Honor 8 x has fast charging. Using fast charging on an Honor phone. Waterdrop camera cutout

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 features, but costs half the price. In terms of hardware, Huawei Honor 8 is practically indistinguishable from its more expensive predecessor.

Smartphone Huawei Honor 8 - Reviews

Probably, for Huawei, the incentive 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 it can compete on equal terms with flagship killers.

Huawei Honor 8 impresses with both its design and technical characteristics, and at the same time it is relatively inexpensive. But what about the availability of special functions and practical use? We tested the Honor 8 to find out.

Exquisite design of Huawei Honor 8

Honor 8 may formally belong to the category of “mid-class” smartphones, but the design completely contradicts this.

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

At the front of the device, the glass panel curves smoothly to create the effect seen on the iPhone.

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

The minimalist design of Huawei Honor 8 is simple, and the light show created by the laminated glass is impressive.

It is this glass that can be considered unique feature Honor 8. Featuring a patented 15-layer design, back panel refracts incoming light in shimmering patterns, and, according to Huawei, no two options are exactly alike.

The Honor 8 has a dual camera setup on the back with a laser sensor, autofocus and LED flash. Under the camera you will find a fingerprint scanner and another logo.

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

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

Huawei Honor 8 operating system and applications

operating room Android system 6 Marshmallow in Huawei Honor 8 runs on its own Emotion 4.1 user interface (EMUI). Although EMUI has its positive aspects, sometimes it makes simple tasks difficult for unknown reasons.

For example, notifications. You need to swipe down from the top of the Honor 8 screen to open notifications with timestamps. This takes up much more space than the notification panel on stock Android. Additionally, third-party apps require you to manually enable notifications to display, and they aren't always positioned correctly. We hope this will be fixed with an OS update.

But there are several in Emotion UI interesting opportunities, which are missing in basic Android. For example, " Smart Assistant", allows you to assign to the fingerprint sensor of Huawei Honor 8 various actions: A single tap can launch the camera, and a triple tap can launch the photo gallery. Gestures are also supported - by default, swiping your finger down on the sensor will open the notification panel. You can set up to answer calls, clear notifications, and much more.

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

Huawei Honor 8 has very useful applications. For example, Phone Manager, which opens up a wide range of possibilities for customizing a smartphone, especially its energy consumption.

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

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

Specifications Huawei Honor 8

The Honor 8's hardware isn't amazing, but it doesn't lag behind its competitors either.

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 with a frequency of 2.3 GHz and 4 ARM Cortex-A53 with 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 easy and fast. The same goes for scrolling through hundreds of Instagram photos, reading the news, downloading emails with attachments, and other everyday activities. Multitasking at the level of Kirin 950 and allows you to work without significant delays background applications.

But performance in everyday tasks is not reflected in the tests. The Honor 8 received a score of 931 in the Sling Shot test, which is much lower than the Lenovo Moto Z's score of 2615. This low score is most likely due to the Mali-T880 graphics chip.

In addition to the Kirin chip, there's 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's battery capacity is 3,000 mAh, which is lower than recent flagships such as Lenovo's Moto Z Force, which has a 3,500 mAh battery. But it still matches the competitors: the battery capacity of 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 was never able to reach even 25% at the end of the day, much less completely drained.

More resource-intensive tasks can drain the battery faster, but most people don't use them, so you can safely expect 14-16 hours of battery life.

Moreover, the charge of Huawei Honor 8 is also quickly restored. Fast charging 9V 2A is similar in functionality to QuickCharge 2.0 technology. We have checked and confirm Huawei’s claim that you can charge your smartphone up to 50% in half an hour, as well as the ability to reach 30-40% 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 time difference isn't too noticeable.

Good screen Huawei Honor 8

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

The 5.2-inch display has a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, which is the same as the OnePlus 3, but it's not Quad HD (2560 x 1440) like the Lenovo screens Moto Z Force and ZTE Axon 7. The viewing angle is not very wide - the phone's display often distorts colors when tilted from side to side, this is especially noticeable in applications and on web pages with a white background.

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

Honor 8's smooth touchscreen responds to every touch, and the curved display and 2.5D glass make it a pleasure to use.

Huawei Honor 8 has several hardware features:

• First: infrared sensor. In recent years, IR ports have become less common on smartphones, even in the area of ​​controlling TVs and household appliances they are being replaced by Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. But not everyone has smart technology at home, 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 is superior to the rest in this. It has one of the most accurate and fastest scanners we've ever tested, takes a fraction of a second to detect a fingerprint, and relies on the best Level 4 encryption algorithm available today.

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

The rear dual camera setup consists of two 12MP sensors with f/2.2 aperture and 1.25μm pixel size. One camera uses an RGB sensor and records color data, the other is monochrome, here to measure brightness. This combination makes Honor 8 and P9 capable of taking pictures 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 in right moment.

How does this work in practice? We tested the Honor 8's camera in low-light conditions (from sunset to dim room light) and the image came out noise-free every time. Detail and brightness in dark conditions is superior to most budget smartphone cameras.

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

The P9's rear cameras were called a "revelation" and put them on par with the iPhone 6S Plus, Galaxy S7 and LG G5, and nothing has changed on 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, and the image is as sharp and clear as if taken with the rear camera.

The front-facing sensor lacks an LED flash, without which it is difficult to take a good photo in low light, but a special Perfect Selfie app mitigates the dimming.

