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Leave a Review of the Honor 8X and Win Another One as a Christmas Gift!
Now is your chance to win a gift for someone for the upcoming holidays. Share your love of the Honor 8X by leaving a review of the phone in the comments below. Three lucky winners will be selected to receive another Honor 8X that they can share with a friend or family.
Rules:
One detailed review per person
Three Honor 8X prizes for random winners
Reviews should be a minimum of 150 words
Out of the total amount of reviews, the ones that fall on the 18%, 58%, and 98% markers will be the winners
Giveaway dates 12/11/18 - 12/24/18
Update: Winners are Shashank1320, oslo83, and Sukhi
Some of the original winners have been replaced due to cheating using multiple accounts.
We thank Honor for sponsoring this post. Our sponsors help us pay for the many costs associated with running XDA, including server costs, full time developers, news writers, and much more. While you might see sponsored content (which will always be labeled as such) alongside Portal content, the Portal team is in no way responsible for these posts. Sponsored content, advertising and XDA Depot are managed by a separate team entirely. XDA will never compromise its journalistic integrity by accepting money to write favorably about a company, or alter our opinions or views in any way. Our opinion cannot be bought.
I own Honor 8x and using it since last one month.
Device is gorgeous in terms of looks.
It is beast in terms of performance as I play PUBG daily no lags and frame drop.
RAM management is decent.
Network is great VOLTE works great and wifi too.
Now comes to main part which is important to all is CAMERA.
Rear camera is great but it can be more improved through OTA.
Front camera is great in detail capture but it looks weird when portrait mode on.
Edge detection can be improved in both rear and specially needed for front.
When two or more people there for selfie portrait shots looks rubbish.
Overall great device.
Improvement needed for Camera specially front and improve algorithm can be improved for edge detection via OTA. Also need to activate EIS for both camera.
I love my honor for various reasons
Pros:
1. 6.5-inch Display(Edge To Edge display)
2. Build Quality Design
3. Kirin 710(Is a Beast)
4. Battery Life
5. Camera(Night Mode)
This are the major pros of this device. For the price point, you can get a powered phone with a sleek design. Compare to all android skins Huawei skin is the lightest skin and the fastest.
And yes there are some cons also for this device as a review I should mention that also s here are the cons.
Cons:
1. EIS is not there
2. Type C
3. Front Camera is average.
So this are the cons of this device I just wanted to mention it.
As a whole, I love this device and at that price point, I would say it is 'Budget Killer'.
The Honor 8X has one of the largest displays we've seen so far on a Honor device, sporting a 6.5-inch Full HD+ IPS LCD (2340 x 1080) panel. There is a notch at the top of the display — as is becoming the norm — but it is narrow enough that it isn't annoying. Like the Honor 10, you get the option to hide the notch in the display settings.
The panel itself is quite decent, offering vibrant colors and great contrast levels. You get the usual features that are standard across all Honor devices — a blue light filter and ability to adjust the color temperature
— and there's also the option to reduce the resolution to 720p to conserve battery life.
It also offers a face unlock feature that works reliably in both well-lit and dark environments, and it's just as fast as using the fingerprint sensor.
There's the obvious AI-assisted feature that's now standard across all Honor phones, and you also get a Night Shot feature that lets you take better photos in low-light scenarios. Up front, there's a 16MP shooter with the usual slate of beauty effects and filters.
The Honor 8X has one of the largest displays we've seen so far on a Honor device, sporting a 6.5-inch Full HD+ IPS LCD (2340 x 1080) panel. There is a notch at the top of the display — as is becoming the norm — but it is narrow enough that it isn't annoying. Like the Honor 10, you get the option to hide the notch in the display settings.
The panel itself is quite decent, offering vibrant colors and great contrast levels. You get the usual features that are standard across all Honor devices — a blue light filter and ability to adjust the color temperature
— and there's also the option to reduce the resolution to 720p to conserve battery life.
It also offers a face unlock feature that works reliably in both well-lit and dark environments, and it's just as fast as using the fingerprint sensor.
There's the obvious AI-assisted feature that's now standard across all Honor phones, and you also get a Night Shot feature that lets you take better photos in low-light scenarios. Up front, there's a 16MP shooter with the usual slate of beauty effects and filters.
The Honor 8x is a budget phone with the feel of a flagship. It has many of the Features found on modern day flagships such as a Notch, good display, reasonable processor, latest OS and a few gimmick up it's sleeve, dual rear cameras and a single front camera. It's aimed at budget markets and provides an overall good experience. The prize isn't that high for the specs it offers.
The 8X has a Good screen. Full HD+ display, albeit it's a LCD it has great colours and although not the deep blacks of an OLED panel, colors are certainly good and you won't have any problem looking at it in the sunlight. The notch, while I personally am not a fan of it, the fact that I can hide it via Toggle in the settings and that real estate doesn't go to waste is amazing and a feature I wish other OEM would implement.
The audio-quality is also good but as with all Bottom Speakers it easily gets muffled if you hold it. Other than that it's loud and you won't have any problem listening to music. The availability of the head phone jock is also a novelty not many phones offer now-a-days.
One of the Key Features of the phone is the AI camera and it certainly live up. The phone takes excellent photos and post-processing is also Good. Front Camera is also good at taking photos and the Portrait mode on this phone, while nothing like the Pixel 3's, is nothing to laugh at. The camera can take excellent photos and they hardly feel like they are taken from a Mid-Range Phone. Video Recording is at 1080p at 60 FPS. Photo resolution is 20M. Two features of the camera that I liked are the portrait mode and the night shot. While they are nothing like the Portrait mode and night sight found on the Pixel 3, they are nothing to laugh at and can produce good photo. However the Master AI often produce over saturated Photos so I disable it.
