Fast charger for Honor phones. Fast charger for Honor phones Screen flickers - what to do

Honor 8 specifications

• Body materials: metal, glass
• Operating system: Android 6.0, EMUI 4.1
• Networks: GSM / EDGE, UMTS / HSDPA, LTE (nanoSIM)
• Screen: IPS LCD, diagonal 5.2 ", resolution 1920x1080 pixels (FullHD), ppi 423, Gorilla Glass 3
• Platform: HiSilicon Kirin 950
• Processor: eight-core, 64-bit, 4 cores 2.3 GHz (Cortex-A72) and 4 cores 1.8 GHz (Cortex-A53)
• Graphics: Mali T880 MP4
• RAM: 4 GB
• Storage memory: 32/64 GB
• Memory card slot: yes, microSD (instead of the second SIM card)
• Main camera: two modules of 12 megapixels, f / 2.2, laser autofocus, dual LED flash
• Front camera: 8 MP, f / 2.4
• Interfaces: Wi-Fi Dual-Band, Bluetooth 4.2 (A2DP, LE), NFC, IrDA, USB Type-C (USB-Host) for charge / synchronization, 3.5 mm headset / headphone jack
• Navigation: GPS (support A-GPS), Glonass
• Optional: fingerprint scanner, accelerometer, light sensor, proximity sensor
• Battery: 3000 mAh, fast charging
• Dimensions: 145.5 x 71 x 7.5 mm
• Weight: 153 grams

Positioning

In July of this year, a smartphone called Honor 8 (a sub-brand of Huawei) was announced. It seems to me that the device is, first of all, interesting in terms of appearance: glass with a mirror effect and 2.5D rounding is used on the front and back sides, the side edges are made of metal, and there are also several bright colors. Naturally, it is better to see once than to read about Honor 8 in the text or look at it on the Internet.

From the point of view of technical characteristics, everything is excellent here: a powerful processor, and a "sea" of RAM, and a capacious battery. It is worth mentioning separately that Honor 8 inherited a dual camera from Huawei P9. Of course, it is simpler, but it performs the main functions well: it blurs the background and expands the dynamic range.

The positioning of this model is simple - the flagship among the Honor line for those who are interested not only in the parameters, but also in the design of the device.

The Honor 8 smartphone with 32 GB of internal memory costs 28,000 rubles, with 64 GB - 30,000 rubles.

Design, dimensions, controls

I can confidently say that the novelty is the most beautiful among all Honor smartphones, if not among all Huawei gadgets. Yes, some features of the Samsung Galaxy S6 / S7 are traced in it, in particular, the mirrored "back", but it is made even more original if we are talking about the pattern and mirroring. I had a version of blue on my test - an amazing color that does not lose brightness either in the light or in the shade. For example, my emerald Samsung Galaxy S6 appeared black in low light conditions and pale green in light.

The Honor 8 has only four colors: white, black, gold and blue.

It is also worth noting that fingerprints are practically invisible, there are no greasy spots on the surface, the oleophobic coating is of excellent quality from both the front and the back. The finger glides over the surface smoothly and quickly. A logical question: if the surface is slippery, then the phone as a whole should slip out of your hands? To my surprise, for several weeks of active use, I did not have a single case when the device could fly out of the palm of my hand. However, the smartphone slides down an inclined plane, especially if vibration is turned on for notifications and calls. Due to the sloping glass bezel in some stands, Honor 8 also does not hold. In any case, if something does not satisfy you, there is always an opportunity to purchase a cover. For example, I specifically bought a case for the Galaxy S6, because the device was so grimy that it was a shame to use it.

If we are talking about scratches and other damage to the glass, then this is inevitable: in my case, the lower part on the back side slightly rubbed (I put the phone in a holder made of wood), there were also small scratches and one deep scratch. There are no scratches or chips on the front panel.

The sides are made of metal, they are matte and painted in the same color as the phone. During the "skid" they did not get rubbed, and external defects did not appear. The sides have thin polished edges, also painted in the color of the device.

The smartphone is made from environmentally friendly materials, complies with the requirements of the RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) and REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals) directives.

Dimensions Honor 8 - 145.5 x 71 x 7.5 mm, weighs 153 grams.

In the hand it lies like a glove due to the rounded corners, sloping edges, thin and light body. In terms of design ergonomics, Honor is great.

On top of the front of the gadget there are a camera, sensors, an indicator of missed messages and a speech speaker. The speaker is loud, but, alas, there is no reserve. The timbre is pleasant, the interlocutor is heard clearly and legibly.

At the bottom - 3.5 mm, USB Type-C (unfortunately, 2.0, not 3.0), microphone and speakerphone. Above is a second microphone and an IR transmitter.

On the left are metal skids for two nano-SIM or nano-SIM + microSD. On the right - a power button with a raised surface and a volume rocker key. Made of metal.

On the back side there are two camera "eyes", laser autofocus illumination, dual LED illumination of warm and cold glow and a round fingerprint scanner, slightly recessed into the body. It is also a mechanical button.

In the settings, it is set with one click, double or long. The fingerprint sensor functions quickly, there were no problems.

Honor 8 and Apple iPhone 5

Display

This device uses a 5.2-inch screen. The physical size is 64x114 mm, the frame at the top is 15 mm, at the bottom - 16 mm, on the right and left - about 3.5 mm each. There is an effective anti-reflective coating.

Display resolution Honor 8 - FullHD, that is, 1920x1080 pixels, aspect ratio - 16: 9, density - 423 pixels per inch. Matrix IPS (LTPS LCD TFT) without air gap.

The maximum white brightness is 400 cd / m2, the maximum black brightness is 0.47 cd / m2, the contrast is 850: 1.

The brightness graph is within normal limits, the gamma is excellent (around 2.13), judging by the color levels, there is an obvious dip in red, the temperature is in the range of 9100 - 9900 K. The obtained data exceeds the values ​​of the sRGB triangle. This suggests that the colors will be saturated and very vibrant.

The matrix of Honor 8 has excellent performance, the only drawback is that the black values ​​are somewhat overestimated, that is, the black is not pure.

The device has an eye protection mode that reduces the level of UV radiation of the screen, prevents eye fatigue during prolonged use of the smartphone.

Viewing angles

Flare

Battery

This model uses a 3000 mAh non-removable lithium-ion (Li-Ion) battery.

In my mode of operation, the gadget functioned for 16-18 hours: about 30 minutes of calls, constant synchronization with Wi-Fi (9.00 to 02.00, Twitter, mail, Skype, Whatsapp), 4-6 hours of LTE. The screen glow in this mode is 3.5 hours.

With games, the situation is a little worse: the battery runs out after 3-4 hours of continuous "battle". The video device "spins" for about 7 hours (HD).

“The 3000 mAh battery and Smart Power 4.0 technology provide up to 1.77 days of use with normal use and up to 1.22 days with heavy use. For example, on the Honor 8, you'll be able to watch online videos for 11 hours straight! 9V / 2A fast charging technology provides 47% charge within 30 minutes. And if you charge the Honor 8 for just 10 minutes, the battery will last 2 hours of talk time or 6 hours of audio playback. "

It seems to me that for many users a short screen luminescence time will be critical. In my case, the maximum value was 3.5 hours. In addition, it should be noted that the brightness of the matrix backlight was set to "Auto".

Communication capabilities

The device works not only in 2G (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) / 3G (HSPA + up to 42 Mbps) networks, but also 4G CAT 6:

• 4G TDD LTE: Band 38/40
• 4G FDD LTE: Band 1/3/7/8/20

Now attention! The device was equipped with two radio modules! Frankly, I won't name a single modern smartphone with such a thing.

The gadget has implemented the "Signal +" function - it improves the quality of signal reception. Another feature is "Wi-Fi +". The gadget automatically connects to the most stable and powerful network (either mobile data or Wi-Fi).