Setting up the front camera is easy and there are many modes available, such as Panorama, HDR and Slow Motion. There are also more unusual ones: “Document scanner”; “Night photography” (helps with color reproduction in dark conditions, but requires a tripod and a special holder).

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

Experienced photographers will undoubtedly appreciate the ability to save images as 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 the company. Repairs do not include shipping and the warranty lasts one year.

Is it worth buying Huawei Honor 8

Huawei achieved a miracle: they used almost every high-end component of their 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 deserves praise.

Advantages

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

Flaws

• Software problems.
• Mediocre display.

Of course, the Honor 8 touch screen is not so bright, there is not enough RAM, and software The company is already a little outdated. However, the main advantage of the Huawei Honor 8 smartphone is that it offers excellent specifications.

Although Huawei Honor 8 cannot be called a suitable option for everyone, if you value a high-quality camera, a fast fingerprint scanner, an IR sensor and a bright appearance- it was created for you.

I won't write about technical characteristics oh, you can look them up on the Internet. I will write about the features that I liked in the phone. And about the phone itself.

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

What did I like about it? Apart from 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, with two short presses I turn on the flashlight. Even with a locked phone, this is very convenient.

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

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

When you take a selfie, you can turn on the beautiful face feature. There is also a function where when you take a selfie, the screen lights up white for a few seconds before taking the picture, thereby illuminating your face. I still haven’t figured out how to enable this function, but in my opinion it only works in poor lighting conditions.

It also has its own photo editor. See the photographs for more details.

I liked the "do not disturb" mode - this is when certain time you will not hear any sound on your phone, calls, SMS, nothing except the alarm clock. That is, the call will go on, the SMS will arrive, 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 don’t use them, the same functions were in Galaxy. There is a scheduled switching off and turning on of the phone. That is, you can make sure that the phone turns 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 non-active use.

There are also disadvantages to this phone. In my opinion, it's the sound. The sound of the speakers is loud, when the call volume is at full, I even get scared, so I keep the volume set to less than half. But I don't like the sound quality itself. My husband says it's a normal sound. Apparently I got used to Galaxy, it had a completely different sound, beat, bass. In general, I don’t know how to explain.

I also don’t 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 inconvenient for me; my fingers could not fit 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 put buttons there.

Another bad thing for me personally was that the keyboard did not have a microphone. I'm used to Galaxy that you press the microphone, say a message and the sound is translated into words. You don’t need to write anything; if you need to write a large text, this is very convenient.

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

Right off the bat, the Honor 8C review begins with battery life to immediately indicate key feature new items - impressive autonomy, giving the smartphone a tangible competitive advantage.
There is no way I would have said in advance that in this unremarkable 8 mm case - 13 hours and 37 minutes of web surfing at 50% screen brightness. All thanks to the 4000 mAh battery. Using built-in energy saving modes, you can extend the operating time of your smartphone by eliminating the background operation of applications and automatic synchronization Email and some other functions.

Battery test results website:

Moto G7 Power

realme 5

Huawei P30 Pro HD+

OPPO A1k

Xiaomi Redmi 7

Xiaomi Redmi Note 7

iPhone 11

Pocophone F1

Honor 8C

Samsung Galaxy S20+ (60Hz)

Apple iPhone XS Max

Samsung S10+

Samsung Galaxy S20 (60Hz)

OPPO Reno

Xiaomi Mi 9

BlackBerry KEY2

Yandex Phone

The list of characteristics of Honor 8C includes support for fast charging at 10 W, but the test sample was tested without packaging and a complete adapter, so it was not possible to obtain accurate data on charging time.

The second important feature of Honor 8C cannot be assessed using the example of a black candy bar. The iridescent “Cat's Eye” color is available only on the blue version of the device. However, regardless of color, plastic case it is assembled soundly and the only thing about it that suggests the low cost of the smartphone (12,990 rubles at the time of writing these lines) is the Micro-USB connector.

Other required attributes modern apparatus in place: an additional microphone for noise reduction, a 3.5 mm jack, a speaker, dual cameras and, of course, a unibrow.

One can argue about the aesthetics of such a solution, but structurally the cutout in the screen is justified. The unibrow contains: various sensors, an earpiece with an LED indicator hidden under the mesh, and a front camera with support for facial recognition.

The design also includes a traditional fingerprint sensor on the back of the case, which is fast, accurate and ergonomic, but this time face recognition is more convenient.

The smartphone recognizes the owner both during the day and at dusk, and even when turned upside down. Glasses are not a hindrance to the Honor 8C's facial recognition system, and photographs cannot deceive it. The implementation of the technology is high-quality.

The corners of the 6.26" Honor 8C screen are rounded, so the front panel looks modern. The resolution of the TFT-LCD matrix is ​​low - HD+ or 1520 x 720 pixels, the corresponding screen density is 269 ppi. There is no need to talk about crystal clarity of the image here, but due to large fonts and icons, pixelation is noticeable only during certain animations, for example, when taking a screenshot.

When an image from the screen is saved to the smartphone's memory, EMUI shows a miniature of it, which clearly lacks detail. This is perhaps the only drawback of the Honor 8C display. The matrix has wide viewing angles, good contrast for this price and reliable color rendition, and the brightness reserve reaches 400 nits, which some flagship smartphones cannot boast of. Multi-touch is accurate and easily recognizes 10 simultaneous touches and supports double-tap activation.

Yes, Honor 8C does not support displaying notifications when the screen is off. This function was inherited by more expensive devices, but the main conveniences: a blue light filter and color correction are provided here.

