Skip to main content

Honor 8 Pro Review – Best Plus Size Smartphone 2017?

VERDICT – This is quite simply, this is one of the best plus-sized smartphones money can buy.

Many would have poked fun at 5.7in smartphones a few years back, but now they’re a common sight, and the Honor 8Pro shows why: it’s an impressively specced Quad HD handset that merges the beauty of the Honor 8and Huawei P10, while keeping the price down to a very reasonable £480.
Honor has ditched the 15 layers of glass found on the regular Honor 8, instead opting for a matt finish, and the result is stunning. The sleek, rounded edges and full-metal unibody design give the phone a premium feel, and its 184g weight complements the phone’s handling. It’s also just 7mm thick, which is even slimmer than the 7.3mm iPhone 7Plus, and the 8Pro lacks any unsightly camera bump.

ON TAP

Unlike the Huawei P10, the fingerprint sensor is found on the back. This makes it much more comfortable to use one-handed, and the unlock speed is blisteringly fast. However, the ability to also use the sensor as a customizable button has been removed, leaving just basic directional swipes to carry out operations. We miss being able to use the sensor as a torch shortcut, for example, as we could on the Honor 8.

A3.5mm headphone jack is located at the bottom, alongside a downward-firing speaker and its fast-charging USB Type-C connector, which delivers 38% battery from a30-minute charge. The phone’s volume rocker and power button are found on the right, and a dual nano-SIM compartment is on the left. If you prefer, a128GB microSD card can be inserted, occupying the secondary SIM slot.

The Honor 8’s Full HD display was impressive, but the Honor 8Pro takes it one-step further. With an impressive 2,560x1,440 pixels, the Honor 8Pro kicks out a pixel density of 515ppi, resulting in extremely sharp images and text.

Its 93.7% sRGB color gamut is slightly lower than the Honor 8’s 98.2%, but colors still appear vibrant and rich, and the 1,305:1 contrast ratio and 0.35cd/m2 black levels are pretty good, too. Screen brightness has also improved, up to a maximum 463cd/m2 –easily enough to use in the sun.
Since Honor is a Huawei subsidiary, this phone’s Android 7.0 OS has been given the EMUI treatment. Despite Honor’s claims that the current 5.1version includes certain RAM and processor optimizations, this is one of the more extensive manufacturer skins for Android, and you still have to make do with the lack of an apps drawer and a heavily redesigned drop-down settings menu.

KIRIN TIME

Things are much better on the hardware side. As well as 6GB of RAM, it has the same octa-core Kirin 960 chip as the Huawei P10, and achieves similarly excellent benchmark results of 1,828 in Geekbench 4’s single-core test and 6,278 in the multicore test. Short of the most opulent £600 handsets, the Honor 8Pro is up there with the best.

We experienced no performance issues whatsoever, and all the intensive Android games we played maintained smooth frame rates; indeed, the Honor 8Pro scored highly in the GFXBench Manhattan benchmark, with 33fps in the native resolution onscreen test and 42fps in the 1080p off-screen test.
The only big disappointment is battery life. Considering its sizable 4,000mAh battery, we expected better than the 11h 17m it managed in our video playback test. By comparison, the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge –which can be found for around the same price –lasted 18h 42m.

The Honor 8Pro has the same 12-megapixel f/2.2 rear camera as the regular Honor 8, including the laser autofocus and dual-tone LED flash. There’s a healthy selection of camera modes to choose from: photo, pro photo, video, pro video, monochrome, HDR, 3D creator, night shot, panorama, light painting, time-lapse, slow-mo, watermark, audio note and document scan.

Pro photo mode is perhaps the most useful, as it allows you to adjust the metering, ISO, shutter speed, EV, focus and white balance. Pro video also gives you the option to adjust the metering mode, EV, AF and white balance.

Even without tinkering, snaps are excellent. With good colors and details, and the ability to shoot in monochrome, the Honor 8Pro is a great device for photography, especially as it can handle low light. Images exhibit little noise, while color accuracy and exposure balance remain impressive.