I noticed such an unpleasant feature (again, I don’t know if this is connected with the phone or with the firmware): the device switches to receiving the EDGE signal and does not want to see 4G point-blank. Restarting the phone helps. Fortunately, this rarely happens.

There is also NFC (payment for purchases at the checkout works), the rest is standard for any expensive Android smartphone: GPS and GLONASS, Wi-Fi b / g / n / ac (2.4 and 5 GHz), Bluetooth 4.2 BLE, USB 2.0 with OTG support.

Memory and memory card

RAM 4 GB LPDDR4, and built-in memory can be 32 GB or 64 GB. We have a 64 GB version, its read speed is 163 MB / s, write speed is 126 MB / s. Supports memory cards up to 128 GB.

Despite the presence of four gigabytes of RAM, it seems that the phone "eats up" a lot of "operative". A trivial example: a tab is open in the browser, you launch a couple of applications and return to the browser - the page reloads.

Cameras

In this section, it is worth throwing you over to the article about Huawei P9, since it is in it that the essence of the two built-in cameras is considered. The Honor 8 also has dual cameras, dual flashes and laser autofocus. The only difference, it seemed to me, is that the P9 and Honor 8 use different camera modules.

When shooting during the day (12 + 12 MP, f2.2 aperture) on the Honor 8, the dynamic range is widest, you don't even need to turn on the HDR mode: there are practically no dark undefined areas in the photo, or light ones without information. The colors and white balance are excellent. The focusing accuracy and speed are high.

With insufficient illumination, it is noticeable that the matrices are weak, noise appears, and the picture may become somewhat soapy. However, even at night, the colors remain juicy and accurate, and the DD is wide.

The Honor 8 smartphone shoots FullHD video at a maximum frame rate of 60. The quality is average, focusing is fast, the sound is clear (stereo).

Selfies (8 MP, f2.4 aperture) are relatively wide-angle (for example, wider in Samsung S6 / S7). The footage comes out ordinary, not to compare with the Huawei P9 Plus. The video is written in 720p.

There is a function to blur the background. But I practically did not use it, as it does not work very confidently, it often “lathers” the wrong areas.

In the camera settings, you will find manual parameters: shutter speed, ISO, focus, white balance. From the locked screen, press the volume down button twice and get a frame (with autofocus) in just 1.2 seconds!

Sample photos during the day

Sample photo with flash

Examples of photos in low light conditions

Front-camera

Performance

The "heart" of the device is a chipset of its own production - HiSilicon Kirin 950: 16 nm, 64-bit, 8 cores (4x2.3 GHz A72 + 4x1.8 GHz A53), graphics Mali-T880. Needless to say, the Honor 8 is very fast and bug-free. The phone has no problems with games and other applications. Under load, the body of the smartphone practically does not heat up.

It may seem strange that a few months after the release of its top-end flagship P9, the Chinese company Huawei is releasing a smartphone that has many of its functions, but costs half the price. In terms of hardware, the Huawei Honor 8 is virtually indistinguishable from its more expensive predecessor.

Huawei Honor 8 Smartphone - Reviews

Probably for Huawei, the impetus was the release of such high-quality budget smartphones as ZTE Axon 7, OnePlus 3, Alcatel Idol 4S and Lenovo Moto Z. The company decided to prove that they can compete on equal terms with the killers of flagships.

The Huawei Honor 8 is impressive in both design and specs, while still being relatively inexpensive. But what about having special features and practical use? We tested the Honor 8 to find out.

The exquisite design of the Huawei Honor 8

Honor 8 may formally belong to the category of "mid-range" smartphones, but the design is completely contrary to this.

Two tempered glass sides on the front and back of the beveled metal body provide durability and protection to your Huawei Honor 8.

On the front of the device, the glass panel gently curves to create the effect you see on the iPhone.

Above the display is the front wide-angle camera, LED flash and speaker, below the Honor logo. Thus, the front side looks like an iPhone, while the back looks more like a Galaxy S7.

The minimalist design of Huawei Honor 8 is simple, and the impression is made by the light show, which is arranged by the laminated glass.

It is this glass that can be considered a unique feature of the Honor 8. Thanks to the patented 15-layer design, the back panel refracts incoming light with flickering patterns, and, according to Huawei, no two options are exactly the same.

On the back of the Honor 8, there is a dual-camera setup with a laser sensor, autofocus and LED flash. Under the camera you will find a fingerprint scanner and another logo.

On the side is a slim power button and volume rocker, as well as 2 slots for SIM and MicroSD cards. At the bottom is the speaker, USB Type-C port and 3.5mm headphone jack.

Thanks to its curved edges and glass, the new Huawei Honor is very comfortable to hold in the hand even after a few hours, and it seems more compact than it actually is. But there is a standard drawback of modern glasses on smartphones - they become covered with fingerprints too quickly.

Huawei Honor 8 operating system and applications

The Android 6 Marshmallow operating system in the Huawei Honor 8 runs on its own Emotion 4.1 User Interface (EMUI). Although EMUI also has positive aspects, sometimes simple tasks in it, for some unknown reason, become difficult.

For example, notifications. You have to swipe down from the top of the Honor 8's screen to open time-stamped notifications. It takes up much more space than the notification bar on stock Android. In addition, third-party applications need to manually enable the display of notifications, and they are not always positioned correctly. Hopefully this will be fixed with an OS update.

But the Emotion UI has a few interesting features that basic Android lacks. For example, "Smart Assistant" allows you to assign different actions to the Huawei Honor 8 fingerprint sensor: one press can launch the camera, and a triple press can launch the photo gallery. Gestures are also supported - by default, swiping down on the sensor will open the notification panel. You can set up answering calls, clearing notifications, and more.

If the Honor 8 is on the table, Knuckle Sense comes in handy, like the P8, Mate 8 and P9 from Huawei, it allows you to quickly perform various actions by simply tapping your fingers on the screen. You can take a screenshot by double tapping the display, tap twice with two fingers to record a video, and so on.

The Huawei Honor 8 has some very useful apps. For example, Phone Manager, which opens up the broadest possibilities for setting up a smartphone, especially its power consumption.

You can turn off unnecessary applications that use energy, find out how much energy is spent on them, open statistics for the day, month and year. You can also switch between different power levels (Performance, Smart and Ultra) and select an extreme battery saver mode that reduces screen resolutions to 720p (1280 x 720).

Emotion UI also has a smart controller feature that uses the Honor 8's infrared emitter to control TVs, audio receivers, DVD players and other devices that receive infrared signals.

Characteristics Huawei Honor 8

The hardware of the Honor 8 is underwhelming, but it also keeps up with the competition.

Honor has a proprietary HiSilicon Kirin 950 processor, which was used on the flagship Mate 8. The processor has 8 cores: 4 ARM Cortex-A72 at 2.3 GHz and 4 ARM Cortex-A53 at 1.8 GHz. As you can see, it is only slightly weaker than the Kirin 955 in the Huawei P9.

Scrolling and opening apps is quick and easy. The same goes for flipping through hundreds of Instagram photos, reading news, downloading email attachments, and other daily activities. Kirin 950-level multitasking allows background applications to work without significant delays.

But performance in everyday tasks is not reflected in benchmarks. The Honor 8 scored 931 points in the Sling Shot test, which is well below the Lenovo Moto Z's 2615. This is most likely due to the Mali-T880 graphics chip.

In addition to the Kirin chip, there is a dedicated i5 coprocessor that handles lighter tasks like speech recognition and location tracking. Huawei claims that this helped significantly extend the battery life of the smartphone.

Honor 8's impressive and durable battery

The Huawei Honor 8 has a 3,000mAh battery, which is lower than recent flagships like Lenovo's Moto Z Force with 3,500mAh battery. But still in line with the competition: the battery capacity of the Alcatel Idol 4S and Moto Z is 3000 mAh and 2600 mAh, respectively.

