At the end of the first half of 2021, Honor became the most popular smartphone manufacturer in Russia. In terms of unit sales, the Chinese have even surpassed Samsung, which was achieved due to the wide variety of budget models that sell well in official retail.
Today we will dissect Honor 8S, the company’s cheapest smartphone among the current 2021 models. At a very low price, it is not deprived of trendy features, such as a cutout in the screen, which makes the device stand out from state-priced devices with an outdated design. But this smartphone has a couple of serious disadvantages, which we will discuss in detail in the review.
Autonomous operation
Honor 8A has a 3020 mAh battery.
Not the highest figure in its class. Complete charging at 5V=2A. The smartphone is fully charged in 2 hours. It may seem that the operating time of the smartphone is short, but in practice everything is quite good. All measurements were carried out at average screen brightness.
1. Various games – 7 hours.
2.Playing movies – 12 hours.
3.Maximum load: full screen brightness, constant 4G connection, geolocation, social. networks, etc. - 6 hours.
4.Work only in telephone mode – 3 days.
In progress
Honor 8A runs on Google Android 9.0 Pie operating system with EMUI 9.1 shell.
This is what the smartphone menu looks like when you turn it on for the first time. You can note a large number of pre-installed applications, but they can be completely removed, leaving only applications from Google and a few applications from Huawei.
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 when simply surfing the smartphone menu. The problem is the slow RAM, which is only 2GB. For a modern smartphone this is no longer enough. Running resource-intensive games/applications significantly reduces operating and loading speeds.
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 specific actions to the fingerprint scanner. The scanner itself works very accurately and quickly.
Touch control buttons can be replaced with gestures.
I was pleasantly surprised by the ability to operate the radio without a connected headset.
The MediaTek processor – MT6765 (Helio P35) is responsible for the performance of the smartphone. 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.
The high CPU temperature both at idle and under load is surprising.
The permanent memory in the smartphone is 32GB. In fact, there is only 21GB free, so most likely you won’t be able to do without a memory card. Well, the range of different sensors in a smartphone is not the maximum. You can fully install applications on a memory card.
The call speaker volume is very high. The sound is clear without distortion, the speaker does not produce noise at full volume. Sound in mono format. There is support for LDAC and HWA. The earpiece is also quite loud. The interlocutor can be heard perfectly, and there were no problems with speech reception and transmission. According to this indicator, HUAWEI/HONOR smartphones are among the best on the market.
Excellent work on navigation, all modern geolocation standards are supported.
Performance and OS
The heart of Honor is the MediaTek MT6761 chipset, also known as Helio A22. It is manufactured using a 12nm process and consists of four Cortex-A53 cores, each clocked at 2GHz. There is as much as 32 GB of permanent memory (~25 GB free), which is very good for a budget employee, but the memory itself is slow - eMMC 5.1. You can expand the storage with MicroSD cards; the phone works with flash drives up to 512 GB.
In the AnTuTu test, this hardware scores 64,790 points - a modest result, but expected. This means that the Honor 8S's gaming capabilities are very modest. You can easily while away the time in undemanding timekillers, but heavy titles like PUBG or World Of Tanks somehow work only on minimum graphics settings. Some games that are poorly optimized for MediaTek (for example Asphalt 9) cannot be played even at minimum settings due to the abundant freezes. Under load, the case heats up moderately; after half an hour of playing PUBG, the temperature of the back cover reaches 38 degrees, the temperature of the processor reaches 58 degrees.
In everyday use, the Honor 8S proved to be a fairly leisurely smartphone. The interface works smoothly most of the time, but even when performing basic tasks, the animations sometimes stutter. It is also worth considering that there is only 2 GB of RAM, so running applications are quickly unloaded from memory.
The operating system is Android 9 Pie in the proprietary EMUI shell. Huawei has one of the most functional interfaces on the market, it has many useful functions and services, and also provides good customization options. You can, for example, swap virtual navigation keys, or hide them altogether and switch to swiping controls on the screen. Gestures do not work as quickly as on expensive devices, but overall they work well.
Appearance
In retail, a smartphone costs less than 10 thousand rubles and this is a very good price for a quite good smartphone. Three colors are available: gold, blue, black. In my review there was a version in gold design.
