Review: Huawei Honor 8 Has Almost Everything You Need in a Phone

This is Huawei’s third phone with dual-camera capability, their second of sorts in 2016.

Apple announced its first phone with dual cameras this year, but it would be fair to say that a certain China-based global brand took the dual camera plunge much before anyone else.

We’re talking about Huawei’s Honor, which has launched its Honor 8 phone in India, that is also their third phone with similar dual camera specced features.

And unlike the iPhone 7 Plus (priced Rs 72,000 onwards), you get the Honor 8 at Rs 29,999 for less than half of what you pay for the Apple’s dual-camera phone. But do you get any value for the money paid? Read on to know.

Pros:

• Power-packed device with reliable hardware
• Impressive dual-camera on manual mode
• Decent battery life
• Crisp and bright display

Cons:

• Sluggish Emotion UI
• Heats up often
• Slippery back panel
• Would have loved more built-in storage

What’s Good?

We’ve always liked the design imprints of Honor’s flagship devices till date, and the Honor 8 is no exception. The clean lines go in tandem with suave curves of the phone, closely resembling that of the iPhone 6 in many ways, but totally in a good way.

The phone gets the tried-and-tested Kirin processor with 4GB RAM that delivers in terms of multi-tasking, day-to-day use and all your heavy usage needs that includes gaming and Netflix binging as well.

The built-in fingerprint scanner responds to your registered finger IDs in quick time, which has become everyone’s priority these days. Combine that with a 3000mAh battery that manages to last you for over 15 hours on a single charge, and it’s easy to see why Honor 8 has all the attributes of a good quality phone.

The phone, as per Honor comes with a Hybrid SIM slot, wherein you can either add up more storage, or make use of two SIMs on 4G connectivity.

But the headlining feature of the phone is the dual-camera set up. It doesn’t have the supposed Leica capability that Huawei’s P9 has, but the company has made strong claims of the quality being comparable to the best in its segment.

And we kind of agree with what they’ve said. However, it is advisable that to get the best results, one should use the phone’s camera on manual mode, giving you the flexibility to add a different touch to the subject in the frame.

What’s Bad?

Honor really needs to work on the weight and balance of the Emotion UI running on the Honor 8. This clearly adds up the pressure on the hardworking processor, resulting in unwanted heating up of the device.

The operating system (OS) also lags every now and then, which for a phone under 30K is just not cool. The problem with going for a glass back body is that it becomes slippery to hold. Clearly its time phone makers look at adding some texture to the glossy nature of a glass body phone.

While 32GB (22GB usable) is not bad for built-in storage, but when a OnePlus 3 can give us 64GB at under 28K, we would have loved if Honor could have done the same with the Honor 8, small things do matter.

Why Buy It?

Does the Honor 8 have one of the best dual-camera right now? Pretty much so, and that’s not all. You get a aesthetically appealing device with quality hardware, decent battery life and a capable day-to-day performer.

But a sluggish user interface needs to ironed out of its issues, which also ends heating up the device quite often. For Rs 29,999 you get a phone that is at par with others in its segment, and that’s not bad at all!