The Performance of the phone is good. While you can't play Fortnite Mobile, you can easily play other games without lag like Asphalt 8/9 or the recently released Call of Duty. And if you like to play PUBG the in built GPU-Turbo is an excellent Optimization that increases the Performance and reduces battery usage. The UI is also smooth in day-to-day usage and I hardly found any Lag. App Opening is quick and phone has no problem keeping up. Even with several apps open in the back ground, the phone didn't lag.
However, after the good, also comes the bad and like every other Huawei/Honor phone out there the only thing I could find bad about this phone that really bugged me was the Software. EMUI is bad. Not just bad but terrible. It feels unpolished and for some many people, myself included it's a deal breaker. The software is the part that you use the most of a phone and a Bad software really breaks the experience. In my case, on EMUI 8, any app I had open in the background would be killed as soon as I left it. The excessive amount of pre installed apps is just annoying. And not to mention the HiCrap. The excess of Huawei apps that no one ises just end up taking space. The settings menu is a pain to navigate through. And there is no third party customization options.
Battery life is awesome. Phone can easily give a day+ of battery life. The fingerprint is also fast and secure and face unlock is a cherry on top.
I also have a personal problem with Huawei/Honor phones and that is the Bootloader Fiasco. But that's a whole other matter.
All in all, the 8X is a great phone and I have no problem recommending it to someone as long as you don't mind the software. And the locked Bootloader but that's for another day.
Review :
Design :
It has premium look with 91% STB and minimal chin which is undeniably impressive with its glossy textured glass back finish with its dazzling light reflecting properties, metal trim, notched display, and eye-catching looks all around.
Even though the phone is little big to hold in small hands its thin 7.8mm profile helps to compensate it.
The rear fingerprint scanner placement is perfect on a handset of this size, but the volume rocket is perhaps a little high up the phone to reach comfortably.
Display :
The Honor 8X sports a 6.5-inch LTPS LCD display with a 2340 x 1080 resolution, producing a density of 397 pixels per inch. Even given the large display size, the Full HD+ resolution appears plenty sharp enough.
It gives a great viewing experince when viewing videos and playing games on the FHD+ display.
If you are fan of small screens you can just enable one hand mode and use it with single hand, which is one of the most useful features of EMUI.
Hardware :
The hardware specifications for the Honor 8X hover somewhere between mid- and low-end. On the processing side, there’s a distinctly mid-range Kirin 710 SoC, which offers powerful Cortex-A73 CPU cores but a lower end Mali-G51 GPU.But combined together they give solid performance for any average user.The handset also includes a reasonable 4GB or 6GB of RAM and 64GB or 128GB of internal storage.
There’s just a single bottom-facing speaker on the Honor 8X. The top mounted speaker is only used for calls. The speaker sounds fairly decent and pumps out plenty of volume, but the mono presentation is a notable drawback.
On the plus side, the phone sticks with the tried and tested 3.5mm audio jack, so our existing headphones will work just fine. There’s also a dual SIM slot, microSD card port, along with NFC and Bluetooth 4.2 connectivity. The rear fingerprint scanner is highly responsive and face recognition is also very speedy.
Performance :
The inclusion of big power Cortex-A73 cores inside the Kirin 710 help elevates the phone above the feel of other low-cost handsets, offering consistently snappy performance across apps. Multitasking doesn’t pose any problems either.
The Mali-G51 MP4 GPU isn’t a high-performance gaming class component but it has been compensated with GPU Turbo which helps us to play games which require high specs ike PUBG or Fortnite.
Software :
The Honor 8X runs Android 8.1 Oreo skinned with EMUI 8.2 on top.
Earlier EMUI used to get a lot of criticism for its interface making a impression like iOS but from EMUI 8 its changed a lot and now its gives a more resemblance like AOSP when you use the corresponding themes.
Themes are great for EMUI and are easily customizable which provides a great user interface for all kind of users.
EMUI 8.2 includes a few extra tweaks. If the traditional navigation keys aren’t your thing, Honor provides the option to switch over to the single-key navigation.
The software’s motion controls are also rather handy, enabling features like raising the phone to your ear to automatically answer calls or flip the phone upside down to mute. App Lock and Filesafe also provide ways to keep bits of information secure behind your fingerprint.
HiTouch can be used to identify products on a page using Amazon Assistant. Just touch something on your display with two fingers at once to active it.
Battery Life :
With a 3,750mAh battery, the Honor 8X has no problem surviving a full day with even the most demanding user.
If for some reason you find yourself short of juice, the Honor 8X packs in two power saving modes.
The regular power saving mode limits background activity, reduces visual effects, and turns off email syncing to save on power.
The more extreme ultra power saving mode limits the phone to just a selection of apps to greatly extend battery life up to several days, which helped me to use my phone for two days with just 45% of charge when I traveled for a distant place without a feasibility to charge my device.
Camera :
There’s a familiar looking dual camera setup on the back of the Honor 8X. The primary sensor offers 20-megapixels of resolution with a f/1.8 aperture and Phase Detection Auto Focus. Video recording is capped at 1080p 60fps, Obviously there is no 4K recording option here considering its a budget device.