HD+ screen resolution saves battery power and SoC resources, which does not have a large performance reserve and belongs to the middle class of Qualcomm processors.

Snapdragon 632 with Adreno 506 graphics core works in tandem with 3 GB of RAM rather slowly. In the Honor 8C, this is masked by accelerated interface animation, creating a feeling of responsiveness of the operating system, but a weakness central processor show low speed of installation and opening of complex applications.

In the Sling Shot Extreme test from the 3DMark suite, Honor 8C scores about 500 points. Unfortunately, getting more detailed performance data, for example in the popular AnTuTu, has proven difficult. The Honor 8C test sample ran the engineering version of EMUI 8.2 (Android 8.1). Many synthetic tests from our set did not run on it, although in all other respects the device’s firmware corresponded to the release version, that is, compared to regular Android, it was packed with various useful and not so useful improvements.

In real tasks, the Adreno 506 graphics core performed unexpectedly well. The performance is enough to play World of Tanks Blitz on medium-high settings with a frequency of about 50 frames per second.

mobile version Playerunknown's battlegrounds generally works stably at low graphics settings. Rare lags usually accompany the connection of new users to the game lobby and the loading of sections of the game arena. Drops in performance do not interfere with the successful shooting of opponents.

Mobile games are usually well optimized, and the HD screen resolution allows you to save the Honor 8C high frequency frames, despite the low potential of the processor and modest results in synthetic tests. Most likely you will have problems running various versions of GTA ported from PC, as well as game console emulators, with the exception of eight-bit, but for most 3D games from Google Play It will be possible to find a balance between graphics parameters and performance. There is nothing to say about simpler 2D games; nothing will interfere with popping balls and making rows in Tetris.

During the game, Honor 8C heats up moderately, and as far as can be judged without access to stress tests, there is almost no loss in performance.

The internal memory of the Honor 8C is 32 GB, which is enough for most users, and in case you want to carry a music collection or a couple of seasons of your favorite TV series with you, there is a dedicated (which is rare) slot for an SD card with a capacity of up to 256 GB.

The memory card is placed in the tray side by side with a pair of nano-SIMs operating in all current frequency ranges cellular communications, including the 20 Band, which is in demand in Russia, and work well - signal reception is reliable both in the city and in an open field. I also praise the accurate and fast navigation, which finds dozens of satellites almost instantly, but otherwise the Honor 8C interface is weak. Wi-Fi module It operates in one band - 2.4 GHz and passes only about 45 MB / s, and there is no NFC chip, unlike FM radio.

The tandem of 13 MP and 2 MP cameras leaves mixed impressions. Autofocus, automatic selection basic parameters shooting, such as white balance, exposure and even digital zoom, work here, as they say, for all the money.

And the optics in the main cameras are of quite high quality, and there are no hopelessly blurred frames, and no shooting artifacts are visible. Even the Camera2 API is supported, which means that shooting in uncompressed formats and full manual sensor adjustment will be available in third-party applications. Except that the crops in some photographs are blurry, and macro photographs are not always successful, but these are rather features of post-processing data from sensors.

Reviews of inexpensive smartphones are usually harder than texts about flagship devices. You quickly develop a liking for devices in which everything is perfect, whereas with a limited budget you have to make your choice wisely. I will also try to come to the conclusion of this review and sort out my impressions.

Honor 8C is:

• A stylish gadget in blue and a discreet work device in black.
• Not a replacement at all bank card;
• An opportunity to pass the time playing a couple of popular games;
• An alternative to a point-and-shoot camera, but not a semi-professional camera;
• Not the device you want to watch videos on;
• A good smartphone for a long stay outside the home, durable, with a bright screen, accurate navigation, pedometer and FM radio.

Rating of this article according to readers:

(43)

Only the lazy have not heard about the problems Huawei is creating with the US government led by Donald Trump. They are threatening to take away the company's license to use all Google services and future versions of the Android OS.

In the wake of this information noise, some users of Huawei and Honor smartphones are starting to sell their devices, mistakenly believing that something might happen to them soon. Others have stopped considering smartphones of this brand for purchase.

Despite all these political games, the Honor brand continues to produce some of the most best devices on the market in terms of price/quality ratio. And today we will talk in detail about the new Honor 8A, which has something to surprise you with. But first we must answer the main question:

What will happen “tomorrow” with my new Honor 8A?

All released Huawei smartphones (including Honor) will continue to operate regardless of US sanctions. All Google services will work without any restrictions for many years.

Moreover, Honor and Huawei smartphones will receive security updates as normal. If Huawei does not reach an agreement with the US government, the worst scenario for current users- this is the lack of updating to Android 10.

But even in this case, users of flagship devices, who were supposed to be among the first to receive this update, will suffer more. As far as budget phones go, upgrading to Android 10 doesn't make a big difference.

Thus, there is no reason to bypass Huawei and Honor smartphones that have already hit store shelves. They are in no danger.

156.28 x 73.5 x 8.2 mm

IPS 6.09″
720 x 1560

Processor and memory

Mediatek Helio P35
2/32 GB

13 MP, f/1.8
Selfie 8 MP, f/2.0

Battery

3020 mAh
No fast charging

Additionally

NFC, FM radio, fingerprint sensor

Honor 8A review. Comfort, design and materials

The smartphone comes with a 5W charger, a USB cable and a clip for removing the SIM card, and a factory film without an oleophobic coating is stuck on the screen:

Honor 8A is made entirely of plastic. The build quality is very good - no play or creaking, the device feels solid. The buttons have a clear movement.