LIGHTS OUT

The downside is a poor flash, which can result in some images looking dull and dark. Since low-light performance is so good without the flash, we’d suggest avoiding it entirely.

Video capture is decent as well. You can even record in 4K at 30fps, another improvement on the Honor 8, while Full HD footage gives a choice of 60fps and 30fps. You can also shoot slow-mo video at either Full HD/120fps or 720p/60fps, and edit which parts are shown slowed down.
Other than the battery life–and, depending on your tastes, EMUI – there’s very little to dislike about the Honor 8Pro. It has a blazingly fast processor, 6GB of RAM, a beautiful Quad HD display, a healthy 64GB of storage, dual-SIM or microSD capability and a great camera –all that, for £480, makes it a superb choice of phablet.

SPECIFICATIONS:

PROCESSOR - Octa-core 2.4GHz HiSilicon Kirin 960
SCREEN SIZE - 5.7in
SCREEN RESOLUTION - 2,560x1,440
REAR CAMERA - 12megapixels
STORAGE - 64GB
WIRELESS DATA - 4G
DIMENSIONS - 157x78x7mm
WEIGHT - 184g
OPERATING SYSTEM - Android7.0
WARRANTY – One year RTB

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Motorola Moto Z2 Play Review

New aspect ratios, curved displays, and iris scanners—manufacturers have spent the past six months doing just about everything to make their phones stand out from the crowd. The unlocked Moto Z2 Play, on the other hand, builds on a concept Motorola established last year: It has a unique design that works with Moto Mods, useful modular back panels that bring new functionality. It also has snappy performance and great battery life, and it’s compatible with all major U.S. carriers. In addition, unlike the Z Droid, it even has a headphone jack. That makes the Z2 Play a great phone for anyone who’s sold on the modular build. Otherwise, the ZTE Axon 7 gets you a bit more power for less money. A SLIM, SMOOTH, FAMILIAR DESIGN Available in black, blue, gold, and gray, the Moto Z2 Play is largely the same phone as the Moto Z Droid and Play Droid in terms of design. The svelte device is ringed by a band of metal along the sides, with a set of clicky volume buttons and a ridged power button on

Motorola Moto G5 Plus Review

For a year, the Motorola Moto G4 (Shopper 343) represented the pinnacle of budget smartphone design, which is why the Moto G5 (Shopper 353) was such a disappointment; it’s still a decent handset, but takes so many backwards steps that there’s no reason to choose it over last year’s model. However, the Moto G5 Plus –the larger phablet version – couldn’t be more different. Not only is it a far more accomplished device than its own predecessor, the Moto G4 Plus, but it easily warrants the £80 premium over the MotoG5, with a better camera, nicer looks and drastically faster performance. That price difference does mean the Moto G5 Plus sits in a different sector to the Moto G5 but, at £249, that sector is largely empty right now. Most rival phone manufacturers have deserted the mid- to low-price tier, previously occupied by such stalwarts as the Nexus 5X and the OnePlus 2, and have moved to higher or lower ground. So, although still a temptingly priced phone, the G5 Plus’s competition

Huawei P10 Review

VERDICT – This photographer’s companion is a powerful Android handset and worthy upgrade to the P9. The Leica-branded Huawei P9 (Shopper 342) was a pleasant surprise when it launched last year. Much of that was down to its dual rear cameras, which Huawei has wisely decided to carry over unchanged to the new P10. It also raises the issue of what’s actually new, especially since the P10 is pricier than the P9 was on release. The biggest difference lies in the P10’s improved physical appearance, which is uncannily iPhone 7-like in design. Huawei has tossed away the easily scratched all-metal silver back of the P9 in favor of a smooth, matte black rear that’s far easier on the hands (and pocket). THUMB AND GAMES The fingerprint sensor has also moved from the rear to the front, where it’s now integrated with the home button. We did prefer the sensor in the P9’s more index finger-friendly position, but since it has such extra abilities as swiping left or right to switch apps; it can at