The 20-megapixel camera offers up plenty of detail in well-lit shots and I never had the trouble with finding the correct exposure.
The front-facing camera is a 16-megapixel affair with a f/2.0 aperture give good selfies and performs upto its mark, but there can be more improvement in the portrait mode of the camera.
AI Camera :
Like all latest Huawei/Honor Devices 8X camera also houses AI capabilities which gives good images when enabled.
It detects most of the scenes and tunes the camera accordingly to capture good shots.
Pros :
1. Stunning design uses max screen with a notch
2. Two-day battery life With 3,750mAh battery on board
3. 3.5mm headphone jack
4. Budget friendly with value for money.
5. Dual VOLTE which is he most requiring feature for Indian users
6. Dual sim support with dedicated slot for SD Card.
Cons:
1. It doesnt support Wifi 5G.
2. No EIS
3. Uses MicroUSB instead of Type-c (but can understand the decision as its a budget device)
4. Camera quality can be improved , mainly the front camera portrait mode on front camera just looks too wired.
5. Doesn't have option to set up multi user
Final Thoughts :
Compared to other budget range devices my vote goes for this device as its power packed with Kirin 710 it can handle most of the things thrown towards it by an average Joe.
The thing which attracted me most is its battery backup can hold up to two days on a normal usage and morethan one day on heavy usage.
Mostly importantly different color variants are eye catchers the Red version is so beautiful.
Build quality is good compared to many other devices.
Launched in September’18 and then making its debut in Indian market in October’18 during Honor fan fest in India, Honor 8X has sidelined almost every other player in this budget segment and is coming up with great reviews every now and then. Below is my personal review about Honor 8X. I am using this device for a week now and ready to give my initial impression about the phone.
Powerful Processor with GPU turbo- Initially I was not very sure about the new processor, coming from Kirin 970, but the phone has been doing really well in terms of performance and inhouse 12nm Kirin 710 is doing an amazing job under the hood with AI capabilities and comes with Android Oreo, EMUI 8.2 out of the box and GPU Turbo boost the graphical processing preserving the FPS and stability and at the same time reducing the power consumption. Kirin processors are known for this right?
Look and Build Quality- So when most of the OEMs does not focus much on the build quality and only adds bunch of feature in the phone, Honor has done a commendable job. Instead of cheaper and regular build quality, Honor has provided a flagship level quality and look to the device. I am in love with this design not recently but since the time of Honor 8 launch (2 years back). It looks expensive than it actually is with its grating effect glass body and superb build quality.
Display- With roughly around 91% screen to body ratio and 6.5-inch FHD+ display with 2340 x 1080 pixels resolution, display covers almost the entire front view making the device look stunning still manage to fit in the same phone size of a 5.5-inch phone, making for an easier to hold even with bigger size. Users who plays a lot of games or watch videos on their phone will definitely love the display and enjoy watching the content on nearly borderless display. Display looks vibrant and color reproduction are really good and allowing users to change the mode to vivid or natural colors which is even better.
Battery- With massive 3750 mAh battery and fully optimized EMUI 8.2, Kirin 710 and GPU turbo, battery does really well and last for over a day with moderate to heavy usage. Various inbuilt battery saving technologies are an added advantage here which preserves the juice for those critical hours. Even though, phones come with a massive 6.5 inch screen, I would say battery life is excellent on this phone and I could easily get 8 hours of Screen on time and over 1 day of battery backup.
Camera- Probably the USP of all Honor phones in any segment they gets launched. All performs to the expectation and 8X is not lacking behind. Dual AI Camera performs well and delivers more than you can imagine. Coupled with 20MP+2MP AI dual rear camera and 16MP front facing camera, you can take amazing picture and no need to carry an additional device specifically for clicking pictures as your smartphone is your best companion for the same. Honor has added the night mode directly without any need to navigate across options and settings. AI does make a difference and there is AI switch given which makes it easier to click pictures with or without as per user's need. Super Slow-motion video does really well and produces interesting and fun to watch videos. I have clicked few pictures and they looks awesome considering the price range.
Sound- Volume through earpiece is good and no challenges there and also the volume through the sound grill is loud enough for regular day to day usage. Certainly, better than my couple of other phones. There are various options available for headphone sound known as Histen Sound effect which can change the sound effect based on the mode you select or the type of headphone you are using, also you can enable/disable 3D sound effect and customize your equalizer. Initially there was some issue and when you speaker volume was more than 70% there were intermittent vibration during music, YouTube play but has been fixed by OTA.
Software- EMUI 8.2 on top of Android 8.1 is really optimized and phone doesn’t lag even with heavy usages. Game Assist, Party mode are added advantages for users who use such feature. Mine is global version so not much bloatware and there is VOLTE support for JIO, Vodafone (tested only these 2). Phone was received with JSN-L21C900 B120 version and got 3 updates within a week B125, B130 and B133 and most of the issue that were there in phone were fixed and no more issues with magazine unlock or the vibration on higher volume. EMUI 9.0 can hit the phone anytime and as I have tested with my other Honor phones, EMUI 9.0 really improve the responsiveness and fluidness by some amount compared to EMUI 8.0 or earlier versions.
Storage- Phone comes in 3 variants, 4/64, 6/64 and 6/128 GB versions. Mine is 4/64 variant and you get around 54.9 GB of free storage on first boot. As phone supports dual SIM+additional SD card support, you need not to worry about running of space and can use external card to store your media, music files.