Huawei claims that a full charge of the new Honor will last for an entire working day. In our testing, using Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and making calls, the battery charge was never brought even to 25% at the end of the day, especially until it was completely discharged.

Tasks that are more demanding on resources can drain the battery faster, but most do not use them, so you can safely expect that the charge will last for 14-16 hours.

What's more, the Huawei Honor 8 also recharges quickly. Fast charging 9V 2A is similar in functionality to QuickCharge 2.0 technology. We have verified and confirm Huawei's statement that it is possible to charge a smartphone up to 50% in half an hour, as well as the ability to reach 30-40% of the charge in 15 minutes.

It's not as fast as Quick Charge 3.0, which can charge the device to 80% in 35 minutes, but with daily use, the difference in time is not very noticeable.

Good screen Huawei Honor 8

The screen of Huawei Honor 8 is bright, colorful and contrasting, but of course, it is far from Galaxy Note 7 and iPhone 6S Plus.

The 5.2-inch display has a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, which is on par with the OnePlus 3, but not Quad HD (2560 x 1440) like the Lenovo Moto Z Force and ZTE Axon 7 screens. distorts colors when tilted from side to side, especially in applications and web pages with a white background.

It is difficult to read the text in direct sunlight, but it is possible.

The smooth touchscreen of Honor 8 is responsive to every touch, and thanks to the curved display and 2.5D glass, it is a pleasure to work with.

The Huawei Honor 8 has several hardware features:

• First: an infrared sensor. In recent years, infrared ports are not widely used on smartphones, even from the sphere of controlling TVs and household appliances, they are being replaced by Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. But not everyone has all the appliances at home intelligent, so control via IR is still relevant.
• Second: a budget smartphone has long been unable to surprise with the presence of a fingerprint sensor, but Honor 8 surpasses the rest in this. It has one of the most accurate and fastest scanners we've ever tested, takes fractions of a second to detect a fingerprint, and relies on a Level 4 encryption algorithm - the best today.

The Honor 8 has the same six-lens lens that the Huawei P8 debuted with.

The rear dual camera consists of two 12MP sensors with f / 2.2 aperture and 1.25μm pixel size. One camera uses an RGB sensor and captures color data, the other is monochrome for measuring brightness. This combination makes the Honor 8 and P9 capable of capturing images even in low light.

This is not the only feature of Huawei Honor 8. It uses Hybrid Focus technology - combining laser autofocus with special software, this ensures fast focusing at the right time.

How does it work in practice? We tested the Honor 8's camera in low light conditions (from sunset to low light in a room), and every time the image came out free of noise. Detail and brightness in dark environments surpasses most cameras on budget smartphones.

Black and white photos come out as clear as color, impressive with depth and contrast.

The rear cameras in the P9 were called "revelations" and put them on par with the iPhone 6S Plus, Galaxy S7 and LG G5, and nothing has changed in the Honor 8.

The front camera of Huawei Honor 8 differs little from the main one. The 8MP resolution and f / 2.2 aperture make it possible to take great selfies with advanced face tuning, while the image is as crisp and clear as when it was taken with the rear camera.

It lacks the front-facing LED flash, which makes it hard to take good low-light photos, but the dedicated Perfect Selfie app softens the dimming.

Setting up the front camera is easy, with a variety of modes available such as Panorama, HDR and Slow Motion. There are also more unusual ones: "Document Scanner"; Night Shot (helps with color reproduction in dark conditions, but requires a tripod and a special holder).

More professional settings such as shutter speed, ISO, focus, white balance, exposure value, auto / manual focus and so on can be adjusted. The camera interface is adapted for horizontal control.

Experienced photographers will undoubtedly appreciate the ability to save images in RAW format, which is useful when using them in programs such as Adobe Photoshop.

Huawei Honor 8 warranty

Huawei's limited warranty covers manufacturing defects, but does not cover accidental damage not caused by Huawei. Repairs do not include shipping and are covered by a one-year warranty.

Should you buy Huawei Honor 8

Huawei achieved a miracle: they used almost every high-end component of their own flagship P9, in a device that costs $ 400 for the 32 GB version (25,500 rubles) and $ 450 for 64 GB (28,700 rubles). This is commendable.

Advantages

• An impressive combination of metal and glass in design.
• Camera with two sensors.
• Useful IR sensor.
• Fair price.

disadvantages

• Software problems.
• Mediocre display.

Of course, the Honor 8's touchscreen isn't that bright, it's lacking in RAM, and the company's software is already a bit dated. However, the main advantage of the Huawei Honor 8 smartphone is that it offers excellent performance.

While the Huawei Honor 8 is not the right choice for everyone, if you value a quality camera, fast fingerprint scanner, IR sensor and bright looks, it is made for you.

The new flagship of the series, with a dual camera, a fingerprint sensor and a USB Type C connector

The European presentation of the novelty Huawei, produced under the brand name Honor, will take place just today, but in China the model Honor 8 was presented earlier this summer. The new smartphone has already reached our test laboratory, and today we have the opportunity to be one of the first to acquaint our readers with the new product in all its details. We present to your attention a full review of the new device, which now stands at the head of the legendary Huawei Honor family of smartphones.

Main characteristics of Honor 8 (model FRD-L09)

• SoC HiSilicon Kirin 950, 8 cores: 4 × 2.3 GHz (ARM Cortex-A72) + 4 × 1.8 GHz (ARM Cortex-A53)
• GPU Mali-T880 MP4
• Operating system Android 6.0
• 5.2 ″ IPS touchscreen display, 1920 × 1080, 423 ppi
• Random access memory (RAM) 3/4 GB, internal memory 32/64 GB
• SIM-cards: Nano-SIM (2 pcs.)
• Support for microSD memory cards up to 128 GB
• GSM networks 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
• WCDMA 900/1900/2100 MHz networks
• LTE Cat.6 FDD Band 1/3/7/8/20, TDD Band 38/40
• Wi-Fi 802.11a / b / g / n / ac, Wi-Fi Direct
• Bluetooth 4.2
• USB 2.0 Type C, OTG
• GPS / A-GPS, Glonass, BDS
• Heading, proximity, lighting, gyroscope, magnetic compass, step counter, infrared transmitter, fingerprint scanner
• Cameras 12 + 12 Mp (Sony IMX286), f / 2.2, autofocus, LED flash
• Camera 8 MP, front, f / 2.4
• Battery 3000 mAh
• Dimensions 146 x 71 x 7.5mm
• Weight 153 g

Appearance and usability

Honor 8 is unexpectedly different from its predecessor Honor 7. The devices turned out to be designed in completely different styles: if the "seven" with its matte rough and rather rough angular metal body was positioned almost as "unkillable", then the successor with glass panels, strongly rounded edges, streamlined shape and rounded sidewalls can rightfully claim a place among the "fashion" models. Honor 8 really turned out to be surprisingly good-looking, the “pampered” design of the smartphone resembles both the iPhone 6 and the Huawei P series smartphones at the same time.

The smartphone received two transparent 2.5D Gorilla Glass panels with smooth edges on both sides of the case, and a metal strongly rounded bezel was launched along the side perimeter. Thus, neither right angles nor sharp edges can be found here, the body of Honor 8 is absolutely streamlined and very pleasant to hold in the hand.

The surfaces of the case are not slippery at all, the device is securely held in your fingers. Not too large dimensions and low weight also contribute to this. There are no complaints about the assembly, there are no cracks, bends or squeaks, all the details are fitted precisely, the non-separable body of Honor 8 is monolithic.

As for the elements placed on the case, here the Honor 8 has a couple of "aces up its sleeve". Firstly, the smartphone received an infrared transmitter on the upper end, which allows the device to act as a universal remote control. The built-in program easily recognized the old Philips TV, for which she is honored and praised.

