device packs an 8-megapixel sensor with decent wide-angle lens and captures great images. Performance Honor 8 runs on Huawei’s Emotion UI 4.1 over Android 6.0 Marshmallow that makes the user interface quite comfortable and has features that allow users to get the best network for a smooth browsing experience. The device has Kirin 950 octa-core processor with four cores clocked at 2.3GHz and the rest four clocked at 1.8GHz, paired up with 4GB of RAM, 32GB ROM and has external memory support up to 128GB. It handles multitasking well and runs 4K videos without hassles. The smartphone is 4G LTE compatible and is single SIM enabled. The device lack FM radio and VoLTE support. According to the company, the VoLTE will soon be enabled with a software update. Battery The phone comes with three battery profiles out of the box: performance, smart, and ultra. It houses a 3,000 mAh battery with fast charging technology which can last for a lag-free experience for nearly a day and a half on moderate usage with no heating issues even during gaming. It comes with ROG power saving mode which lowers the resolution of the display to 720x1280 to help saving power. Verdict: It’s a wonderful device and we thoroughly enjoyed using this phone so much so that it becomes one of our favorite devices of 2016. It's suitable for both demanding users and beginners, and offers a great all-round experience for a competitive price. Honor 8 looks like a flagship product, performs like one but without a price tag of a flagship. If you need an incredible smartphone camera, impeccable fingerprint sensor, and an outstanding sleek design, the Honor 8 is a steal at sub-30k price point.