Honor has released a number of smartphones in 2018 — perhaps too many depending on who you ask — but they all aim to offer exceptional value and build quality that punches well above their price tag. Honor are not known to be flagship-killing mid-range devices, but they have built a steady reputation as solid mid-range, mid-performing devices for the everyday user. With the 8X, Honor has taken its closest step towards offering a phone that looks like a 2018 flagship, at least on the surface. The Honor 8x is available here in the Philippines for ₱12,990 in Lazada which offers Cash On Delivery and Nationwide Shipping.
Design and Display
The Honor 8X looks like the quintessential Honor smartphone, featuring a glossy textured glass back finish with its dazzling light reflecting properties, metal trim, notched display, and eye-catching looks all around. The 91 percent screen to body ratio and minimal chin is undeniably impressive. The standout feature of the Honor 8X, or at least the one that I think is going to sell these phones, is that large 6.5-inch display that adorns the entire front of this device. It’s a 19.5:9, 1080 x 2340 pixels LCD and it looks a lot more expensive than it is. That means that the 8X offers slightly more than Full HD and a pixel density of 397 ppi. The notch is quite wide but it can be hidden in the software.
Software
The Honor 8X launches with Android 8.1 with Huawei’s EMUI 8.2 customization on top of it. It will be familiar to anyone who has had an Honor or Huawei phone in the past. EMUI still has it opponents, but I am a big fan of the level of customization and utility control that is baked into this OS. You have the ability to switch between an iOS-style format with multiple home screen or a stock Android-like app drawer. You can also change the layout of your home screen to have either smaller or larger icons, which impacts how many apps you can fit onto each homes screen. There’s a fair amount of bloatware on the device out of the box including Huawei’s own apps such as HiCare, AppGallery and Health. There’s also a handful of quirky features that we have come to expect from Huawei and Honor. A Party Mode app lets you create a hotspot to share music with other Honor phones users, syncing the music that comes out of all the linked phones’ speakers. There is also a karaoke feature that will play your singing voice back through your headphones for blasting out your favorite tunes.
Performance
The Honor 8X features a Kirin 710 octa-core processor with up to 2.2 GHz. The version I tested had 4GB of RAM. It’s fine for daily usage. Apps launch quickly, and I had no problems with multi-tasking with 2-3 things on the go at once.
This is not a high-performance phone though, and when pushed to the limits, you start to see some of the cost-cutting measures that were required to get the 8X down to this price point.
In terms of audio performance, there is nothing much to report. The sounds quality isn’t amazing, not terrible. Fine for watching videos at low volume, but I wouldn’t want to listen to music out of it. The speaker is on the right-hand side so it’s easy to avoid covering it with your hand in landscape mode.
Camera
Camera performance is usually the first sign of economy in the smartphone business, but it’s not as obvious here as on a lot of mid-range devices. The dual camera on the back, featuring 20MP and 2MP sensors.
The ultra-low light mode is back as is a synthetic wide aperture feature for those bokeh shots that everyone wants these days. You also get the same AI camera tech in the 8X that you’ll find on Huawei’s flagships phones. The camera can identify 50 different objects from 22 categories and will automatically optimize a variety of settings according to what you’re shooting. The recognition part works great, and you’ll get a text flash up on your display while you point the camera so you can check that the AI is seeing what you are. When it comes to actual results, however, I found mixed results. AI camera tech tends to be a little too strong in my experience. It’s almost like the software wants to make it obvious that it has changed something. You’ll often find over-saturated, overly-punchy images. You can always deactivate it with a single tap, though. The maximum resolution for shooting video is 1920 x 1080 at 60 fps.
Battery Life
With a 3,750mAh battery, the Honor 8X has no problem surviving a full day with even the most demanding user. A second day of full use will be on the cards for most, although taking lots of pictures and gaming will knock a couple or so hours off the total on time. Lighter users could well extend usage well into a third day, as was the case when I only used the phone for some web browsing and music streaming.
If for some reason you find yourself short of juice, the Honor 8X packs in two power saving modes. The regular power saving mode limits background activity, reduces visual effects, and turns off email syncing to save on power. The more extreme ultra power saving mode limits the phone to just a selection of apps to greatly extend battery life up to several days.
Honor 8X Specifications:
- 6.5-inch 19.5:9 Full HD+ (1080 x 2340) IPS display, 397ppi
- HiSilicon Kirin 710 2.2GHz octa-core CPU
- Mali-G51 MP4 GPU
- 4GB RAM
- 64GB/128GB storage
- microSD up to 256GB (dedicated slot)
- 20MP f/1.8 PDAF + 2MP rear cameras, LED flash
- 16MP f/2.0 front camera
- 4G LTE
- WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
- Bluetooth 4.2
- GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS
- Fingerprint scanner
- micro USB, OTG
- EMUI 8.2 (Android 8.1 Oreo)
- 3,750mAh battery
- 160.4 x 76.6 x 7.8 mm
- 175 g
One For All 