But even more interesting is the fact of the implicit presence of a hardware button hidden under the familiar round platform of a fingerprint sensor located on the back of the smartphone. Most of these sites with scanners, including those of Huawei smartphones, do not have any mechanical buttons under them, so without special warning you might not even notice that the site is also clickable.

In smartphones of different companies from time to time there are additional programmable keys, here it is called the "Smart Key function button". The user is free to independently determine the actions performed using this button. In total, you can set three options: for single and double pressing, as well as for pressing with a long hold. By default, the button is "hung" functions for opening Russian services (Yandex search, etc.), but all this, as already mentioned, the user can reconfigure for himself, preferring, for example, turning on a flashlight, launching a camera, voice recorder or the same virtual remote control.

The headphone audio jack is located at the bottom end, it is adjacent to the USB Type C connector and the speaker grill. On the upper end, only the aforementioned infrared transmitter and the second microphone are left, which serves for the operation of the noise reduction system.

There are no hardware touch buttons on the front panel, the buttons are only on the screen. A useful LED event indicator is hidden above the screen among the sensors, it is built right under the speaker grill.

There are more elements on the back than usual. In addition to the aforementioned fingerprint sensor with a button, there are also two round camera eyes, since the Honor 8, like its siblings from the Huawei P9 family, received a dual camera. Next to the cameras can be found a dual LED flash and a laser pointer window for autofocus.

The manufacturer claims that a new 3D scanning technology was used for the fingerprint scanner itself - thanks to it, unlocking the phone takes only 0.4 seconds. In practice, the scanner works really very quickly and almost flawlessly, but, in general, all manufacturers have perfected the functionality of fingerprint sensors to such an extent that they all work flawlessly, it is difficult to single out one as the best. Another thing is that many would like to see such a sensor not on the back of the smartphone, but on the front, like in the iPhone and Samsung, but Huawei is one of those companies that stubbornly adhere to the rear option for placing this element.

None of the elements sticks out beyond the surface, so it is quite convenient to use a smartphone lying on a solid surface. However, it is worth considering that the smooth glass of the back panel can slide on some surfaces, so you need to be careful and make sure that the smartphone does not unexpectedly slide off the table and fall on the floor.

To install cards, there is one hybrid slot on the side, into which you can insert either two SIM cards of the Nano-SIM format, or one SIM card and one microSD memory card, but not three cards at the same time. Hot swap supported.

The side buttons on the edge opposite to this slot are made of metal, just like the slide for cards, their movement is quite distinct, not too soft, but not hard either. The keys are easily groped for blindly, and their surfaces are different in texture. In general, there are no complaints about these elements.

As for the color options for the smartphone, then the manufacturer has provided a wide variety, and the set of colors may differ depending on the modification. The FRD-L09 model we tested will be available in Sunrise Gold, Pearl White, Midnight Black and Sapphire Blue.

Screen

The smartphone is equipped with an IPS touch screen and is protected by glass with sloping edges (2.5D) Corning Gorilla Glass 3. The physical dimensions of the display are 64 × 114 mm, diagonal - 5.2 inches. The screen resolution is 1920 × 1080, the dot density is 423 ppi. The frame around the screen is standard: about 3 mm on the sides and 15 mm on the top and bottom.

The brightness of the display is automatically adjusted based on a light sensor. There is also a proximity sensor that locks the screen when you bring the smartphone to your ear. Multi-touch technology allows you to handle 10 simultaneous touches. You cannot activate the screen by tapping twice on the glass, but the screen is activated by pressing the rear pad of the fingerprint scanner. Gloved operation supported.

Alexey Kudryavtsev, editor of the "Monitors" and "Projectors and TV" sections, carried out a detailed examination using measuring instruments. Here is his expert opinion on the screen of the test sample.

The front surface of the screen is made in the form of a glass plate with a mirror-smooth surface, resistant to scratches. Judging by the reflection of objects, the anti-glare properties of the screen are better than that of the Google Nexus 7 (2013) (hereinafter simply Nexus 7). For clarity, here is a photo in which a white surface is reflected in the turned off screens (on the left - Nexus 7, on the right - Honor 8, then they can be distinguished by their size):

The screen of the Honor 8 is darker (the brightness in the photos is 102 versus 114 for the Nexus 7). The doubling of reflected objects in the Honor 8 screen is very weak, which indicates that there is no air gap between the layers of the screen (more specifically, between the outer glass and the surface of the LCD matrix) (OGS-type screen - One Glass Solution). Due to the smaller number of boundaries (such as glass / air) with greatly different refractive indices, such screens look better in conditions of intense ambient light, but their repair in the case of cracked outer glass is much more expensive, since the entire screen has to be changed. On the outer surface of the screen there is a special oleophobic (grease-repellent) coating (even better than the Nexus 7 in terms of efficiency), so fingerprints are much easier to remove, and appear at a slower rate than in the case of ordinary glass.

With manual brightness control and with the display of the white field on the whole screen, the maximum brightness value was about 460 cd / m², the minimum - 4.4 cd / m². The maximum brightness is high, which means, given the excellent anti-glare properties, readability even on a sunny day outdoors should be at a good level. In complete darkness, the brightness can be lowered to a comfortable value. In the presence of automatic brightness control by the light sensor (it is located to the left of the front speaker slot). In automatic mode, when the ambient light conditions change, the screen brightness both increases and decreases. The operation of this function depends on the position of the brightness control, by which the user can try to set the desired brightness level in the current conditions. If the brightness slider is set to maximum in an office environment, then in complete darkness the auto brightness function reduces the brightness to 4.4 cd / m2 (a bit dark), in an office lit with artificial light (about 550 lx) sets it to 450 cd / m2 (excessively bright) , in a very bright environment (corresponds to bright daylight outdoors, but no direct sunlight - 20,000 lux or slightly more) increases to 460 cd / m² (to the maximum, which is needed). If everything is the same in office conditions, the brightness slider is at half the scale, then the screen brightness for the three conditions indicated above is as follows: 4.4, 140 and 460 cd / m² (the first value is low). If the dimmer is set to minimum - 4.4, 4.4, 460 cd / m² (now the first two values ​​are too low). We were not satisfied with the result, so we moved the slider slightly to the right in complete darkness. Received - 11, 150-160, 460 cd / m² (perfect combination). It turns out that the automatic brightness control function works adequately and to some extent allows the user to customize his work for individual requirements. At any brightness level, there is practically no backlight modulation, so there is no screen flickering either.

This smartphone uses an IPS-type matrix. The micrographs show the typical IPS subpixel structure:

For comparison, you can see the gallery of photomicrographs of screens used in mobile technology.

The screen has good viewing angles without significant color shift even with large gaze deviations from perpendicular to the screen and without tint inversion. For comparison, we present photographs in which the same images are displayed on the screens of Honor 8 and Nexus 7, while the brightness of the screens was initially set at about 200 cd / m2 in the white field for the entire screen, and the color balance on the camera was forcedly switched to 6500 K. Perpendicular to screens white field:

Note the good uniformity of brightness and color tone of the white field. And the test picture:

The colors on the Honor 8's screen are oversaturated (noticeable, for example, on tomatoes) and the color balance is slightly different. Now at an angle of approximately 45 degrees to the plane and to the side of the screen:

It can be seen that the colors did not change much on both screens, but in the Honor 8 the contrast decreased to a large extent due to the strong black highlighting. And white box:

The brightness at an angle of the screens decreased (at least 4 times, based on the difference in exposure), but the Honor 8 has a lighter screen (brightness in the photos is 236 versus 222 for the Nexus 7). When deviated diagonally, the black field is lightened strongly and acquires a reddish tint. The photos below demonstrate this (the brightness of the white areas in the direction perpendicular to the plane of the screens is the same!):

And from a different angle:

When viewed from a perpendicular view, the black field uniformity is good, although at the edges of the screen the backlight shines through the white body, which slightly worsens the overall impression:

The contrast (approximately in the center of the screen) is high - about 1200: 1. The response time for the transition black-white-black is 33 ms (19 ms on + 14 ms off). The transition between gray tones of 25% and 75% (by the numerical value of the color) and back takes a total of 50 ms. The gamma curve, plotted using 32 points at equal intervals in terms of the numerical value of the shade of gray, did not reveal a blockage in either the highlights or the shadows. The exponent of the approximating power function is 2.30, which is slightly higher than the standard value of 2.2. In this case, the real gamma curve almost does not deviate from the power dependence:

This device has some kind of dynamic adjustment of the backlight brightness in accordance with the nature of the displayed image. As a result, the obtained dependence of brightness on the hue (gamma curve) may not correspond to the gamma curve of a static image, since the measurements were carried out with sequential display of gray shades on almost the entire screen. For this reason, a number of tests - determining the contrast and response time, comparing black illumination at angles - we carried out (however, as always) when displaying special templates with a constant average brightness, and not monochromatic fields across the entire screen. It should be noted that in this case the brightness correction is poorly expressed and does not have an obvious dependence on the image, but it would be better if it did not exist at all.