Separately, I would like to note the design of the smartphone. It differs from most devices by its interesting backrest. The idea itself is somewhat reminiscent of design Google Pixel- two types of plastic are also used here - pearlescent gloss and a matte part on which the camera and company logo are placed:

Looks interesting. The smartphone stands out from the crowd of similar devices. As for fingerprints and marks, they are more noticeable on the glossy part than on the matte part.

The front side is occupied by a large display, with a selfie camera embedded on top. Above it there is a speaker and proximity/light sensors, as well as an LED indicator for missed notifications:

It is important to note that the proximity sensor here is not built into the screen, as on some modern smartphones and therefore works very stably. The screen does not turn on spontaneously during a phone call.

The bottom frame is quite large and in order to visually “shorten” it, the company placed its logo here. Because of this, the “chin” of the smartphone is not perceived as too large and looks organic:

Honor 8A does not have moisture protection, and there are no rubber seals inside the connectors and buttons, so it is better not to use the smartphone during heavy rain.

There are no control elements on the left side, which allows you to place the smartphone on a stand to watch videos, and it is also convenient to hold it in your hands while playing games, without the risk of accidentally pressing a button.

At the bottom there is a microphone, the grille of which is stylized as a speaker, a microUSB connector (with USB-OTG support for connecting a flash drive and other peripherals), as well as the main speaker. On the right is the volume rocker and power button. On the top edge there is a 3.5 mm headphone jack and an additional microphone.

The smartphone can simultaneously use 2 SIM cards and a memory card thanks to the triple tray:

At the back there is a camera, LED flash and a fingerprint scanner. The latter is located very conveniently - the index finger naturally rests directly on it.

The smartphone looks modern due to its narrow frames, drop-shaped notch and interesting design back cover.

Honor 8A screen

The smartphone has an IPS matrix measuring 6.09″ and a resolution of 720×1560 pixels (HD+). This gives a pixel density of 282 ppi. If you wish, you can see individual pixels. However, the display clarity of the Honor 8A is higher than that of competitors Samsung Galaxy A10, Xiaomi Redmi 7 or Huawei Y7.

Honor 8A has an IPS matrix. Firstly, it is a perfect white color, which is not yet achievable on AMOLED.

Secondly, this. When we lower the brightness of an AMOLED display, there is a strong flicker that is not noticeable to the naked eye. It often causes eye fatigue and headaches. The IPS matrix does not have this drawback.

In the smartphone settings you can select the color temperature:

As for brightness, the Honor 8A display has good visibility in the sun. And with minimum brightness, you can comfortably use your smartphone in complete darkness.

Color rendition is very accurate. For a budget smartphone, the Honor 8A's screen is very good. Here's what the same photos look like on the maximum brightness screens of the Honor 8A and the Galaxy Note 9 mentioned above (note, this is one of the most expensive displays on the market):

Viewing angles are not bad, but with a strong deviation you can notice a slight change in color rendering and a drop in brightness.

The Honor 8A screen has received the Eye Comfort certificate from the renowned certification institute TÜV Rheinland. Interestingly, Samsung boasted the same certificate at the presentation of its Samsung flagship Galaxy S10. In practice, this certification means that the smartphone screen reduces the harmful effects of blue light on human eyes.

Waterdrop camera cutout

If you don’t like the modern fashion for notches in screens, then on the Honor 8A you can easily hide it in the settings. At the same time, the notification line does not go down and does not take up useful area on the screen, as on Samsung smartphones:

The only note is the asymmetrical corners at the top and bottom with a hidden cutout.

Any application, game or video can be launched in full screen mode or without a cutout. To do this, in the smartphone settings ( Screen— Other screen settings — Dark area at top — Tune) you need to specify the operating mode of any application:

Since the screen here is rather large, it is very convenient to run two applications at the same time. For example, read something on the Internet and at the same time watch a video on YouTube:

There is one important note about YouTube and watching videos in general. Due to the screen resolution of the Honor 8A (HD+), many applications, including YouTube, do not allow you to select video quality above 720p. This resolution is not enough and the difference with FullHD on this big screen very noticeable.

You need to either choose applications that support FullHD video (1080p), or be content with mediocre image quality.

Unfortunately, there is no function to wake up the smartphone by double tap. Instead, Honor suggests using the " Take to activate"—the screen automatically turns on as soon as you pick up the smartphone:

Autonomy and performance

The capacity of the built-in battery is 3020 mAh, which is not much for a 6-inch screen. However, given the screen resolution, relatively weak processor and severe limitation background processes, this capacity is quite enough for long-term operation of the smartphone.

During the test measurement, the smartphone worked on one charge 16 hours 20 minutes, while the screen operating time was 7 o'clock:

On average, the battery always lasts for a day with 6 hours of screen operation. It takes no more than one night 2% charge.

When it comes to charging your smartphone, this is one of its main drawbacks. Honor 8A does not support fast charging, and the included charger has a power of only 5W (5V and 1A).

Included charging at 5W

You can speed up the charge a little by using a third-party power supply of 5V and 1.5A.

The new 8-core processor is responsible for performance Helio P35(Mediatek MT6765), announced at the end of 2018. The same chip is also used in the competing model - Xiaomi Mi Play.

This is a budget processor from which you should not expect high performance. However, its power is enough for comfortable operation of the interface, quick launch applications and even heavy games on minimum settings. For example, you can play PUBG very comfortably on the following settings:

The game with realistic graphics World War Heroes also works without any complaints.

