Dubai
Honor, a subsidiary of Huawei, is pushing the boundaries and has proved again that a high-end and feature-rich smartphone need not be pricey.
The Honor 5X is the successor to Honor 4X and comes with a 5.5-inch Full HD IPS display (401 pixels per inch density) coupled with 2GB RAM and 16GB of internal storage capacity. Out of the 16GB, only 9.82GB is available for users, but it has a microSD card support up to 128GB. It weighs 158 grams.
The display is sharp and clear with vibrant colours and comfortable for outdoor visibility.
The phone is thin and neat, and the metallic unibody body is made of aircraft grade aluminium to give it a premium finish but the top and bottom of the backside of the phone is made of plastic.
The latest budget-friendly offering from Honor comes with hybrid SIM card slots which can be used for one micro SIM and one nano SIM, and both these slots support 4G connectivity.
The power button and volume rocker are on the right side while the SIM card and microSD slots on the left.
On the bottom are the speaker and the microUSB port, while the fingerprint sensor is placed on the back of the device, just below the rear camera. Many a times my finger fell on the camera rather than on the sensor. Huawei should have placed the sensor a little down.
With the fingerprint sensor, users can pull the notification centre up or down, take pictures, answer calls, among other options.
The second-generation fingerprint sensor unlocks the device in 0.5 seconds and is faster than Apple’s iPhone.
The fingerprint sensor is one of the fastest in the market and just a simple tap is enough. It is faster than Apple’s Touch ID on iPhone.
Configuring the fingerprint sensor is easy and straightforward. There are gesture controls, motion controls, navigation bar changes and a slew of other small customisations to improve user experience.
Users can draw letters to open up apps like ‘C’ for camera, ‘E’ for browser, ‘M’ for music. At the same time, users can assign the letter for different apps also.
The Honor 5X is powered by 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor and backed by the Adreno 405 GPU. It is powered by Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, but I experienced some performance issues in testing. The apps take an extra second to open and there is also a bit of delay when pressing keys on the keyboard and it may be due to the user interface — EMUI 3.1 — or the processor.
Call quality is very good with good noise cancellation, apart from the occasional crackle. Earpiece volume is more than sufficient to take calls in noisy environments.
The notification bar has two areas — one for the notification sorted out in timeline and the other for shortcuts.
The 13-megapixel rear camera with dual-tone LED flash, f/2.0 aperture and 28mm wide-angle lens takes surprisingly solid pictures and video for the price and the pictures come out sharp in well-lit settings with colour reproduction that looks generally true-to-life. There is no optical image stabilisation and you cannot expect all of these on a budget phone. The camera can shoot videos in Full HD.
In lowlight conditions, the camera suffers and puts out grainy images.
The 5MP front-facing camera takes decent shots in terms of tone and clarity, and a Beauty Level slider lets you even out your skin tone. It has an f/2.4 aperture 22mm wide-angle lens with an 88-degree viewing angle to squeeze everyone into a group selfie.
The camera app is clean and simple and just by swiping the screen you can switch shooting modes like good food, beauty, photo, video and time lapse for the rear camera. The home screen of the camera app has different modes like beauty, photo, video and time lapse.
Filters such as panorama, HDR, all focus, best photo, watermark, audio note and slow-motion are available for the rear camera. The front camera has filters like watermark, mirror, panorama and audio note.
The colour saturation is right, but the camera has a tendency to overexpose under bright sunlight. It is good to capture close-up shots and the colour reproduction is very good.
The speaker at the base of the device is loud enough, but at higher volumes it becomes incredibly tinny and almost uncomfortable.
The low pricing does come with some trade-offs like NFC and 5 GHz WiFi connection. It has 802.11 b/g/n 2.4 GHz only, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS/GNSS and micro USB 2.0 port.
The non-removable 3,000mAh battery gave more than five hours of video streaming over 4G at maximum brightness which is pretty good and can get one full day for moderate users.
The company has added a very good battery manager with its interface and provides an ultra-power saving mode.
It is definitely a great buy for the price point at Dh899 and the phone which made a splash at Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show will be launched on February 8.
Pros
• Premium metal build
• Affordable price point
• Fast and accurate finger print sensor
• Useful gesture controls
• Good battery life
Cons
• Performance issues
• Obtrusive user interface
• Average speaker
• Camera needs improvement
• No NFC and 5 GHz WiFi connection