The color gamut is noticeably wider than sRGB:

We look at the spectra:

They are atypical, but we have already seen them in the case of, for example, the Sony Xperia Z2 and other mobile devices. Sony points out that these screens use LEDs with a blue emitter and a green and red phosphor (usually a blue emitter and a yellow phosphor), which, in combination with special matrix light filters, allows for a wide color gamut. Yes, and in the red phosphor, apparently, the so-called quantum dots are used. For a consumer device, a wide color gamut is by no means an advantage, but a significant disadvantage, since as a result, the colors of images - drawings, photographs and films - oriented to the sRGB space (and the vast majority of them) have unnatural saturation. This is especially noticeable on recognizable shades, such as skin tones. The result is shown in the photo above.

The balance of shades on the gray scale is average, since the color temperature is significantly higher than the standard 6500 K, the deviation from the spectrum of the absolute black body (ΔE) is formally below 10, which is considered an acceptable indicator for a consumer device. However, in this case, the color temperature and ΔE in the not yet very dark area vary greatly from shade to shade - this negatively affects the visual assessment of the color balance. In general, the jumps in the values ​​on the two graphs above indirectly indicate that some kind of digital correction is being performed, while it is performed poorly. (The darkest areas of the gray scale can be ignored, since the color balance there is not very important, and the error in measuring color characteristics at low brightness is large.)

This device has the ability to correct the color balance by adjusting the hue on the color wheel.

In the graphs above, the curves Without corr. correspond to the results without any color balance correction, and the curves Corr.- data obtained after shifting the point to the position indicated in the picture above. It can be seen that the change in balance corresponds to the expected result, since the color temperature approached the standard value and ΔE remained small. However, it doesn't make much sense to perform the correction. Note that this function is implemented in a variant rather for show, since there is no numerical reflection of the correction, there is no field for measuring the color balance and the adjustment range is insufficient, since even at the edge of the circle one has to look for a compromise between a color temperature close to 6500 K and a minimum value of ΔE ...

To summarize: the screen has a high maximum brightness and excellent anti-reflective properties, so the device can be used outdoors without any problems even on a sunny summer day. In complete darkness, the brightness can be lowered to a comfortable level. It is also acceptable to use the mode with automatic brightness adjustment, which works adequately. Also, the advantages of the screen include the presence of an effective oleophobic coating, the absence of an air gap in the layers of the screen and flicker, high contrast, good uniformity of the black field. The disadvantages are low stability of black to deviation of the gaze from the perpendicular to the plane of the screen, an excessively wide color gamut and an average color balance. Nevertheless, taking into account the importance of characteristics for this particular class of devices, the screen quality can be considered high, although it is worth getting ready for strange and not entirely natural shades in films and photographs.

Sound

Honor 8 sounds less interesting than, for example, its relative Huawei P9. The sound can be described as unpretentious and not too expressive. There is no bass, but this is not the worst thing. Here the sound itself is rather impersonal, dim, dull, it lacks a volume reserve. In headphones with low frequencies, things are, of course, better, but the rest of the remarks remain valid: the sound is muffled, slightly washed out by noise, not very loud and not so crystal clear. In general, everything is not so bad, but the sound of the latest smartphones of the Huawei P line is much more interesting.

To play melodies, we use our own player, and, as usual, there are no additional manual settings in it - you can only turn on or off the entire virtual DTS system.

There are no complaints about the spoken dynamics and microphone: the intonation and timbre of a familiar voice remain recognizable. There is no FM radio in the smartphone. The dictaphone demonstrates miracles of sensitivity, records sound very cleanly and efficiently, the noise reduction system copes with its duties with dignity.

Camera

Here, as in the Huawei P9 line, a dual main camera is used - however, nothing has been said about Leica's participation in its creation. And they say this: “Honor 8 features a camera with two sensors - RGB and black and white shooting with a pixel size of 1.25 nm. Two lenses of the main camera with a resolution of 12 megapixels increase the quality and detail of images. " Most likely, the cameras are installed here the same as in the more expensive devices of the Huawei P image series.

The front camera has an 8-megapixel sensor and a fixed focus lens with a maximum aperture of f / 2.4. The image quality for the selfie level is quite acceptable: the sharpness and color rendition are normal, there are also no special complaints about the detail.

The main camera is equipped with two modules. Installed two sensors Sony IMX286, one of which is responsible for the color image, and the second for monochrome, it records information only about brightness. Then the information read by them is programmatically processed and summarized. The matrix pixel size is 1.25 microns, the maximum aperture is f / 2.2. There is a laser rangefinder for hybrid autofocus and a mid-range pulse LED flash. Autofocusing is fast and confident. Hybrid AF uses laser technology to focus close to the subject and contrast focus in low light conditions. But there seems to be no stabilization here.

The camera control menu has been studied in some detail for the models of the Huawei P series, here it is almost the same, but with some artificial limitations, since the positioning of Honor smartphones is lower. This applies, for example, to the special "Wide Aperture" mode and some additional creative modes.

The menu itself is arranged logically, and if you get used to it, it will be comfortable to use it: with a gesture on the left, a menu with various modes is called up, on the right is the camera settings menu (image resolution, button control, etc.), and from below, a menu of manual settings is called up in mode "Pro". In it, as usual, you can independently control the type of focus, shutter speed, sensitivity (ISO), exposure compensation and white balance. Using the Camera2 API, it is possible to transfer camera control to third-party applications without restrictions, up to saving images in RAW.

The video camera can shoot with a maximum resolution of up to 1920 × 1080 at a speed of 30 or 60 fps, there is no 4K (UHD) shooting mode. The camera copes with video shooting quite well: the image is quite detailed, sharp and clear, without noticeable artifacts and with good sound quality. The noise reduction system handles wind noise confidently.

• Movie # 1 (67 MB, 1920 × 1080 @ 60 fps)

The camera can be called good, but nothing more. She copes well with standard plots, but does not show anything outstanding. Moreover, for a flagship camera, it has too many flaws, such as small but frequent areas of blur, strange artifacts from software processing, soapiness and low detail in macro photography. However, the camera will handle a lot of scenarios well enough.

Telephone part and communications

The smartphone works as standard in modern 2G GSM and 3G WCDMA networks, and also has support for fourth generation LTE Cat.6 networks with a maximum possible speed of up to 300 Mbit / s for reception. Five FDD LTE bands are supported (Band 1, 3, 7, 8, 20), including the three most common in domestic operators (B3, B7 and B20). FDD TDD frequencies (Band 38, 41) are also supported. In practice, with the MTS operator's SIM card in the Moscow region, the smartphone confidently registered and worked in 4G networks, quickly reconnected after a break, and did not lose connection in areas of poor reception.