Honor 8A scored in our AnTuTu test 77 thousand points, which approximately corresponds to the power of Xiaomi Mi Max 2 at Qualcomm processor 625:

It should be noted that for other users the same smartphone dials up to 86 thousand points. This may be due to the firmware version, the overall heating of the device, or the number of applications installed (and running in the background).

In general, there are no special complaints about performance. But as for RAM, I would like to see at least 3 GB of RAM. When working with a specific application, you do not feel a lack of memory, however, when switching between running programs, content is reloaded very often.

Perhaps this is due to the strict limitation of background tasks (a well-known software feature of Huawei and Xiaomi smartphones), in which the smartphone closes a minimized application so that it does not consume resources and does not waste battery power.

Honor 8A camera review

The 13 MP main camera has a fast f/1.8 lens for better low-light photography, and the selfie camera has an 8 MP resolution.

Despite the budget segment, the camera shoots quite well. During the day, photos are well detailed, and thanks to the large aperture, you can see the bokeh effect. The color rendition is good, there is no excessive sharpness in the image, the image is very soft and at the same time clear:

At 100% magnification the detail is very good:

IN standard mode the camera is not enough dynamic range. For example, in the photo below you can see very bright “burnt-out” areas; Honor 8A was unable to convey the entire brightness range:

This problem can be partially solved thanks to a special HDR shooting mode, when the smartphone takes several pictures of different exposures and then combines them.

Notice how clearly the flower is visible in the following photo, taken in backlight (against the window). This is a very difficult shot that the Honor 8A handled very well:

Present here and Pro mode, which allows you to change camera parameters such as:

• Light sensitivity (ISO) from 100 to 3200
• Shutter speed (shutter speed) 1/4000 second to 8 seconds
• Exposure compensation
• Focus (auto or manual). Minimum distance to object ~8 cm
• White balance

Video is recorded in FullHD resolution (1080p) with a frame rate of 30 fps. Unfortunately, there is no image stabilization, neither optical nor digital.

Smartphone hardware features

Honor 8A has a number of hardware features that are not typical for budget smartphones.

Main speaker

First of all, this is the main speaker, which is not inferior in quality to, for example, the 2018 flagship models from Samsung. Despite the lack of stereo speakers, the sound is very spacious, with low frequencies present. The maximum volume is higher than on the Samsung Galaxy Note 9, iPhone X and other top smartphones.

Comparing the Honor 8A speaker with mid-budget smartphones like or does not make any sense. It surpasses them in everything in terms of sound quality and volume. This is one of the best speakers on the market in general, regardless of the cost of the smartphone.

As for the sound in the headphones, it is quite loud and not bad. But when compared with more expensive models, the difference in detail in the high and mid frequencies is clearly audible. Overall, this is a typical sound for a budget smartphone.

There is also proprietary technology Huawei Histen, which makes the sound in headphones more spacious. The difference between the various 3D effects is clearly audible:

FM radio wirelessly

Many smartphones of this price category have a built-in FM radio receiver. But the main inconvenience of this solution is the need to connect wired headphones, which are used as an antenna. Because of this, the whole essence of mobile radio is lost, since you always need to carry wired headphones with you.

However, FM radio on Honor 8A works great without a connection wired headphones, since the antenna is built into the body itself! The smartphone automatically scans frequencies and finds radio stations. The reception quality is excellent, the signal is not lost.

The built-in application is as simple as possible; there are no additional functions, such as recording from the air:

Also, the radio does not support RDS technology, that is, the names of stations are not displayed, only their frequency.

Fingerprint sensor

The fingerprint sensor is located on the back cover of the smartphone and, for convenience, is slightly recessed into the body, making it very easy to find by touch. The speed and stability of recognition is very high. Total can be registered 5 prints. You cannot add the same finger twice - the system will recognize already added fingerprints.

In addition, the sensor supports gesture control. Swiping your finger across the sensor from top to bottom opens the notification shade. And in the Gallery application, you can scroll through photos using gestures on the sensor.

The smartphone also supports face unlock. However, this method is not as secure as fingerprint or face unlock on iPhone. They use a completely different technology for this. Here the selfie camera is simply used.

Contactless payment

Unexpectedly, a smartphone in the budget category received NFC chip. This is one of the main competitive advantages of this device. Contactless payments have become commonplace and are accepted almost everywhere in the post-Soviet space. If you have never tried to pay with a smartphone, be sure to read the article “

New flagship of the series, with dual camera, fingerprint sensor and USB Type C connector

The European presentation of the new Huawei product, produced under the Honor brand, will take place today, but in China the Honor 8 model 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 introduce our readers to 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 family of Huawei Honor smartphones.

Main characteristics of Honor 8 (model FRD-L09)

• SoC HiSilicon Kirin 950, 8 cores: 4x2.3 GHz (ARM Cortex-A72) + 4x1.8 GHz (ARM Cortex-A53)
• GPU Mali-T880 MP4
• operating system Android 6.0
• Touch display IPS 5.2″, 1920×1080, 423 ppi
• Random access memory (RAM) 3/4 GB, inner memory 32/64 GB
• SIM cards: Nano-SIM (2 pcs.)
• Supports microSD memory cards up to 128 GB
• GSM networks 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
• WCDMA networks 900/1900/2100 MHz
• LTE Cat.6 networks 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
• Direction, proximity, lighting sensors, 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 146×71×7.5 mm
• Weight 153 g

Appearance and ease of use

Honor 8 unexpectedly does not look like 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 “indestructible”, then the successor with glass panels, strongly rounded edges, a streamlined shape and rounded sides can rightfully claim a place among the “image” models. Honor 8 really turned out to be surprisingly good-looking; the “pampered” design of the smartphone is reminiscent of both the iPhone 6 and the Huawei P series smartphones at the same time.

