Honor 8 Pro is the newest offering in the market by Huawei’s sub-brand. The device offers amazing build quality and dual camera setup, at an attractive price. But can it stand out from the competition? We’ve been using the phone since past few weeks to find that out.
Design and Build
The Honor 8 Pro comes with a stylish design and slim build. The curved edges at the back manages to offer impressive ergonomics. The phone is quite solid as it’s made of metal but seems light in weight.
The rear panel has the dual camera setup at the top left side along with the flash. Fingerprint sensor is placed a bit below at the center and Honor Logo at the bottom. The fascia has camera and sensors on the top, very thin bezels and company’s branding at the bottom. There are no navigation keys as they are available as part of the software.
The volume rocker keys and the power button is on the right side of the edge while the SIM tray is available on the left. The IR Blaster and the secondary mic is up top, and the 3.5mm Audio jack and Type-C port are at the bottom along with the speakers.
Overall the design and build quality of the Honor 8 Pro is quite good and it fits in the hands comfortably.
Display
The Honor 8 Pro has 5.7-inch of QHD IPS display with 2,560 x 1,440 pixel resolution and 2.5D curved glass. The contrast and colour reproduction is amazing. It shows good amount of details with natural tone. The sunlight readability is also good and one can use the display under direct sunlight with ease. The viewing angles are up to the mark as well.
Hardware and Software
The Honor 8 Pro is powered by octa-core Kirin 960 processor with Mali-G71 GPU. There is 6GB of RAM along with 128GB of internal storage. The memory can be further expandable up to 128GB via microSD card slot. It supports 4G VoLTE and has Dual-SIM Hybrid slots. Other connectivity options are IR Blaster, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2 and GPS.
On the software side, it runs Android 7.0 Nougat OS with Emotion 5.1 UI on the top of it. The UI offers great functionality and customisation. There is very less bloatware in the interface, but does come with several useful features. It also lets the user to use dual accounts for apps like Facebook and Whatsapp.
Performance
As can be expected, the Honor 8 Pro offers great performance in every section. The touch response is amazing as well as the multitasking experience. I ran around 25 apps simultaneously but still switching between them was instantaneous.
Gaming performance on the device is also good. The high-end games ran smoothly without a single lag. There was a minimal heating issue after playing for 20 to 25 minutes, but it can be neglected.
Fingerprint sensor works blazingly fast – it unlocks the smartphone under 0.2 seconds. As we have seen the fingerprint sensor is just not used to unlock but it can be used to pick calls, swipe in gallery, stop alarm and take photos. The audio and video performance of the Honor 8 Pro is good and the speaker does a good job.
The 4G VoLTE connectivity of the smartphone is good. I used Airtel 4G on it and I didn’t found out any type of call drop or connectivity issue.
Camera
The 12-megapixel dual camera setup on the Honor 8 Pro comprises a monochrome and RGB lens. The brand has been making dual cameras since long, and the 8 Pro brings with it that rich experience. It captures great photos with depth details. The captured images have good amount of details and colour reproduction. The low-light performance of the smartphone is good and the given flash gives it a right amount of light.
The front camera is of 8-megapixel and it also shoots great images. The selfies has good amount of light, colour and details.
The camera app has lots of customization modes for better usage. It comes with tons of modes like Pro Photo, Monochrome, HDR, 3-D Creator, Panorama, Night Shot, Light Painting, Time Lapse, Slow-mo, Document Scan and Good Food. 3D Creator mode lets you get a 3D capture of your face, and make a model out of that. If you’re willing to spend time with the app, then you can get some amazing shots which are usually not possible in smartphones, especially things like light painting.
Overall the camera is great and a plus point for the smartphone.
Battery
The smartphone houses a 4,000mAh of battery with fast charging technology. It gives about full day of battery backup with moderate usage, which is quite good, considering its 2K display. The standby time of the smartphone is about 3 days. All in all, the battery performance is pretty impressive.
Gizmo-Verdict
At a price point of 29,999 INR, Honor 8 Pro is a great smartphone in terms of performance, build quality and camera. With its loaded spec sheet, it also gives a tough competition to all the current flagship smartphones. In fact, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that the Honor 8 Pro is a flagship killer – much like the OnePlus’ latest offering, the 5 – but is priced more attractively