Honor 8A is a typical representative of the budget line of smartphones. But the smartphone doesn’t look cheap at all, despite the plastic frame around the perimeter of 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, and the right side is already glossy.
Despite the large screen of a smartphone, in some cases you can quite successfully use one hand. The body is slightly elongated diagonally, which compensates for the large size.
The corners of the case are strongly rounded. The edges of the smartphone are sloping, making it pleasant and comfortable to hold in your hand. The main camera protrudes slightly above the body. There is an LED flash underneath the camera. The fingerprint scanner is located at the top.
At the top end there is a 3.5 mm jack (mini-jack) and the hole for the first microphone.
On the right side there is a paired volume button and a power button.
At the bottom end there is a Micro-USB connector, a speaker for calls and a second microphone. Moreover, the microphone is hidden in an imitation of the right speaker.
On the left side there is a full-fledged slot for two nano SIM cards 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 frames are quite wide, especially at the bottom.
The thickness of the smartphone is small.
The front camera is placed in a drop-shaped cutout. If for some reason you are not satisfied with this cutout, you can hide it with a black stripe. The speaker was placed at the junction of the top end and the screen. There is a status indicator that is hidden in the earpiece. There is also a proximity sensor and an automatic brightness sensor.
The screen matrix is covered with 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 play in the mechanical buttons, but for the most part these are my personal nitpicks.
Overall, Honor 8A is quite a practical and convenient smartphone. There is no glass on the back side, the camera does not protrude particularly above the body, and the location of the scanner is very convenient. And on the front side there is already a protective film pasted.
Design and ergonomics
The smartphone is supplied with a clip for removing the card tray, a 5V/1A charger and a microUSB cable. There is no cover, but the manufacturer was generous with a protective film, which was carefully glued to the screen out of the box.
By design, this is the most simple but practical smartphone that does not try to look more expensive than it actually is. And in this case, this is not a disadvantage, but an advantage of the device. As a workhorse, the Honor 8S is simply ideal. You can absolutely safely use it without a case, carry it in your pocket with your keys without fear of scratching it and without remembering the need to constantly wipe the back panel from fingerprints.
By modern standards, the 8S has compact dimensions and is very light - only 146 grams. The textured surface of the back cover makes the case grippy, so you can comfortably operate the phone with one hand, including on the go.
The camera located on the back cover does not protrude beyond the body. It is slightly recessed into the protective ring, thanks to which the lens glass does not get scratched when the phone is lying on the table. Below the single module is an LED flash that is powerful enough to be used as a flashlight.
There is no fingerprint scanner in the Honor 8S; you can unlock it with a PIN code, a pattern, or using the facial recognition function. During the day, Face Unlock works quite quickly, but when there is not enough light to trigger the front camera, you have to resort to the first two methods.
The Honor 8S screen is made in accordance with current trends in 2019. The top and side frames are quite small, there is a trendy teardrop-shaped neckline, but the massive chin unceremoniously hints at the budget price of the device. The developers also showed bad taste and stuck the manufacturer’s logo under the screen, which you have to constantly see when using the device.
At the top end of the case there is a noise reduction microphone and a 3.5 mm headphone jack, which manufacturers are increasingly abandoning. It’s good that this trend has not yet reached the budget segment.
At the bottom end we find another microphone, speaker and microUSB port, the use of which in such a cheap device does not raise any questions. On the positive side, I would like to note the presence of a full-fledged tray for two NanoSIM and MicroSD, a bright notification indicator and good build quality in general. Despite the budget materials, the smartphone feels like a solid brick, nothing creaks, does not play, and does not cause rejection.
Camera
The main camera in the smartphone is represented by a 13MP matrix, F/1.8 aperture and there is only one camera. I think perfectionists will appreciate this step! The camera settings are very simple and will not be difficult to figure out.
It is worth noting the fast and accurate autofocus and a fairly effective LED flash. The final images come out with slightly oversaturated colors, and there is also a lack of sharpness in the frame. But overall, for a budget smartphone, the camera takes pretty good pictures.