The smartphone received two transparent glass 2.5D panels Gorilla Glass with smoothed edges on both sides of the body, and a strongly rounded metal rim running along the side perimeter. Thus, there are no right angles or sharp edges to be found here; the Honor 8 body is absolutely streamlined and very pleasant to hold in the hand.

The surfaces of the case are completely non-slippery, 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 parts fit neatly, the non-separable body of Honor 8 is monolithic.

As for the elements placed on the body, Honor 8 has a couple of “aces up its sleeve”. Firstly, the smartphone received an infrared transmitter on the top end, which allows the device to act as universal remote control DU. The built-in program easily recognized the old one Philips TV, for which honor and praise be given to her.

But even more interesting is the fact of the implicit presence of a hardware button, hidden under the usual round platform of the fingerprint sensor located on the back panel of the smartphone. Most of these scanner pads, including those on Huawei smartphones, do not have any mechanical buttons underneath them, so without special warning, you may not even notice that the pad is pressable.

In smartphones from 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 clicks, as well as for pressing with a long hold. By default, the opening function is assigned to the button 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 audio jack for headphones is located at the bottom end, it is adjacent to the USB Type C connector and the speaker grille. At the top end there are only the mentioned infrared transmitter and a second microphone, 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. Hidden above the screen among the sensors is a useful LED event indicator, built right under the speaker grille.

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

The manufacturer assures that for the fingerprint scanner itself it was used new technology 3D scanning - thanks to it, unlocking the phone takes only 0.4 seconds. In practice, the scanner works really very quickly and almost error-free, but, in general, all manufacturers have now 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 the iPhone and Samsung, but Huawei is one of those companies that stubbornly adheres to the rear placement of this element.

None of the elements protrude beyond the surface, so using the smartphone lying on a hard surface is quite convenient. 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 or fall on the floor.

To install cards, there is one hybrid slot on the side, into which you can insert either two Nano-SIM format SIM cards, 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 opposite side of this slot are made of metal, like the card slide, and their movement is quite distinct, not too soft, but not hard either. The keys are easy to feel blindly, and their surfaces also have a different texture. In general, there are no complaints about these elements.

As for the color options for the smartphone, the manufacturer has provided a wide variety, and the set of colors may differ depending on the modification. For the model we tested with index FRD-L09, colors such as Sunrise Gold (golden), Pearl White (white), Midnight Black (black) and Sapphire Blue (blue) will be available.

Screen

The smartphone is equipped touch screen IPS and protected by glass with sloping edges (2.5D) Corning Gorilla Glass 3. The physical dimensions of the display are 64x114 mm, diagonal - 5.2 inches. The screen resolution is 1920×1080, the pixel density is 423 ppi. The frame around the screen is standard: approximately 3 mm on the sides and 15 mm on the top and bottom.

The display brightness is automatically adjusted based on the light sensor. There is also a proximity sensor that blocks the screen when you bring the smartphone to your ear. Multi-touch technology allows you to process 10 simultaneous touches. You can't activate the screen by double-tapping the glass, but you can activate the screen by pressing the rear fingerprint reader. Glove operation is supported.

A detailed examination using measuring instruments was carried out by the editor of the “Monitors” and “Projectors and TV” sections, Alexey Kudryavtsev. Here is his expert opinion on the screen of the sample under study.

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

The Honor 8's screen is darker (photo brightness 102 versus 114 for the Nexus 7). The ghosting of reflected objects in the Honor 8 screen is very weak, this 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 - One Glass Solution type screen). Due to the smaller number of boundaries (glass/air type) with very different refractive indices, such screens look better in conditions of intense external illumination, but their repair in the case of cracked external glass is much more expensive, since the entire screen has to be replaced. The outer surface of the screen has a special oleophobic (grease-repellent) coating (even better in efficiency than that of the Nexus 7), so fingerprints are removed much more easily and appear at a lower speed than with regular glass.

With manual brightness control and when the white field was displayed in full screen, the maximum brightness value was about 460 cd/m², the minimum was 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 reduced to a comfortable value. There is automatic brightness adjustment based on the light sensor (it is located to the left of the front speaker slot). In automatic mode, as external lighting conditions change, the screen brightness both increases and decreases. The operation of this function depends on the position of the brightness adjustment, with which the user can try to set the desired brightness level in the current conditions. If in an office environment the brightness slider is set to maximum, then in complete darkness the auto-brightness function reduces the brightness to 4.4 cd/m² (dark), in an office illuminated by artificial light (approximately 550 lux) it sets it to 450 cd/m² (excessively bright) , in a very bright environment (corresponding to lighting on a clear day outdoors, but without direct sunlight - 20,000 lux or a little more) increases to 460 cd/m² (to the maximum, which is what is needed). If everything is also in the office, 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 rather low). If the brightness control 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 a little to the right in complete darkness. We got - 11, 150-160, 460 cd/m² (ideal combination). It turns out that the auto-brightness function works adequately and to some extent allows the user to customize their work to individual requirements. At any brightness level, there is virtually no backlight modulation, so there is no screen flickering.