Call quality and network- Call quality is just awesome; network signal reception is good. One of the advantage on Honor 8X is the dual sim and SD card slot unlike hybrid slot in many other phones pushing us to compromise on dual sim or expandable storage. Wi-Fi supports 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac bands and I would say the time to connect to a Wi-Fi and network speed is pretty well.
Apart from above great features, below are few additional stuffs which makes this phone great-
AI shopping and scene recognition
[*]Dual SIM with Dual VOLTE with dedicated slot for SD card.
[*]Face Unlock
[*]Fully optimize Smart EMUI 8.2
[*]Super Slow motion
[*]Super Night shot with AI and multi-frame stabilization
[*]Inbuilt storage up to 128 GB storage and triple card slot
[*]Full View Display with Nearly Border-less Design
[*]Widevine support
With so many eye catching features, Honor 8X definitely ticks all the boxes to be your first choice while you decide to buy a phone in this range. This phone is beautiful, delightful yet powerful and with the competitive price tag of 14,999, has created a buzz in the segment and has sidelined many competition to become a clear choice for many.
Starting my review with a thanks to "Honor & XDA" for bringing this opportunity to share our reviews on Honor 8X, Hearing reviews directly from the users, it's a best way to bring the best devices in the future!
Honor X-series smartphones - The X - Factor, For the past couple of years Honor has been a company that is growing constantly better with each release of their Honor phones.
Starting with Honor 6X(My first Honor device) to 8X, every year Honor bringing the best possible devices in terms of Design, Specifications, Eye catching color options etc.
So let me go through my experience with Honor 8X after being using it for almost 38 days,
SPECIFICATIONS
Honor 8X - (4GB/64GB or 6GB/64GB/128GB)
Color Options - There are a total of four available color options, including Black, Blue, Red and Pink.
Processor - Kirin 710 SOC
Graphic Processor - Mali-G51 MP4
Screen Size - 6.5 Full HD+ Notch
Camera - 20 MP + 2 MP Rear AI CAMERA & 16 MP Front
Battery - 3750 mAH Battery
Android & EMUI - 8.2 based on Android Oreo 8.1
DESIGN -
* Featuring a glossy textured glass back finish with its dazzling light reflecting properties, metal trim, notched display, and eye-catching looks all around, It's a flat one with very subtle 2.5D finish on the edge.The 91 percent screen to body ratio and minimal chin is undeniably impressive, giving the handset even more screen to work with.
* Gorilla Glass 3 will be keeping the display out of harm.
* Great Weight Balance.
* The bottom line is that Honor has still found a way to make it unique. And keep it simple, of course,the Honor 8X’s combination of metal and gradient glass looks and feels great. The trade-off, as always with glass.
AGAINST -
* The phone is somewhat slippery & more often you will find yourself using the device with two hands!
RATING - 4.8/5.0
DISPLAY -
* The Honor 8X features a 6.5" IPS LCD screen with 1,080 x 2,340 pixels - this makes for a pretty sharp picture with 396-ppi density will offer you reasonably accurate colors.
* Color looks accurate enough and well saturated on the new Honor phone, It is quite sharp and colours pop out, vivid and vibrant.
* The adaptive brightness is very consistent and you get a host of customisation for the display like colour temperature adjustment, resizing the font etc.
AGAINST -
* The phone will be fine in shady outdoor viewing, but visibility will struggling with reflections in direct bright sunlight.
RATING - 4.7/5.0
HARDWARE -
* The Honor 8X has all the necessities - an audio port, a tri-slot for two SIMs and a microSD, a second mic for noise-cancelling, and a microUSB port.
* The rear fingerprint scanner is very fast and reliable.
* Face recognition highly responsive as well.
AGAINST -
* Honor’s use of a micro USB port instead of a USB-C is the one hardware niggle that sticks out.
RATING - 4.4/5.0
BATTERY -
* The Honor 8X is powered by a large 3,750 mAh battery, The battery backup is excellent thanks to Kirin 710
* With a very heavy day of use, the Honor 8X isn’t a class leader, but it is very solid and a second day of full use will be on the cards for most of all.
* No sign of Overheating at all.
AGAINST -
* With 3750 mAh battery, it's odd that No Supercharging is on board.
* There is fast charging. The charger offers variable voltage. It’s not the fastest we’ve tried, but we’re still very glad we’re not left with a basic charger.
RATING - 4.5/5.0
SPEAKER -
* There is one speaker on the Honor 8X, and it's at the bottom. It's just good but not louder out there in the market considering the price point.
* With Histen Sound Effects & right headphones, it will be a great one for the occasional music playback session.
AGAINST -
* The sound is a bit shallow and not very rich, lacked depth.
* Even the Ringer volumes lacked the loudness in it.
RATING - 4.4/5.0
SOFTWARE -
* Android 8.1 has EMUI 8.2 on top not EMUI 9.0 Pie yet.
* The new v8.2 improves the Face Unlock and Gallery with machine learning.
* EMUI catches a lot of flak for deviating from a stock-like skin, but the software is perfectly functional and avoids any major bloat.
* Honor tools like the Game Suite, Mirror, Compass, and Themes apps.
* SoOn With EMUI 9 + Kirin 710, It will be a CakeWalk!
AGAINST -
* Still lacking in Timely updates
* THEMES -
* Ever since Google preventing the use of Custom Overlays, Themes Customization is not at its best compare to previous versions of EMUI 5/5.1, Even Though EMUI is heavily customizable but with latest Android OS, Themes not working as it was intended to, as a Theme developer am completely disappointed even the users also feeling the same, but still other devices allows customization, i hope Honor will take a look at this too.
