The 8 Lite looks great, but can it impress us overall?
Honor seems to be one of the most successful brands in the recent years, thanks to its impressive offerings ever since its entry in India. Among its latest launches is the Honor 8 Lite, which is a lower-end variant of the Honor 8. The mid-ranger which has the decent specifications for its price, such as an octa-core chipset, a 2.5D curved glass display and a 3000mAh of battery. But should you buy it? Let’s find out.
Design
Similar to the Honor 8, the body of the 8 Lite is made up of plastic with a 2.5D glass on the both ends. This gives it a premium look, and also quite sexy thanks to the reflective glass. The edges are smooth and curvy and have a metallic frame. The smartphone is light in weight and can be used easily with a single hand.
The front panel has a camera on the top and a Honor logo at the bottom, with the display being the centrepiece. The navigation keys are available in the software. The 3.5-mm audio jack is at the top edge and speakers and micro USB port on the bottom edge. On the right, there’s a volume rocker and a power button. The SIM card tray is stapled on the left side of the smartphone. The back panel has the main camera and flash on the top right corner, fingerprint sensor and Honor logo at the bottom.
Overall the design is very simple, minimalistic and impressive. The device has good build quality and seems durable, although glass back tends to pick up scratches rather easily.
Display
The Honor 8 Lite sports a 5.2-inch IPS display with a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels. The display is crisp and colourful. The icons seem vibrant and colourful. The screen can be seen under direct sunlight quite easily and under different viewing angles. The display is not the best in class, yet it’s a good one.
Hardware and Software
Powering the Honor 8 Lite is the brand’s own octa-core Kirin 655 processor. It has two set of four ARM Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 2.1GHz and 1.7GHz. The SoC is supported by 4GB of RAM and Mali-T830 GPU. There is 64GB of onboard storage, which can be further expandable up to 128GB.It is a Dual-SIM smartphone with 4G LTE connectivity.
Talking about the software section, it is running on Android Nougat 7.0 out of the box with Honor’s EMUI 5.0 on the top of it. The UI is quite good and clean, and there are no additional apps given in the smartphone. That said, it offers a lot of customisation options to the users, which they’ll love.
Performance
The Honor 8 Lite offers great multitasking and app usage. The touch response is quick and amazing. The only thing that’s not lag-free is while opening heavy apps.
The gaming performance of the device is acceptable. Smaller games run smoothly, but the high-end games lag a bit. I played Asphalt 8 and Modern Combat 5 on the 8 Lite, and the gameplay isn’t very smooth. There is also slight heating issue.
The benchmark performance of the device is decent. It scored 55946 in AnTuTu and 21848 in Quadrant Standard. The scores are not the best in class but good enough as per the hardware.
The fingerprint sensor works well and unlocks the phone quickly. The connectivity features like Wi-Fi and 4G VoLTE works as expected. I was using Airtel 4G and I didn’t find any type of call drop issues in it.
The audio and Video quality of the Honor 8 Lite is good. It offers good surround sound experience with its dual speakers.
Camera
The rear panel sports a 12-megapixel camera with 1.25-micro pixel sensors. There is a single LED flash accompanied with it. The camera produces great images on the screen. The captured images have a good amount of details and colours. The PDAF works good and enhances the camera performance.
At the front, there’s an 8-megapixel unit for selfies. It also delivers good images. The selfies seem natural in tone and capture details well. The camera app is minimal and easy to use. It also offers a ton of modes for better usage of the camera as per occasion or requirement.
Battery
It houses a 3,000mAh of battery, which delivers three days of standby time. The capacity is a bit low, when compared to the current devices, but good enough for most users. On moderate usage, it offers 8 to 9 hours of battery life, and it can surely give a full day battery life when used minimally.
Gizmo Verdict
The Honor 8 Lite is a good device at a price point of 17,999 INR, that can be purchased from offline stores. It offers a compact and classy design with decent specifications. However, it faces competition from its higher-end sibling, the Honor 8, which is now available under 20,000 INR and offers dual cameras. It’s also competing against powerful devices such as the Moto G5 Plus.