IN this smartphone An IPS type matrix is ​​used. The microphotographs show a typical IPS subpixel structure:

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

The screen has good viewing angles without significant color shift even with large viewing deviations from perpendicular to the screen and without inverting shades. For comparison, here are photographs in which the same images are displayed on the screens of Honor 8 and Nexus 7, while the screen brightness is initially set to approximately 200 cd/m² over a white field across the entire screen, and the color balance on the camera is forcibly switched to 6500 K. Perpendicular to screens have a white field:

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

The colors on the Honor 8 screen are oversaturated (noticeably, 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 have not changed much on both screens, but on Honor 8 the contrast has decreased to a greater extent due to the strong highlighting of blacks. And a white field:

The brightness at an angle of the screens has decreased (by at least 4 times, based on the difference in shutter speed), but the Honor 8’s screen is still lighter (brightness according to photographs is 236 versus 222 for the Nexus 7). When deviated diagonally, the black field brightens greatly and acquires a reddish tint. The photographs below demonstrate this (the brightness of the white areas in the direction perpendicular to the plane of the screens is the same!):

And from another angle:

When viewed perpendicularly, the uniformity of the black field 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 black-white-black transition is 33 ms (19 ms on + 14 ms off). The transition between halftones of gray 25% and 75% (according to the numerical value of the color) and back takes a total of 50 ms. The gamma curve, constructed using 32 points with equal intervals based on the numerical value of the shade of gray, did not reveal any 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-law 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 resulting dependence of brightness on hue (gamma curve) may not correspond to the gamma curve of a static image, since the measurements were carried out with sequential display of shades of gray on almost the entire screen. For this reason, we carried out a number of tests - determining contrast and response time, comparing black illumination at angles - (however, as always) when displaying special templates with a constant average brightness, and not monochromatic fields in the entire screen. It should be noted that in this case, brightness correction is weakly expressed and has a not entirely obvious dependence on the image, but it would be better not to have it at all.

The color gamut is noticeably wider than sRGB:

Let's look at the spectra:

They are atypical, but we have already seen them in the case, for example, of the Sony Xperia Z2 and other mobile devices. Sony indicates that these screens use LEDs with a blue emitter and green and red phosphors (usually a blue emitter and a yellow phosphor), which, in combination with special matrix filters, allows for a wide color gamut. Yes, and the red phosphor apparently uses so-called quantum dots. For a consumer device, a wide color gamut is not 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 an 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 blackbody spectrum (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 hue to hue - this negatively affects the visual assessment of color balance. In general, jumps in values ​​in the two graphs above indirectly indicate that some kind of digital correction is being performed, and it is being done poorly. (The darkest areas of the gray scale can be ignored, since 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 adjust the color balance by adjusting the hue on the color wheel.

The curves in the graphs above 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 image 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 make the correction. Note that this function implemented in the version rather for show, since there is no numerical reflection of the correction, there is no field for measuring color balance and the adjustment range is insufficient, since even at the edge of the circle it is necessary to seek a compromise between close to 6500 K color temperature and the minimum value of ΔE.

To summarize: the screen has a high maximum brightness and has excellent anti-glare properties, so the device can be used outdoors without any problems, even on a sunny summer day. In complete darkness, the brightness can be reduced to a comfortable level. It is also possible to use a 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, and good uniformity of the black field. The disadvantages are low black stability to deviation of the gaze from perpendicular to the screen plane, an excessively wide color gamut and average color balance. Nevertheless, given the importance of characteristics specifically for this class of devices, the screen quality can be considered high, although you should prepare 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 simple and not very expressive. There is no bass, but that's not the worst thing. Here the sound itself is rather impersonal, dim, dull, and lacks volume reserve. In headphones with low frequencies things are, of course, better, but the rest of the comments remain valid: the sound is a bit muffled, a little blurred by noise, not very loud and not so crystal clear. In general, everything is not so bad, but the latest smartphones from the Huawei P line have a much more interesting sound.

To play melodies, you use your own player, and, as usual, no additional ones manual settings it does not - you can only turn on or off the entire virtual DTS system.

There are no complaints about the conversational speaker and microphone: the intonation and timbre of a familiar voice remain recognizable. There is no FM radio in the smartphone. The recorder shows miracles of sensitivity, records sound very clearly and efficiently, and the noise reduction system copes with its responsibilities adequately.

Camera

Here, as in the Huawei P9 line, a dual main camera is used - however, nothing is said about Leica’s participation in its creation. And this is what they say: “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 installed here are the same as in the more expensive devices of the Huawei P fashion 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 is quite acceptable for selfie level: sharpness and color rendition are normal, and there are no special complaints about detailing either.

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

We have studied the camera control menu in some detail for Huawei P series models; here it is almost the same, but with some artificial restrictions, since Honor smartphones have lower positioning. This applies, for example, to the capabilities of 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: a gesture on the left brings up a menu with various modes, on the right - the camera settings menu (image resolution, button control, etc.), and at the bottom brings up the manual settings menu in "Pro" mode. 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 third party applications without restrictions, up to saving pictures in RAW.

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

• Video No. 1 (67 MB, 1920×1080 @60 fps)

The camera can be called good, but nothing more. She does a good job 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 can handle many scenarios well.

Telephone 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 reception speed of up to 300 Mbit/s. Five FDD LTE bands are supported (Band 1, 3, 7, 8, 20), including the three most common among domestic operators (B3, B7 and B20). FDD TDD frequencies (Band 38, 41) are also supported. In practice, with a SIM card from the MTS operator 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 not too many smartphones that support Wi-Fi standard 802.11ac, so quality and speed wireless transmission His data is top notch. 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 channels. Smart Wi-Fi+ lets you automatically switch between Wi-Fi and network mobile transmission data. USB Type C connector supports connecting external devices USB mode OTG.