RATING - 4.7/5.0
PERFORMANCE -
* The Kirin 710 processor is indeed a massive improvement over the Kirin 659 It's made on a 12nm process "Its efficiency already proven in the battery chapter".
* With Heavy usage, there is no heating or Overheating issues at all.
* The combo of Kirin 710 + Mali-G51 MP4 makes no lags, gives a tough competition to rivals.
RATING - 4.9/5.0
CAMERA -
* Honor’s big selling point with all of its recent phones are their AI camera capabilities, The 20-megapixel camera offers up plenty of detail in well-lit shots and never once was trouble with finding the correct exposure
* For the most natural shots, you’ll want to avoid using the ‘AI’ mode too much.
* The ultra-low light mode is the most interesting part, it does gives a better pictures but you really can use it handheld and you end up with some of the best low light photos seen in a phone at the price.
* The camera snaps good enough pictures during the day, and great at night.
* The selfies are quite nice, too
* Front camera has a 16MP sensor,Once you get the distance right, the level of detail is very good. Colors are faithfully represented, and dynamic range is good for a selfie camera., Beauty mode that smooths out your skin texture for a more flattering look.
AGAINST -
* Honor 8x has the great potential to produce great pictures but not this time, The so-called AI doesn't did well as it is doing in the likes of Honor 10, HonorView 10 etc.
* Second camera only has a crude 2MP sensor, it's for name sake to be frank. You got to be careful while using background blur effect or aperture mode. Even my previous devices Honor 7x, Honor 9 lite did well in edge detection.
* Camera Performance is inconsistent.
* Video Capturing is Limited to 1080p, No 4K support even the Kirin 710 Supports.
* No EIS.
RATING - 4.4/5.0
FIXES by OTA -
* Ringer volume loudness.
* Camera performance including AI - Optimization, Beauty mode, Wide-aperture & Depth mode needs to be improved.
* EIS update.
* 4K Video Support.
* Native Video Call support.
Hopefully with EMUI 9.0 just around the corner, these much needed updates will be fixed with it
EMUI 9.0 is one advanced upgrade - A huge advancement in the direction of simpler, more intuitive design, better productivity features, and AI-powered achievements
FINAL VERDICT -
* The Honor 8X is one very balanced smartphone on the cheap. Its bang for the buck isn't exactly on par with some Xiaomi and Realme offers, where those are available, but for the rest of the world - it deserves to be seriously considered.
* The Honor 8X isn't the most powerful smartphone in this price bracket, but its balance across the board is what really matters.
Bottom line, if you are looking for a handset that comes with elegant design, sharp and vivid display, good battery backup and decent audio quality, Honor 8X can be an ideal pick
Final RATING - 4.6/5.0
EXPECTATIONS in 2019 -
* Instead of using Kirin 710 across all devices in 2019, would be great if Honor can make use of latest Snapdragon processors as well.
* Bluetooth 5.0 or more, EIS Out of the box.
* At Least single device with Android One Program.
* No More 2MP for depth sensor alone, All we need is improved camera sensors at the back.
* USB-C Type, support for Fast charging already became usual in Mid-range smartphones but it's not case with Honor yet.
* Faster updates.
Being one of the world's top smartphone manufacturers, it will be really tough in the likes of Xiaomi & the latest entrant Realme in the year 2019! People would consider buying the smartphones only when the expectation is fulfilled, even though it costs 50-75 bucks more than the rivals.
Honor is definitely a company to keep your eye on. If you’ve never used an Honor phone before, you should consider one as your next device. They won’t let you down.
First of all let's start with the looks of the phone, It looks absolutely beautiful and stylish, when I hold it in my hand it feels like a top of the line premium device. The glass feels extremely smooth to the touch and although I like the looks of the phone I will most likely use a case on it since I tend to have sweaty hands.
Although It's nice to have such an elegant device for such an affordable price.
The beauty of this phone doesn't stop at the exterior, in fact it packs quite a punch on the inside with the highly powerful octa core kirin 710 with cores clocked up to 2.2 GHz! And it's also built using the highly energy efficient 12nm manufacturing process coupled with a beefy 3750mah battery you are guaranteed to easily achieve 2 days of battery life with regular usage so you don't have to worry about your phone dying in the middle of your day.
I also like to game sometimes, I've been playing pubg and asphalt 9 and some other graphically intensive games and the phone managed to run all of them without any frame drops or lag, also the phone rarely heats up and even when it does, it's after long sessions of graphically intensive applications.
The cameras are an absolute delight to use as well, both front and back cameras have everything a flagship device camera has and portrait mode looks stunning with really good edge detection.
I'll finish this review by saying that this phone is a really good bang for your buck and you won't ever regret buying it, it does everything you expect a flagship to do, somethings even better.
Great phone for a great price
The honor 8x is the successor to the popular honor 7x.
Software :
It runs huawei's emui 8.2 out of the box. Emui 8.2 definitely does have a bunch of extra features that you don't get on stock android, but if you Prefer stock android you probably won't enjoy emui too much as it is one of the more heavily skinned versions of Android. Emui 9 will probably be the phones last major Android update (not including security patches and minor feature additions). However if you like emui you are sure to enjoy the software experience of the phone.
Hardware :
In the hardware department it is in no way a reflection of the budget price tag. It has 6 gb of ram (can hold many background apps) and it uses the Hisilicon kirin 710 processor.