Honor 8 is one of the still few smartphones that support the Wi-Fi 802.11ac standard, so the quality and speed of wireless data transfer is at its best. There is support for Bluetooth 4.2 and NFC. The smartphone supports Wi-Fi Direct, you can organize a wireless access point via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. The smart Wi-Fi + function automatically switches between Wi-Fi and mobile data networks. The USB Type C connector supports connecting external devices in USB OTG mode.

The navigation module works with GPS (A-GPS), Glonass and the Chinese Beidou. There are no complaints about the speed of the navigation module, the first satellites are detected during a cold start within the first tens of seconds. The smartphone is equipped with a magnetic field sensor, on the basis of which the compass of navigation programs functions.

The smartphone provides work with two SIM-cards according to the Dual SIM Dual Active standard. That is, here both cards can work in parallel and at the same time, because the smartphone uses two separate radio modules. It is very simple to use it: during parallel conversations, you can instantly switch from one interlocutor to another by pressing one button.

Any of the SIM cards can be assigned as the main one for organizing voice calls, data transfer and sending SMS messages; when dialing a number, you can also select the desired card using the corresponding buttons.

OS and software

The smartphone goes on sale with a 64-bit version of Google Android 6.0 with EMUI 4.1 shell. There are no noticeable changes or limitations in the Honor 8's user interface compared to the Huawei models already reviewed this season. The shell is exactly the same: there is a familiar timeline in the notification curtain, an additional functional menu with a flashlight, voice recorder, etc. is called from below, it is possible to change themes, arrange virtual control buttons on the screen in your own way, there is wide support for gestures. There are not many preinstalled applications, most of them are useful, and if it were not for the forcibly preinstalled free services of Russian Yandex and Mail.ru, then, in general, the choice of programs could be called successful.

Performance

The Honor 8 hardware platform is based on the HiSilicon Kirin 950 octa-core SoC. The SoC consists of four powerful 64-bit ARM Cortex-A72 cores up to 2.3 GHz, complemented by four simpler 64-bit Cortex-A53 cores with frequency up to 1.8 GHz. The Mali-T880 MP4 quad-core video accelerator is responsible for graphics processing.

The amount of RAM of the smartphone is 4 GB, the amount of built-in flash memory is 32 or 64 GB (from 32 GB, the user has no more than 23 GB of free space). This volume can be increased by using microSD cards, but then one of the SIM cards will have to be removed. It is also possible to connect external flash drives to the USB port in OTG mode. MicroSD cards are officially supported with capacities up to 128GB, in practice, our 128GB Transcend Premium microSDXC UHS-1 test card was confidently recognized by the device.

Kirin 950 is a top-level platform, it is practically the same flagship Kirin 955, only here the maximum operating frequency of the older Cortex-A72 cores has been reduced from 2.5 to 2.3 GHz. Everything else is the same, including the Mali-T880 video core and the i5 coprocessor responsible for the Honor 8 sensors. The platform is much more powerful than the Kirin 650, which was installed in the Huawei P9 Lite, a very large margin is visible in all tests without exception. In complex tests, the SoC Kirin 950 demonstrates good results, although they are not maximum. The top SoCs of Qualcomm and Samsung remain the flagships of the mobile platform market, their superiority over the Kirin 950/955 is especially evident in graphics tests. Nevertheless, the performance of the review hero should be sufficient to perform any tasks, including quite demanding games.

Testing with the latest AnTuTu and GeekBench 3 Benchmarks:

All the results obtained by us when testing the smartphone in the latest versions of popular benchmarks, we have summarized in tables for convenience. Several other devices from different segments are usually added to the table, also tested on similar latest versions of benchmarks (this is done only for a visual assessment of the obtained dry numbers). Unfortunately, within the framework of one comparison, it is impossible to present the results from different versions of benchmarks, therefore, many worthy and relevant models remain behind the scenes - due to the fact that they once passed the “obstacle course” on previous versions of test programs.

Testing the graphics subsystem in gaming tests 3DMark, GFXBenchmark and Bonsai Benchmark:

When testing in 3DMark for the highest performing smartphones, it is now possible to run the application in Unlimited mode, where the rendering resolution is fixed at 720p and VSync is disabled (which can cause the speed to rise above 60 fps).

	Honor 8 (HiSilicon Kirin 950)	Huawei p9 lite (HiSilicon Kirin 650)	Sony Xperia X (Qualcomm Snapdragon 650)	Sony Xperia XA Ultra (MediaTek Helio P10)	Meizu Pro 6 (Helio X25)
3DMark Ice Storm Sling Shot (more is better)	867	367	871	425	1054
GFXBenchmark Manhattan ES 3.1 (Onscreen)	11 fps	5 fps	10 fps	5 fps	11 fps
GFXBenchmark Manhattan ES 3.1 (1080p Offscreen)	10 fps	5 fps	10 fps	5 fps	11 fps
GFXBenchmark T-Rex (Onscreen)	36 fps	19 fps	33 fps	18 fps	36 fps
GFXBenchmark T-Rex (1080p Offscreen)	27 fps	19 fps	31 fps	17 fps	40 fps

Browser cross-platform tests:

As for benchmarks for evaluating the speed of a javascript engine, you should always make allowances for the fact that the results in them significantly depend on the browser in which they are launched, so that the comparison can be truly correct only on the same OS and browsers, and this possibility is available when testing not always. In the case of Android OS, we always try to use Google Chrome.

Heat images

Below is a thermal image of the rear surface taken after a 10 minute battery test in GFXBenchmark:

Heating is more localized in the upper right part of the device, which, apparently, corresponds to the location of the SoC chip. According to the heat chamber, the maximum heating was 43 degrees (at an ambient temperature of 24 degrees), which is slightly higher than the average value in this test for modern smartphones.

Video playback

To test the "omnivorous" video playback (including support for various codecs, containers and special features, such as subtitles), we used the most common formats that make up the bulk of the content available on the Web. Note that it is important for mobile devices to have support for hardware video decoding at the chip level, since it is often impossible to process modern versions using processor cores alone. Also, do not expect a mobile device to decode everything, since the leadership in flexibility belongs to the PC, and no one is going to challenge it. All results are summarized in a single table.

According to the test results, the subject was not equipped with all the necessary decoders that are needed to fully play most of the most common multimedia files on the network, in this case, audio files. To play them successfully, you will have to resort to using a third-party player - for example, MX Player. True, it is also necessary to change the settings in it and manually install additional custom codecs, because now this player does not officially support the AC3 audio format.

Format	Container, video, sound	MX Video Player	Native video player
BDRip 720p	MKV, H.264 1280 × 720, 24fps, AAC	reproduced normally	reproduced normally
BDRip 720p	MKV, H.264 1280 × 720, 24fps, AC3		the video plays normally, there is no sound
BDRip 1080p	MKV, H.264 1920 × 1080, 24fps, AAC	reproduced normally	reproduced normally
BDRip 1080p	MKV, H.264 1920 × 1080, 24fps, AC3	the video plays normally, there is no sound	the video plays normally, there is no sound

Further video playback testing was done by Alexey Kudryavtsev.

Theoretically, we could not check the possible support for adapters for outputting images to an external device due to the lack of an adapter option that can be connected to the USB Type C port, so we had to confine ourselves to testing the output of video files on the screen of the device itself. To do this, we used a set of test files with an arrow and a rectangle moving one division per frame (see "Methodology for testing video playback and display devices. Version 1 (for mobile devices) 720 / 24p

OK No

Note: If both columns Uniformity and Skips green ratings are set, this means that, most likely, when watching movies, artifacts caused by uneven alternation and skipping of frames will either not be visible at all, or their number and visibility will not affect the viewing comfort. Red marks indicate possible problems with the playback of the respective files.