The navigation module works with GPS (A-GPS), Glonass and Chinese Beidou. There are no complaints about the operating 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 operates.

The smartphone supports two SIM cards using 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: during parallel conversations, you can instantly switch from one interlocutor to another by pressing just one button.

Any of the SIM cards can be designated as the main one for organizing voice calls, transferring data 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 Google Android 6.0 with EMUI 4.1 shell. There are no noticeable changes or limitations compared to the previously reviewed Huawei models of the current season in the Honor 8 user interface. The shell is exactly the same: the familiar timeline in the notification shade is in place, an additional functional menu with a flashlight, voice recorder, etc. is called up from below, it is possible to change design themes, arrange virtual control buttons on the screen in your own way, there is wide support for gestures. There are few pre-installed applications, most of them are useful, and if not forcibly pre-installed free services 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 8-core HiSilicon Kirin 950 SoC. The SoC includes four powerful 64-bit ARM Cortex-A72 cores with a frequency of up to 2.3 GHz, which are complemented by four simpler 64-bit Cortex-A53 cores with frequency up to 1.8 GHz. The quad-core Mali-T880 MP4 video accelerator is responsible for graphics processing.

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

Kirin 950 is a top-level platform, it’s practically the same flagship Kirin 955, only here the maximum operating frequency of the older Cortex-A72 cores is 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 operation of 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 gap is visible in all tests without exception. In comprehensive tests, the Kirin 950 SoC shows good results, although they are not maximum. The flagships of the mobile platform market remain the top SoCs from Qualcomm and Samsung; their superiority over the Kirin 950/955 is especially evident in graphics tests. However, the performance of the review hero should be enough to complete any task, including fairly demanding games.

Testing in latest versions comprehensive tests AnTuTu and GeekBench 3:

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

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

When testing in 3DMark, the most powerful smartphones now have the ability 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 assessing the speed of the javascript engine, you should always make allowance for the fact that their results significantly depend on the browser in which they are launched, so the comparison can only be truly correct on the same OS and browsers, and this is possible during testing not always. For Android OS, we always try to use Google Chrome.

Thermal photographs

Below is a thermal image of the rear surface obtained after 10 minutes of running the battery test in the GFXBenchmark program:

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 camera, 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.

Playing video

To test omnivorousness when playing video (including support for various codecs, containers and special features, for example subtitles), we used the most common formats, which make up the bulk of the content available on the Web. Note that for mobile devices it is important to have support for hardware video decoding at the chip level, since it is most often impossible to process modern options using processor cores alone. Also, don't expect mobile device decoding 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 testing results, the test 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 successfully play them, you will have to resort to the help of a third-party player - for example, MX Player. True, it is also necessary to change the settings and manually install additional custom codecs, because now this player does not officially support the AC3 sound format.

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

Further testing of video playback was performed Alexey Kudryavtsev.

We were unable to test the theoretically possible support for adapters for outputting images to an external device due to the lack of an adapter option that connects to the USB Type C port, so we had to limit ourselves to testing the output of video files to 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

Fine No

Note: If in both columns Uniformity And Passes Green ratings are given, this means that, most likely, when watching films, artifacts caused by uneven alternation and frame skipping will either not be visible at all, or their number and visibility will not affect the viewing comfort. Red marks indicate possible problems related to the playback of the corresponding files.

According to the criterion of frame output, the quality of playback of video files on the screen of the smartphone itself is good, since frames (or groups of frames) can (but are not required) be output with more or less uniform alternation of intervals and without skipping frames. 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 border of the screen, one to one in pixels, that is, in the 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 capacity of the non-removable battery installed in Honor 8 is 3000 mAh, which allows the device to demonstrate a quite decent level of autonomy. In real life, a smartphone calmly goes through an eventful day, but the developers claim that the presence of 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 to be true. The device behaves confidently in any scenario, no failures, no sudden “drawdown” of the battery was noticed, everything is in order with the autonomy of Honor 8.

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

Continuous reading in the Moon+ Reader program (with a standard, light theme, with auto-scrolling) at a minimum comfortable brightness level (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 through home network The Wi-Fi device operates for at least 10.5 hours. In 3D gaming mode, the smartphone works reliably for more than 4 hours.

Unfortunately, a copy of Honor 8 arrived to us for testing without a complete charger. It is known that the device supports fast charging. From the included charger of the Huawei P9 Plus smartphone (2 A, 9 V), our copy of Honor 8 was fully charged in approximately 1 hour 40 minutes with a current of 1.5 A at a voltage of 9 V. Wireless charging the device does not support.

Bottom line

Until the official price for 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 “people’s”, included devices that attracted buyers with the optimal combination of excellent technical characteristics and a very affordable price.

But if we abstract from cost, then we can objectively characterize new smartphone as a device in a very attractive case, with a decent screen, hardware platform, set of communication modules and autonomy. The smartphone's sound and cameras are also quite good, although it has many competitors in this area. In general, the new smartphone of the legendary Honor line turned out to be very interesting, and as for its cost, the wait is very short.

The stylish new product will be presented in Paris on August 24, and now the manufacturer’s first steps 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 August 17 to 24 you subscribe to the company’s news on the online store website shop.huawei.ru, then when purchasing 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 coupon for a 1000 rubles discount when purchasing Honor 8.