Screen: it has a 6.5 inch ips panel with the widely used notch design.it looks similar to many flagship.
Its resolution is 1080 X 2340.(1080 p full HD)
Battery:it has a 3750 mAh battery. It should easily last you a full day but from my personal use I still found my self charging it overnight. It should last you about a day and a half on average usage.
Camera: it has a dual lense system with on 20 mega pixel primary sensor and a 2 mp depth sensor. It has good photos but in my usage the portrait mode dosent seem to always work so well especially in low light despite the second sensor. However it has an option to record videos is slow motion upto 480fps (which is insane). The slefie camera is a 16 mega pixel sensor that shoots good photos but has the same issue with portrait mode in low light.
I have a few personal thoughts on the phone based on my usage that not everyone might experience.
1) flashing a rom to get stock android feel is much harder no as honor closed their bootloader unlock code service. However you can still get one at a huawei supplier in your area.
2)emui is feature packed and certainly has a few features I miss in stock but it just takes longer than I would. Like to get updated to the latest build of Android. Also only 1 major os update. Makes the phone feel outdated very quickly.
3)i personally am Loving the build quality of the phone. It feels really high end due to the glass design.
Finally I would say that it's a great phone that is for most people 100% worth the price. If you don't mind the software you are getting a phone that almost feels and runs like a flagship for less than half the price.
To the people who saying software is good or doesn't matter, I'd just like to say that software is half of the phone and the whole experience of the phone depends on the software. Example? Here's a simple one. Your phone has a bad camera. Just download a ported Google Camera for your device and compare the performance. I have a 6X. On stock EMUI 8 it was nothing short of terrible. The OS would kill any app as soon as I left it. The result? I'd miss notification. I wouldn't get a single notification untill I opened the app. EMUI is bloated. Don't get me wrong. There are several features in EMUI that I personally loved and miss in my Stock Android Custom ROM. Example is the ability to turn off the Hotspot after a set amount of data has been used and the navigation dock. But the other things are too irksome. Like I can't change the default launcher without it either crashing or me getting a notification every few hours to change back to default. Similarly I sideloaded a few APK's. Every time I turn on my device I was greeted with a screen prompting me to uninstall them. So in the end I flashed a Pie Custom ROM (AOSP Extended by @DarkJoker360 to be exact) and I'm loving it. I can customize and theme my phone with and without substratum. There are a ton of customization available and phone is smoother than it was on EMUI. So if you can, I'd definitely recommend you to take that route. You won't regret it. And speaking of EMUI it has very slow updates. So I have a bad experience with EMUI. Other than that I really love Huawei/Honor phones. They are cheap and good. Even my old 6X can play modern games fairly well.
Other than that is the small, small problem that Huawei no longer provides bootloader unlock codes and that's a deal breaker for me. Really bad choice.
@XDARoni can we get another limited Bootloader unlocking for XDA users? I really want to unlock the bootloader of my Honor 10
Honor has released a number of smartphones in 2018 — perhaps too many depending on who you ask — but they all aim to offer exceptional value and build quality that punches well above their price tag. The Honor 8X fits into the portfolio as a supersized phablet model priced at €249.
Somewhat confusingly, the Honor 8X doesn’t share too much in common with 2016’s Honor 8. There’s an all-new bezel-less design and a completely different set of internal components. While the sum of the changes produces some notable upgrades, the new handset sees a number of downgrades too. We’re here to find out if the 8X can successfully build on Honor’s legacy in the affordable handset market.
Honor 8X review notes: During this review, the Honor 8X was running beta software version JSN-L21 8.2.0.120, with EMUI 8.2.0 running on top of Android 8.1 Oreo.
The Honor 8X used in this review was provided to Android Authority by Honor.
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Design
The Honor 8X looks like the quintessential Honor smartphone, featuring a glossy textured glass back finish with its dazzling light reflecting properties, metal trim, notched display, and eye-catching looks all around. The 91 percent screen to body ratio and minimal chin is undeniably impressive, giving the handset even more screen to work with that Huawei’s flagship P20 Pro. It’s a great piece of tech to marvel at that rivals the look and feel of premium flagship handsets which cost significantly more.
However, the Honor 8X is a true behemoth. While there’s plenty of screen real estate, reaching across the panel is a stretch with one hand. Combined with the glass back and sharper edges than some other large handsets, the phone can be awkward to handle at times. The thin 7.8mm profile helps, but there’s no getting around that the Honor 8X feels like a very big phone. The rear fingerprint scanner placement is perfect on a handset of this size, but the volume rocket is perhaps a little high up the phone to reach comfortably.
The bottom line is that the Honor 8X’s combination of metal and gradient glass looks and feels great. The trade-off, as always with glass, is that the phone is somewhat slippery and that doesn’t help given the handset’s awkwardly bulky size.
The Honor 8X's design is simply stunning
Display
The Honor 8X sports a 6.5-inch LTPS LCD display with a 2340 x 1080 resolution, producing a density of 397 pixels per inch. Even given the large display size, the Full HD+ resolution appears plenty sharp enough. The panel’s colors also pop with the appropriate fervor, resulting in bright and vivid images.
Given the size of the display, you’ll want to switch into a smaller text or small view mode to really make the most of it. Honor’s default makes everything, from text to images and icons, appear far too large and it’s an odd choice for such a big phone. I’ve experienced similar problems with other Honor and Huawei phones, so this could just be a personal preference. Fortunately, it’s simple enough to change to the small option in the display settings menu.