According to the criterion for outputting frames, the quality of video playback on the screen of the smartphone itself is good, since frames (or groups of frames) can (but are not required) to be displayed with a more or less uniform alternation of intervals and without frame drops. When playing video files with a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels (1080p) on a smartphone screen, the image of the video file itself is displayed exactly along the edge of the screen, one to one pixel by pixel, that is, in its original resolution. The brightness range displayed on the screen corresponds to the standard range of 16-235: in the shadows only 4 shades merge with black, and in the highlights all gradations of shades are displayed.

Battery life

The Honor 8 has a non-removable battery of 3000 mAh, which allows the device to demonstrate a decent level of autonomy. In real life, a smartphone quietly lives an eventful day, while the developers claim that the presence of the proprietary energy-saving technology Smart Power 4.0 "provides up to 1.77 days of operation with normal use and up to 1.22 with intensive use", which, in general, seems like the truth. The device behaves confidently in any scenarios, no failures, a sharp "drawdown" of the battery was noticed, with the autonomy of the Honor 8 everything is in order.

	Battery capacity	Reading mode	Video mode	3D Game Mode
Honor 8	3000 mAh	16:00	10h 30m	4h 00m
Sony Xperia XA Ultra	2700 mAh	12h 00m	9h 00m	3h 00m
Sony Xperia XA	2300 mAh	09h 40m	7h 50m	2h 30m
Sony Xperia X	2620 mAh	15h 50m	9h 00m	5h 30m
Meizu Pro 6	2560 mAh	14h 40m	9h 50m	3h 10m
Huawei p9 lite	3000 mAh	14h 30m	10h 00m	4h 00m
Huawei P9	3000 mAh	19h 00m	9h 00m	4h 50m

Continuous reading in the Moon + Reader program (with a standard, light theme, with auto-scrolling) at a minimum comfortable brightness level (the brightness was set to 100 cd / m²) lasts up to 16 hours. When continuously watching videos from Youtube in high quality (720p) with the same brightness level via a home Wi-Fi network, the device operates for at least 10.5 hours. In 3D games mode, the smartphone confidently works for more than 4 hours.

Unfortunately, the Honor 8 came to us for testing without the included charger. At the same time, it is known that the device supports fast charging. From the complete charger of the Huawei P9 Plus smartphone (2 A, 9 V), our Honor 8 was fully charged for about 1 hour 40 minutes with a current of 1.5 A at a voltage of 9 V. The device does not support wireless charging.

Outcome

Until the official price for the Russian retail has been announced, it is difficult to judge the advisability of purchasing Honor 8. And this is quite important, since initially the Honor line, nicknamed "popular", included devices that attracted buyers with the optimal combination of excellent technical characteristics and quite affordable prices.

But if we ignore the cost, then we can objectively characterize the new smartphone as a device in a very attractive case, with a decent screen, hardware platform, a set of communication modules and autonomy. The sound and cameras of the smartphone are also good, although there are many competitors in this area. In general, the new smartphone of the legendary Honor line came out very interesting, and as for its cost, it will not be long to wait.

The stylish novelty will be presented in Paris on August 24, and now the first steps of the manufacturer to attract the attention of domestic buyers are already known. For the first buyers of the new smartphone, the company has prepared a special offer: if from 17 to 24 August subscribe to the company's news on the website of the online store shop.huawei.ru, then when buying Honor 8, users will receive a monopod for selfies. And the lucky ones who are the first to score 500 points in the Honor 8 Go game will receive a 1000 rubles discount coupon when purchasing the Honor 8.

Smartphone sales are falling for the fourth quarter in a row. All major manufacturers are reporting a decline in smartphone sales. But only the HUAWEI company notes the growth of sales up to 50%. This also applies to the subsidiary brand in the face of HONOR. In mid-2019, the HUAWEI / HONOR brand ranks second in global smartphone sales. So far Samsung is in first place, but Apple is in third place. In this review, we will talk about the HONOR 8A smartphone.

SPECIFICATIONS

Case material - plastic.

The screen size is 6.08 inches (IPS).

Screen resolution - 1560x720 pixels.

Operating system - Android OS 9.0.

Processor - Helio P35 MT6765.

Video processor - PowerVR GE8320.

RAM - 2 GB.

Built-in memory - 32 GB.

Memory card type - micro SD.

The main camera is 13 megapixels.

Front camera - 8 megapixels.

Battery capacity - 3020 mAh.

GPS / GLONASS / LTE support - yes.

Headphone jack type - 3.5 mm (mini-jack).

Support for two SIM-cards - yes.

NFC support - yes.

Fingerprint scanner - yes.

Charging connector - Micro USB.

CONTENTS OF DELIVERY

The smartphone is packed in a branded turquoise box.

The delivery set includes:

2.USB - Micro-USB cable.

3. Network s / u.

4.Strip for ejecting the tray.

5. Quick start guide.

6. Warranty card.

7.Protective film (on the screen).

There is no cover and headset included in the package.

APPEARANCE

In retail, a smartphone costs less than 10 thousand rubles and this is a very good price for a quite good smartphone. There are three colors available: gold, blue, black. I had a gold-colored version on my review.

Honor 8A is a typical representative of the budget line of smartphones. But the smartphone does not look cheap at all, despite the plastic frame around the body. The back of the smartphone is also made of plastic. Moreover, the back side has two textures in design. The left narrow insert is matte, while the right side is already glossy.

Despite the large screen of the smartphone, in some cases it is quite possible to use it with one hand. The case is slightly elongated diagonally, which compensates for the large size.

The corners of the body are strongly rounded. The edges of the smartphone are sloping, it is pleasant and comfortable to hold in your hand. The main camera protrudes slightly above the body. There is an LED flash under the camera. The fingerprint scanner is at the top.

At the top there is a 3.5 mm mini-jack and a hole for the first microphone.

On the right side there is a coupled volume control button and a power button.

At the bottom there is a Micro-USB connector, a speaker for calling and a second microphone. Moreover, the microphone is hidden in the imitation of the right speaker.

On the left side there is a full-fledged slot for two SIM-cards of the "nano" format and a memory card.

Touch control buttons are located on the screen itself.

Screen matrix with rounded corners. And the screen itself is "frameless" although the bezels are quite wide here, especially in the lower part.

The thickness of the smartphone is small.

The front camera is placed in a teardrop notch. If for some reason this cutout does not suit you, then it can be hidden with a black stripe. The earpiece speaker was placed at the junction of the top end and the screen. There is a status indicator hidden in the earpiece. There is also a proximity sensor and an automatic brightness control sensor.

The screen matrix is ​​covered with a protective 2.5D glass. There is an oleophobic coating, but not the best. The build quality of the smartphone is excellent. There is a slight backlash in the mechanical buttons, but for the most part these are my personal quibbles.

Overall, the Honor 8A is a pretty practical and handy smartphone. There is no glass on the back side, the camera does not protrude much above the body, the location of the scanner is very convenient. And a protective film is already glued on the front side.

SCREEN

The screen size of Honor 8A is 6.09 inches, the resolution is 1560x720 pixels (HD +), the density is 283 PPI, the matrix is ​​IPS LCD. If it is important for someone, then individual pixels on the screen can be viewed.

The viewing angles are maximum possible, multitouch for 10 touches.

The uniformity of the backlighting of the screen can be appreciated in the photograph.

The screen brightness is high enough. In the screen settings, you can adjust: color temperature, sleep mode, eye protection.

Let's analyze the screen settings in more detail using the ColorMunki Display calibrator from X-Rite.

The gamma curves show a small spread in relation to the reference (white line) curve.

Color channels are also not entirely stable. There is a lack of red saturation.

The color temperature is too high relative to the reference at 6500k. Colors on the screen will have a cool tint. In the screen settings, you can set the "warm" display mode.

But according to the sRGB standard, we see almost ideal performance. We can say that the color rendition will be quite natural.

