Honor 8X design
The design of Honor 8X makes it different from the handsets of other companies. The 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 budget segment phone under Rs 20,000. Due to the glass panel, the targets of fingers and scratches fall easily. To protect the phone, you can apply the cover that came 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 sports a 6.5-inch (1080×2340 pixels) IPS LCD display with an aspect ratio of 19.5:9. Honor’s 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 a blue color variant for review.
Vertical dual rear camera setup will be seen for photography on the back panel. The rear camera is slightly raised. There will be a fingerprint sensor on the back panel for security. On the right side are the buttons to increase and decrease the power and volume, while on the left side of the phone is the SIM-tray (two nano SIM and microSD card slot). At the bottom, you have the loudspeaker, 3.5mm 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 got a place on top of the phone. The build quality of the phone is good, but after using the phone for a while, we did notice scratches on the glass back panel. For the purpose of keeping the size of the notch low, the company has kept the size of the earpiece small.
Honor 8X specifications and software
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 handsets with Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 and Snapdragon 660 chipsets coming in this price range. 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 their prices are Rs 16,999 and Rs 18,999 respectively. While doing multitasking, we did not face any problem in the phone. There is also no shortage of storage to keep apps and photos. With the help of microSD card, it is possible to increase the storage up to 400 GB.
Honor 8X sports a 6.5-inch Full HD+ (1080×2340 pixels) TFT IPS display. The company says that the blue light filter (Eye Comfort Mode) has been used in the display, which is certified by TUV Rheinland. To give life to the phone, there is a 3,750 mAh battery which comes with 5V / 2A (10W) charging support. There is a 20-megapixel primary sensor with F / 1.8 aperture on the back panel 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 the SIM slots support 4G VoLTE, Sensors on the phone include ambient light sensor, electronic compass, gravity sensor, gyroscope, proximity sensor, and fingerprint sensor for security. Dual-band WiFi 802.11 AC, Bluetooth version 4.2 LE, GPS / A-GPS, GLONASS and 3.5mm headphone jack will be available for connectivity.
The Honor 8X in our possession is running on 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 at the moment. Our handset is running on September 2018 security patch which is a good thing. You will already get Facebook Messenger, Netflix, Camera360 and Lords Mobile installed in the phone. The icons are quite large, apart from this you will get the phone manager app which will help you to manage RAM, block selected apps, track data consumption, virus check and battery consumption and many more. Now talk about gestures in EMUI. If you swipe up from the bottom, the Google Assistant will open on the home screen, swiping up from the bottom left or right. Software based face recognition support will be available in Honor 8X. Face Unlock unlocks the phone by scanning fast. 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 delivers up to 60 percent performance improvement and up to 30 percent better battery life during gaming. If Asphalt 9: Legends and PUBG are played on Moderate settings, then it works correctly. The experience of playing games like Subway Surfers and Candy Crush was great. During gaming, we found that the phone heats up very rarely and the battery consumption was also not high.
Honor 8X has scored 140,435 on Antutu benchmark, 1,604 and 5,559 in Geekbench single and multi score test respectively. These results of Honor 8X are much better than the benchmark scores obtained by Snapdragon 636 chipset powered Redmi Note 5 Pro, Asus ZenFone Max Pro M1 and Snapdragon 660 powered Xiaomi Mi A2 and Realme 2 Pro. In the camera app, you will find aperture, night, portrait, photo and video modes. Apart from this, Pro, Slo-mo, Panorama, AR, HDR, Time Lapse and other features are given in the More section. Let us know that the rear camera is capable of slow-motion video recording at a speed of 480 frames per second.
The focus of the rear camera works fast and works properly in enough light but the quality of the phone does not come that much. If we talk about sharpness in picture quality, then the 16-megapixel selfie camera is much better in this case. The quality of the picture taken at night is also below average. The Honor 8X is capable of video recording 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 great. 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 handset lasted us a full day. In HD video test, Honor 8X gave a backup of 14 hours and 47 minutes. The phone takes more than 2 hours to charge from 0 to 100 percent.
our decision
Honor wants to keep its hold strong in the market by giving premium look to the phone and launching good smartphones at low prices. Not only the design of Honor 8X, but the performance of the handset is also very good at this price. This has been made possible with the help of the company’s new HiSilicon Kirin 710 chipset. Apart from the performance of the phone, its specialty is the vibrant display and the 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 ruling 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.