More about Huawei: eSIM: what it is, what devices it works on and how to connect. Connection. MTS/Media
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 white balance, autofocus often jumps.
Night shots are more or less normal if there is a light source in the frame.
Front camera 8MP. 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.
General impressions of the case
The back wall has a double texture, which not only looks beautiful, but also brings out the deep shine of the device. In Russia, buyers will be offered three colors to choose from. Among them are traditional black, stylish blue and red, a rare color for smartphones of the brand.
The buttons are traditionally located on the right side of the case. There is a headphone jack at the top, and charging is done via MicroUSB located at the bottom. Some will be pleased with the choice of connector, but nowadays it’s time to switch smartphones to USB Type-C.
Night and evening photos
Huawei Honor 8X has a wonderful night mode that allows you to take great photos in the dark. The automation works in such a way that it takes a series of frames with different exposures and combines them into one, thereby obtaining a very interesting result. At the same time, the photographs produce a fairly long shutter speed - 4-8 seconds and this is handheld!
The first photos were taken in HDR mode in the evening, but the rest were taken in night mode. It is easy to recognize by its contrast and bright colors; for comparison, a photo in HDR mode is also shown. Also pay attention to the last 2 pictures, they were taken in night mode, but with a tripod, with a shutter speed of 16 and 22 seconds, respectively.
Performance
The performance of Honor 8x is powered by the Kirin 710 processor with accelerator. There is an opinion that Kirin is not suitable for games, and this is partly true, but for everyday tasks the processor is more than enough. This is especially facilitated by the excellent optimization that Huawei achieves through the use of its own processor and development of the operating system.
There is 4 GB of RAM on board, and 64 GB or 128 GB of internal memory. If that's not enough, the smartphone supports memory cards up to 400 GB. At the same time, the memory card slot is separate, the SIM card slots are separate. It is very comfortable.
Portrait mode on honor 8x
Portraits on the Honor 8X come out well. Portrait mode works with background blur on both the main and front cameras. The only caveat is that you can adjust the aperture on the main camera later, but not on the front camera. This is understandable; this is where the second, 2 MP camera module comes into play. For example, at aperture 0.95, a portrait might look like this:
But with f/1.4 aperture
and a couple of examples with f/4
Subjectively, the quality is quite good, on par with other smartphones in this price range. Let me remind you that in portrait mode on the Honor 8X the photos are 8 megapixel.
Camera specifications
Even though I wanted to, I couldn’t find what exact models of camera sensors are used in the Huawei Honor 8X. Apparently, this information is classified as secret, but if we take the publicly available characteristics, they look like this:
- Main camera – 20 MP, f/1.8;
- Second camera - 2 MP (for measuring depth and creating a blur effect);
- Front camera – 16 MP, f/2.0.
This is all the information that we were able to find on the Honor 8X camera modules. Also note that 20 MP is the physical resolution of the sensor and not all modes will have exactly such photos. In fact, it turns out something like this:
- Main photos in standard mode - 20 MP;
- In night mode - 8 MP;
- In large aperture simulation mode - 8 MP;
- In AI mode (artificial intelligence) - 12 MP;
- In portrait mode - 8 MP.
As for the front camera, the full resolution of the matrix is always used here.
Screen
The Honor 8A screen size is 6.09 inches, resolution – 1560x720 pixels (HD), density 283 PPI, IPS LCD matrix. If it is important to someone, then individual pixels on the screen can be examined.
Viewing angles are the maximum possible, multi-touch for 10 touches.
The uniformity of the screen illumination can be assessed in the photograph.
The screen brightness is quite high. In the screen settings you can configure: color temperature, sleep mode, eye protection.
Let's look at the screen settings in more detail using the ColorMunki Display calibrator from X-Rite.
Gamma curves show a small scatter relative to the reference (white line) curve.
The color channels are also not entirely stable. There is a lack of red color saturation.
The color temperature is too high relative to the 6500k standard. The 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.
The points of the gray wedge lie far beyond the border of the circle DeltaE>10. In our case, spurious shades will be present.
In general, the screen leaves positive emotions. Sufficient maximum brightness and correct sRGB performance, which is rare in budget models.