In general, the screen leaves positive emotions. Sufficient maximum brightness and correct sRGB values, which is rare in budget models.

CAMERA

The main camera in the smartphone is represented by a 13MP matrix, the aperture is F / 1.8, and in fact it is one. I think perfectionists will appreciate this step! The camera settings are very simple and easy to figure out.

Fast and accurate autofocus and a fairly efficient LED flash are worth noting. The final shots are obtained with slightly oversaturated colors, and there is also a lack of sharpness in the frame. But in general, the camera shoots quite well for a budget smartphone.

Panoramic shot

Video from the main camera can be recorded in FullHD at 30 frames per second. But it is worth considering that there is no optical stabilization. During shooting, there are problems with the white balance, autofocus often jumps.

Night shots are more or less normal if there is a light source in the frame.

8MP front camera. There is no portrait mode at the software level. As you understand, there is no need to talk about the quality of night selfies. Videos can also be shot in FullHD format. The face unlock function is also available, it works quite accurately and quickly.

Here you can download the originals of photos and videos from the front and main cameras: Photos and Videos from the main and front cameras (Honor 8A)

IN WORK

Honor 8A runs Google Android 9.0 Pie operating system with EMUI 9.1 shell.

This is how the smartphone menu looks like when you turn it on for the first time. A large number of pre-installed applications can be noted, but they can be completely removed, only applications from Google and a few applications from Huawei will remain.

In the settings, you can activate the main menu with applications.

It is worth noting that the smartphone interface does not work very smoothly. Lags are noticeable even with simple surfing through the smartphone menu. The problem lies in the slow RAM, which is only 2GB. For a modern smartphone, this is no longer enough. Running resource-intensive games / applications significantly reduces the speed of work and loading.

The smartphone interface can be decorated with various branded themes.

There is a simple mode of operation, this is for those who do not want to bother with the settings.

You can assign certain actions to the fingerprint scanner. The scanner itself is very accurate and fast.

Touch control buttons can be replaced with gestures.

I was pleasantly surprised by the ability of the radio to work without a headset connected.

Responsible for the performance in the smartphone is the MediaTek processor - MT6765 (Helio P35). The chipset has 8 ARM Cortex-A53 cores clocked at up to 2.3 GHz and an IMG PowerVR GE8320 GPU.

You can see the results of synthetic tests in these screenshots.

Surprisingly, the CPU temperature is high both at idle and under load.

Permanent memory in the smartphone 32GB. In fact, there is only 21GB of free space, so most likely you will not be able to do without a memory card. Well, the set of various sensors in a smartphone is not maximum. You can fully install applications to a memory card.

The speaker volume for a call is very high. The sound is clear without distortion, at full volume the speaker does not sound. Mono sound. There is support for LDAC and HWA. The earpiece is also loud enough. The interlocutor is perfectly audible, and there were no problems with the reception and transmission of speech. According to this indicator, HUAWEI / HONOR smartphones are among the best on the market.

Excellent navigation job, all modern geolocation standards are supported.

The smartphone has an NFC module. You can not only connect wireless gadgets, but also pay at the store. For full-fledged work, you need to download the Google Pay application.

The smartphone uses SIM-cards of the "nano" standard. For each card, you can assign your own melody. Call forwarding between SIM-cards is supported. 4G support is available on both cards. Wi-Fi only works at 2.4 GHz, Bluetooth 4.2 (BLE). Connecting peripherals via USB-OTG cable is supported.

OFFLINE OPERATION

The Honor 8A has a 3020mAh battery. Not the highest in its class. Complete charging 5V = 2A. The smartphone is fully charged in 2 hours.

It may seem that the battery life is short, but in practice everything is pretty good. All measurements were taken at medium screen brightness.

1.Various games - 7 hours.

2. Playing films - 12 hours.

3. Maximum load: full screen brightness, constant 4G connection, geolocation, social. networks, etc. - 6 o'clock.

4.Work only in phone mode - 3 days.

CONCLUSIONS

Overall, the HONOR 8A is a pretty solid and pleasant smartphone. But only in the category up to 10 thousand rubles, there is very strong competition. So for this amount you can buy a smartphone with 3GB of RAM, a dual camera, a more capacious battery, a FullHD screen and a slightly more efficient processor.

LIKED:

1.Practical and comfortable body.

2.Correctly adjusted sRGB screen.

3. The presence of an NFC module.

4.Loud main and spoken speakers.

5. Good cameras.

6.Long working time.

7.Film on the smartphone screen.

8. Full slot for two SIM-cards and memory card.

9.Fast and accurate fingerprint scanner.

10.Connection over 4G from two SIM-cards.

11.Working radio without a headset.

12.Status indicator.

13. Installing applications to the memory card.

MAY NOT WORK WITH:

1.Total 2GB of RAM.

2. CPU heating.

3.No case included.

4. Most likely you will need to use a memory card.

I will not write about the technical specifications, they can be viewed on the Internet. I'll write about the functions that I liked in the phone. And about the phone itself.

The phone is very fast, I have something to compare with. I used to have a Samsung Galaxy S3. This was my first touchscreen phone. Since I had it first, at first I really liked it. But then I realized that it slows down very much. It slows down when pages on the Internet are loaded, it slows down when some application is loaded, it slows down when you turn on the phone book to find a number. In general, after him Honor seemed to me very fast, lightning fast. Also, when compared to the Galaxy Grand Prime and Galaxy A5, the Honor 8 is faster. I also compared the Honor 8 to the Honor 9, and the Honor 8 is also faster. That is why I chose Honor 8, although I wanted to take 9. I did not regret it at all.

What did I like about him? Besides being fast, I liked the fingerprint sensor. This is very convenient, I liked that this sensor is also a button. With a long press I take a screenshot, with a short press I turn on the camera, two short press I have a flashlight. Even with a locked phone, it is very convenient.

When you hold down the volume key while the phone is locked, the microphone is turned on and you say the name of the person you want to call. And the number is automatically dialed.

I also liked the video recording from the screen, it is very convenient. There is also a long screenshot. You can see how it looks in the photo.

When taking a selfie, you can turn on the beauty face feature. There is also such a function, when you take a selfie, the screen lights up white for a few seconds before taking a picture, thereby, as it were, illuminates the face. I still haven't figured out how to enable this feature, but in my opinion it only works in low light conditions.

It also has its own photo editor. For more details, see the photos.

I liked the "do not disturb" mode - this is when at a certain time you will not hear sound in the phone, calls, SMS, nothing but an alarm clock. That is, the call will go, SMS will come, but the screen will not light up and no sound will be heard. I do this at night.

There is also voice control and motion control, but I do not use them, the same functions were in the Galaxy. There is a scheduled shutdown and inclusion of the phone. That is, you can make the phone turn off at night, for example, so that the battery does not run out. By the way, the battery lasts for 2 and a half days of inactive use.

There are also disadvantages to this phone. In my opinion, this is sound. The sound of the speakers is loud, when the call is at full volume, I'm even scared, so my volume is set to less than half. But I don't like the sound quality itself. My husband says that the sound is normal. Apparently I'm used to Galaxy, there was a completely different sound in terms of sound, beat, bass. In general, I do not know how to explain.

I also do not like that the back and minimize buttons are on the screen itself, and not like in other phones under the screen, on the right and left. At first it was very uncomfortable for me, my fingers did not fall into these narrow buttons. This was my first disappointment with the phone. I still don't understand why they did this, because there is a lot of space under the screen, they could have made buttons there.

Also, for me personally, it turned out to be bad that the keyboard was without a microphone. I'm used to in Galaxy that you press the microphone, say a message and the sound is translated into words. You do not need to write anything, if you need to write a large text, then it is very convenient.

I had to download another keyboard, but I really liked it, I just fell in love with it. I have been using the phone for 2 months now, I haven’t fully explored it yet. If I find some more interesting features, I will add my review.