The key word in the presentation of Honor 8 was «millennials». The Chinese company wants to differentiate itself from its parent company, Huawei, by focusing on a younger audience. People between the ages of 16 and 34 are the ones who consider potential buyers of this mobile. To check if it is worth the investment, of 400 euros, we proceed with our analysis and opinion of Honor 8.
Without a doubt, with this smartphone Honor is very clear what you want: a beautiful, colorful terminal, with good finishes and that takes good photos. In short: a mobile that you can show off to your friends. That the goal is to captivate the younger ones sure it has something to do with the lines that have been worked on in the design of the Honor 8.
By specifications, the Honor 8 has nothing to envy of some high-end terminals. Its features are spectacular, and it is that in addition to being a mobile with dual camera, the Honor 8 comes with USB Type-C and fast charging, two added increasingly demanded by the public.
Of mobiles that aren’t too expensive, the Honor 8 is probably one of the best. With a price of 400 euros you can buy in physical and online stores in Spain. You cannot be classified as an inexpensive mobile in absolute terms, although you can consider everything it offers.
It is definitely the mobile that Honor wants to enter the Spanish and European market definitively, just as Huawei triumphed with the P8 Lite. We will see if they succeed, although for the moment we can say after the review of Honor 8 that our opinion is very positive.
Glass body for spectacular design
As we said, before proceeding to the full honor 8 test, its design had already captivated us. Beyond its performance, if you are looking for a nice smartphone, this would be a good choice. With 15 layers of glass at the back, its unibody body is completely spectacular.
It is available in three colours: blue, black and white, all three of the same style, with a slightly curved finish at the edges of the rear and front. To the touch, being made of diamond-carved glass, it becomes a little slippery. By dimensions it fits perfectly in one hand and it is comfortable to carry it in your pocket.
Plus, by having the headphone jack in the lower area, next to the USB and speaker, you can carry it in your pocket listening to music, take it out, and switch tracks directly without having to turn the terminal. If the goal is to provide comfort to millennials, they have achieved it in this regard.
The Honor 8 is a good mobile to boast, as aesthetically it can be one of the best smartphones on the market. In addition, neither camera stands out from the chassis, a not inconsiderable feature.
Its dimensions are 145.5 x 71 x 7.5 mm with a weight of 153g. As you can see, you don’t need to try this mobile to see that it’s a really thin and relatively light device.
Keep in mind that by specifications, the Honor 8 is a high-end terminal, so Huawei has had to work hard to make it as compact as possible. It is common to see other mid- and low-range mobiles with worse features weighing more than 180g. That’s not the case.
The Honor 8 only has four buttons: the two volume, the off and on and finally the best of all, the fingerprint sensor. This one, located on the back of the mobile, is as well assembled as the other three. It conveys a feeling of solidity that is not easy to achieve and is very fast. Actions can be performed with one press, two or with a long one.
There is no home button on the front, where only the front camera, speaker and Honor logo are found in gray. In the back we see the company logo again along with the flash and the two cameras, in addition to the aforementioned fingerprint sensor.
Finally, being unibody and having dual SIM, two cards can be inserted into the Honor 8 removable tray. One of them can be a MicroSD to expand the phone’s storage capacity.
Screen with good visibility anywhere
The Honor 8 screen deserves a pretty positive review, though not as much as its design. It’s just a good screen, with Full HD 1080p resolution and 423 pixels per inch, two mid-range data well-to-do. However, it is not the feature in which Huawei has been most squeezed.
Compared to analysis and other mobiles, what can be said of Honor 8 is that your screen barely has black frame around it. It is unsightly and inefficient, so it is to be appreciated that on a mobile of almost 400 euros this attack on good aesthetic taste is not present.
The colors are well appreciated and you do not see the pixels at all, two characteristics that should be demanded – and not ask – of any mobile above 200. In addition, good visibility outdoors is important, and the Honor 8 has it, which gives you plenty of points for a more definitive global opinion.
We don’t have an Edge mobile model in our hands, but we do have a slightly curved screen. It is the 2.5D glass, present more and more smartphones. In this case, it comes to round up the appearance of The Honor a little more, making it more symmetrical with respect to its rear.
The tactile response is unbeatable, without delay detecting the pulsation and executing the corresponding action. Reflections, on the other hand, are common when placed under a spotlight, although as we have said before, outdoor visibility does not resent. The catch you can put on is that it has no Corning Gorilla Glass protection.
Software with very original features
Huawei mobile firmware has been harshly criticized in recent months and years. It’s EMUI, the customization layer of this Chinese mobile manufacturer. However, while some criticisms of stability could be justified, it must be said that it has improved greatly lately. The latest version is EMUI 4.1, which equips the Honor, based on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow.
When it comes to a mobile performance test, not everything is specs. Honor 8, however, is good. The operating system used and the software influence as much or more than the processor or RAM. Here’s the importance of knowing whether EMUI 4.1 works well on it or not.
For this analysis we have used the device for long enough to accurately assess the stability and fluidity of the system, in addition to the customization options it offers. The opinion is pretty good, especially as far as fluency is concerned.
The Honor 8 goes like a shot and never suffers application crashes, lag or slowing of any kind. The fluidity when navigating between different applications is maximum, also managing to optimize battery usage quite efficiently.
Among all the options offered by EMUI 4.1, several stand out. One of them is the alert to applications with high impact for the battery, to configure actions using the fingerprint sensor, the one-handed mode and above all: the possibility to change the resolution from 1080p to 720p.
The latter is especially useful if you want to increase the battery life of the Honor 8, and although it decreases the quality of the display, it is not a change that you will notice radically.
Another plus point is that you can activate the screen by simply unlocking your phone with your fingerprint. On other high-end mobiles, even if you unlock it, it will be inactive until you click on the Home button.
For those who are accustomed to Huawei, many options will sound to them. For example, measure and control data traffic from Settings or change the style of the home screen. The themes allow you to customize the interface, although we do not know if it is the best that this mobile has to offer, since the one that comes as standard is quite well worked.
In any case, if you don’t like the desktop interface, you can change it. From settings you can transform the main dock into something simple and similar to Windows 10. For many users this Metro theme is more enjoyable than that of EMUI or Android itself, so Huawei offers the option to modify it. There are also themes available in the dedicated app especially for this purpose.