Design
The Honor 8 is an
absolutely gorgeous smartphone. Even before digging into the details, it’s
difficult to associate the Honor 8’s design with its price; its level of
premium appeal is comparable to that of the more expensive Samsung Galaxy S7.The dual glass panel design
is admittedly reminiscent of the Galaxy S7 and even more so of the Xiaomi Mi 4S. It is still quite remarkable,
however, with the rear’s 15-panel light-refracting glass composition. This
composition primarily enables some very enthralling light patterns.
Display
The
Honor 8 is sporting a 5.2″ 1080P LTPS display, which looks great with a good
amount of sharpness and saturated and punchy colors. Color reproduction could
have been more accurate, however. Mainly, the display’s color temperature is
very cool. Thankfully, you can make adjustments in the settings to compensate
for this, but it’s a shame that the device didn’t ship with a better calibrated
display.
Camera
The Honor 8 boasts the
same six-lens, wide-angle camera that debuted on the company’s P9.The rear cam
is comprised of two 12-megapixel cameras with f/2.2 apertures and
1.25 µm pixel sizes. It’s capable of many cool tricks, because the Honor 8 can
combine sensor data from its twin snappers to improve overall pic quality. One
camera, a traditional RGB sensor, captures color data, while the second, a
monochrome sensor, measures brightness. The Honor 8’s software combines the two
streams into a single image — a feat Huawei said gives the Honor 8 and P9
a dramatic leg up in low-light environments.
Performance
It
should come as no surprise that the Honor 8 is powered by one of Huawei’s own
in-house processors, a HiSilicon
Kirin 950. The Kirin 950 offers comparable performance to that of the
high-end Qualcomm
Snapdragon 820.
Hardware
As is the case with
many Chinese smartphones, the Honor 8 is unlocked and includes dual-SIM card
support, meaning that you can use up to two different lines with this single
phone. In the US, carrier support includes AT&T, T-Mobile, and their
respective MVNOs. The phone also supports Band 12 LTE,
so you’ll receive T-Mobile’s extended range coverage.If you’re willing to give
up one of the SIM card slots, you can expand the phone’s base 32 GB of storage
via microSD card, up to 128 GB. This is always a great option to have, even if
you don’t think you’ll need it.
Battery
Huawei
provides three battery profiles out of the box: performance, smart, and ultra.
While the default smart mode does seem to marginally improve battery life, I
noticed that it prevented many of my apps from sending notifications. This made
me miss a few important messages in Slack and a couple of Snapchats within the
first few hours of using the phone, so I had to switch to the less
power-conservative performance mode in order to continue with my review.
