Honor 8X design
The design of Honor 8X makes it different from handsets of other companies. Glassy dual-tone color scheme has been used in the phone. The back panel of the phone is made of glass which gives it a premium look. The company has named it ‘Visual Grating Effect’, Honor says that many layers of glass (metal) have been used to make it. The design of the phone is so good that it does not look like a phone of budget segment less than Rs 20,000. Being a glass panel, it becomes easily the target of fingers and scratches. To protect the phone, you can apply the cover that comes in the retail box.
Another feature of Honor 8X is that it comes with 91 percent screen-to-body ratio. Like Honor Play, Honor 9N, this phone has a small border at the bottom. Honor 8X has a 6.5-inch (1080×2340 pixels) IPS LCD display with an aspect ratio of 19.5:9. Honor logo is given at the bottom on the front panel of other smartphones of the company, but it has been removed in Honor 8X. You cannot use the display easily with one hand. While using many features, we needed to use both our hands. In India, this handset will be available in Classic Black, Trademark Blue and Bold Red colors. We have the blue color variant for review.
Vertical dual rear camera setup will be seen on the back panel for photography. The rear camera is slightly protruding. There will be a fingerprint sensor on the back panel for security. On the right side, there is a button for power and volume increase and decrease, while on the left side of the phone, there is a SIM-tray (two nano SIM and microSD card slot). At the bottom you have a loudspeaker, 3.5 mm headphone jack, primary microphone and micro-USB port. At this price the company has decided not to provide USB-Type C. The secondary microphone has been placed on the top of the phone. The build quality of the phone is good, but after using the phone for some time, we noticed that there were scratches on the glass back panel. In order to keep the size of the notch small, the company has kept the size of the earpiece small.
Specifications and software of Honor 8X
Honor 8X is the company’s first smartphone in India that comes with HiSilicon Kirin 710 processor. The same processor has also been used in the company’s Huawei Nova 3i smartphone. This processor will compete with the handsets coming in this price range with Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 and Snapdragon 660 chipsets. We have 4 GB RAM and 64 GB storage variant of Honor 8X available for review.
There are two more variants of Honor 8X – 6 GB RAM / 64 GB storage and 6 GB RAM / 128 GB storage, and they are priced at Rs 16,999 and Rs 18,999 respectively. We did not face any problem with the phone while multitasking. There is no shortage of storage to keep apps and photos. It is possible to expand the storage up to 400 GB with the help of a microSD card.
Honor 8X has a 6.5-inch Full HD+ (1080×2340 pixels) TFT IPS display. The company says that blue light filter (Eye Comfort Mode) has been used in the display, which is certified by TUV Rhineland. To bring life to the phone, there is a 3,750 mAh battery which comes with 5V/2A (10W) charging support. On the back panel, there is a 20-megapixel primary sensor with F/1.8 aperture and a 2-megapixel depth sensor. A 16-megapixel front camera will be available for selfie and video calling, its aperture is F/2.0. Both SIM slots support 4G VoLTE, the phone includes ambient light sensor, electronic compass, gravity sensor, gyroscope, proximity sensor and fingerprint sensor for security. For connectivity, dual-band WiFi 802.11 ac, Bluetooth version 4.2 LE, GPS/A-GPS, GLONASS and 3.5 mm headphone jack will be available.
The Honor 8X we have is running Android 8.1 Oreo based on EMUI 8.2.0. The handset will get Android Pie update but the company has not announced the date yet. Our handset is running on September 2018 security patch which is a good thing. You will get Facebook Messenger, Netflix, Camera360 and Lords Mobile already installed in the phone. The icons look quite big, apart from this you will get the Phone Manager app which will help you in doing many things like RAM, block selected apps, track data consumption, check virus and battery consumption. Now let’s talk about gestures in EMUI. If you swipe up from the bottom, the home screen will open; if you swipe up from the bottom left or right, Google Assistant will open. Honor 8X will have software based face recognition support. Face Unlock unlocks the phone by scanning quickly. Its special thing is that the screen brightness automatically increases in low-light and night, due to which Face Unlock is able to work properly.
Honor 8X performance, camera and battery life
GPU Turbo technology has been used in Honor 8X. GPU Turbo improves performance during gaming by up to 60 percent and provides up to 30 percent better battery life. If Asphalt 9: Legends and PUBG are played on moderate settings then it works properly. The experience of playing games like Subway Surfers and Candy Crush was quite good. During gaming, we found that the phone got heated very little and the battery consumption was also not much.
Honor 8X has scored 140,435 on AnTuTu benchmark, 1,604 and 5,559 in Geekbench single and multi score tests respectively. These results of the Honor 8X are much better than the benchmark scores achieved by Redmi Note 5 Pro with Snapdragon 636 chipset, Asus ZenFone Max Pro M1 and Xiaomi Mi A2 and Realme 2 Pro with Snapdragon 660 processor. In the camera app you will get aperture, night, portrait, photo and video modes. Apart from this, Pro, Slo-mo, Panorama, AR Capture, HDR, Time Lapse and other features are given in the More section. Let us tell you that the rear camera is capable of recording slow-motion video at a speed of 480 frames per second.
The focus of the rear camera works fast and works well in adequate light but the quality of the phone is not that good. If we talk about sharpness in picture quality, then the 16 megapixel selfie camera is much better in this matter. The quality of pictures taken at night is below average. The Honor 8X is capable of recording video at 1080p at 60 frames per second, but you’ll find the phone already set to 720p.
The battery life of Honor 8X with 6.5 inch Full HD + display is quite excellent. Once the phone is charged, it will support you throughout the day. Even after using social media apps, checking emails, watching videos on YouTube and playing games for 15 minutes, the battery of our handset lasted us the whole day. In the HD video test, Honor 8X gave a backup of 14 hours and 47 minutes. It takes more than 2 hours to charge the phone from 0 to 100 percent.
our decision
Honor wants to maintain its strong hold in the market by giving premium look to the phones and launching good smartphones at low prices. Not only the design of Honor 8X but the performance of the handset is also quite good at this price. This has been possible with the help of the company’s new HiSilicon Kirin 710 chipset. Apart from the performance of the phone, its specialty is its vibrant display and fast working biometric security feature. However, the camera quality is below average. The facility of fast charging in the phone will be useful for you. Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro and Asus ZenFone Max Pro M1 have been maintaining their hold in the market for the last six months, but now to compete with them, apart from Honor 8X, smartphones like Nokia 6.1 Plus and Motorola One Power are also included in the list.