If there’s one technical fault with the display it’s with blue reproduction, which outputs a much higher color error delta than green or red. This leads to a somewhat oversaturated looking panel when using the default “Vivid” setting, but it’s only really noticeable when comparing like for like on another smartphone. Peak brightness clocks in at 470 nits, which is about average for a cost-effective handset. The phone will be fine in shady outdoor viewing, but visibility will struggling with reflections in direct bright sunlight.
Hardware
While the display and design aesthetics appear premium, the hardware specifications for the Honor 8X hover somewhere between mid- and low-end. On the processing side, there’s a distinctly mid-range Kirin 710 SoC, which offers powerful Cortex-A73 CPU cores but a lower end Mali-G51 GPU. It’s certainly not as exciting as the Pocophone F1’s Snapdragon 845 package. The handset also includes a reasonable 4GB or 6GB of RAM and 64GB or 128GB of internal storage, depending on the region of purchase.
The handset’s microUSB connector with USB 2.0 data speeds feels rather more dated. It’s an even more mind-boggling decision given that the much older Honor 8 supported USB Type-C two years ago. This probably won’t play well in global markets that are moving on from the old connector. Fast charging capabilities are included, but we’re capped at 5V/2A rather than the 5V/4A SuperCharge option that ships with more expensive Huawei phones.
There’s just a single bottom-facing speaker on the Honor 8X. The top mounted speaker is only used for calls. The speaker sounds fairly decent and pumps out plenty of volume, but the mono presentation is a notable drawback.
On the plus side, the phone sticks with the tried and tested 3.5mm audio jack, so your existing headphones will work just fine. There’s also a dual SIM slot, microSD card port, along with NFC and Bluetooth 4.2 connectivity. The rear fingerprint scanner is highly responsive and face recognition is also very speedy, although not quite as fast as the higher-end P20 Pro.
Performance
The Honor 8X is a snappy little device when it comes to zipping in and out of applications. The inclusion of big power Cortex-A73 cores inside the Kirin 710 help elevates the phone above the feel of other low-cost handsets, offering consistently snappy performance across apps. Multitasking doesn’t pose any problems either, I never noticed the phone miss a step the whole time.
However, the phone isn’t quite up to scratch with 3D gaming performance. The Mali-G51 MP4 GPU isn’t a high-performance gaming class component and this is definitely the phone’s weakest area in the performance category. Honor does attempt to address this with its GPU Turbo technology, but it’s difficult to tell how much of an impact this has. Overall, you can still enjoy demanding games like PUBG or Fortnite — just turn down the graphics settings a notch and be prepared for a 30fps rather than 60fps performance target.
The Kirin 970 flies through apps, handling everything you can throw at it
Software
The Honor 8X runs Android 8.1 Oreo skinned with EMUI 8.2 on top. There isn’t much in the way of additional software installed out of the box, save for a selection of Honor tools like the Game Suite, Mirror, Compass, and Themes apps. Google’s apps make up the bulk of the pre-installed software.
The colorful icons and white UI elements can’t help but invoke Apple’s iOS, as does the lack of an app drawer by default. Fortunately, EMUI offers options for the app drawer, notch toggle, View Mode sizes, and text sizes under the display settings to tweak the appearance more to your tastes.
EMUI catches a lot of flak for deviating from a stock-like skin, but the software is perfectly functional and avoids any major bloat. A quick swipe down on the home screen takes you to recommended apps and allow you to search through your contacts and messages. Google Assistant functionality is located on the left on the home screen or via a long press of the home button. Apart from the deep maze of settings that’s about all there is to EMUI’s home screen.
EMUI 8.2 includes a few extra tweaks. If the traditional navigation keys aren’t your thing, Honor provides the option to switch over to the single-key navigation. It’s not unlike Google’s “pill” in Android 9.0 Pie, where you swipe the bar to perform back, home, and recent task actions.
HiTouch can be used to identify products on a page using Amazon Assistant. Just touch something on your display with two fingers at once to active it. The software’s motion controls are also rather handy, enabling features like raising the phone to your ear to automatically answer calls or flip the phone upside down to mute. App Lock and Filesafe also provide ways to keep bits of information secure behind your fingerprint.
Battery life
With a 3,750mAh battery, the Honor 8X has no problem surviving a full day with even the most demanding user. A second day of full use will be on the cards for most, although taking lots of pictures and gaming will knock a couple or so hours off the total on time. Lighter users could well extend usage well into a third day, as was the case when I only used the phone for some web browsing and music streaming.
If for some reason you find yourself short of juice, the Honor 8X packs in two power saving modes. The regular power saving mode limits background activity, reduces visual effects, and turns off email syncing to save on power. The more extreme ultra power saving mode limits the phone to just a selection of apps to greatly extend battery life up to several days.
The Honor 8X is the first phone I've owned to reach a third day of use since my Nokia 3310
Camera
There’s a familiar looking dual camera setup on the back of the Honor 8X. The primary sensor offers 20-megapixels of resolution with a f/1.8 aperture and Phase Detection Auto Focus. Video recording is capped at 1080p 60fps, so there’s no 4K recording option here.
The 20-megapixel camera offers up plenty of detail in well-lit shots and never once was trouble with finding the correct exposure. However, the Honor 8X’s processing can oversaturate colors some of the time, or at least that’s how it looks on the phone’s vivid display. Images mostly pop with vibrant colors which will look great on social media, but there’s a denoise speckling effect covering most of the pictures which takes the sheen off once you zoom in.
Honor’s big selling point with all of its recent phones are their AI camera capabilities. The Honor 8X recognizes 22 different scenarios in which it can apply custom exposure and color corrections. However, most of the results I saw simply involved boosting the color saturation even further, resulting in some almost cartoonish images. I ended up ignoring the mode.
Honor 8X food AI ONHonor 8X food AI OFF Honor 8X food AI ON
Honor 8X food AI OFF
Honor 8X sunset AI ONHonor 8X sunset AI OFF Honor 8X sunset AI ON
Honor 8X sunset AI OFF
As is often the case, low light performance is a weak spot for the Honor 8X. Noise creeps in quickly even in well-exposed images, resulting in smudged shadowy areas rather than crisp blacks. The whole situation is worsened by the lack of image stabilization, making even quick snaps likely to come out blurry let alone ones taken at night. The camera’s Night Mode patches over this issue, providing that you can stand still for anywhere between 4 and 20 seconds to capture the required exposures.
The secondary camera is used entirely for depth calculation, enabling re-adjustable aperture and bokeh after taking the picture. This second sensor has just a 2-megapixel resolution. The bokeh post processing looks fairly decent, but close examination often reveals missed areas of the image where the edge detection algorithm hasn’t quite separated the back and foreground correctly. This might be due to the limited resolution of the secondary depth sensor, and either way the technology is a bit hit and miss.
Honor 8X camera Night ModeHonor 8X camera low light Honor 8X camera Night Mode
Honor 8X camera low light
Honor 8X camera aperture closeHonor 8X camera aperture mode far Honor 8X camera aperture close
Honor 8X camera aperture mode far
The front-facing camera is a 16-megapixel affair with a f/2.0 aperture. Exposure can be more of a problem here, as backgrounds often appear overblown even without a direct light source. Detail is reasonable enough in good lighting, but the camera quickly deteriorates into a noisy blur if you lose sunlight. If I hadn’t read the spec sheet, I wouldn’t have believed these were 16MP shots.
While the rest of the phone punches above its price tag, the inconsistent camera experience, unfortunately, brings the Honor 8X back down to earth with a thud.
Honor 8X Specs
Honor 8X
Display
6.5 inches
2,340 x 1,080
19.5:9 notched display
91% screen-to-body ratio
Processor
HiSilicon Kirin 710
Octa-Core (4 x Cortex-A73 2.2 GHz + 4 x Cortex-A53 1.7 GHz)
GPU
Mali-G51 MP4
RAM
4GB or 6GB
Storage
64GB or 128GB
Battery
3,750mAh
Cameras
Rear dual cameras:
20MP (f/1.8 aperture) + 2 MP
Single front camera:
16MP (f/2.0 aperture)
Software
Android 8.1 Oreo
Skinned with EMUI 8.2
Connectivity
WiFi 802.11 ac (2.4 and 5GHz)
Bluetooth 5
GPS
GLONASS
Network
900MHz, 1800MHz, 800MHz, 2GHz
Bands 38, 39, 40, 41 (2555-2575 MHZ, 2575-2635 MHZ, 2635-2655 MHZ)
Band 1, Band 3, 1.9 GHz, I, VIII
Ports
microUSB
3.5mm headphone jack
SIM
Dual nano SIM
Dimensions
160.4 x 76.6 x 7.8mm
Weight
175g
Colors
Black, Blue, Red, Purple
Image Gallery
Honor 8X review:
The Honor 8X is a tale of some quite remarkable accomplishments. At first, I thought the handset’s giant size would be the dividing factor, but the phone’s thin profile helps to minimize this issue enough that I eventually became accustomed to it.
The design is undeniably premium and unique enough that the phone is sure to stand out in a crowd. Performance, battery life, and storage options also feel a cut above your typical mid-tier smartphone. Honor has most of the major boxes checked off with the 8X.
However, the camera performance and dated hardware choices, like the microUSB port and single bottom-firing speaker, detract from an otherwise superb experience. It’s never possible to have it all at this price point, and whether the Honor 8X is for you will boil down to whether or not these issues impact how you use your handsets. Photography enthusiasts might want to give this AI camera a miss.
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With its rock solid performance, superb camera and glass build, the Honor 8X is great way to get a phone that looks and feels expensive but does not cost much. The Honor 8X is the kind of phone you might buy if you want one that looks different with all the latest design cues, but don’t wanna spend a grand. The looks are similar to some of the most expensive phones in the world, but is a quarter the price.
Honor 8x achieves a very high screen-to-body ratio along with classy looks. No phone model to date has offered such an all-screen look at this price.
With my average to heavy usage, including several hours of audio streaming, a couple of hours of intermittent browsing and about 30 minutes of YouTube streams, the Honor 8X still made it to the night. One word, Simply Amazing !
Camera's aren't bad either. if not the best compared to Pixel's but much more than value for money.
Excellent value, a great day-to-day experience along with out of the world battery life is my recommendation for someone who might be looking forward to own this beast.
Honor 8X is powered by Kirin 710 which is a capable chip. It can fit for user of any group. Honor have been giving devices with value for money unlike some other companies and this device is no exception. The device runs on EMUI 8.2 with android 8.1 and it will likely receive pie update also if we look past record of honor devices. The device comes with expandable storage so you will not have to face low storage issues. The phone has a 3750 mAh battery which should not let you down in in battery section. The rear camera setup is 20+2 MP which is capable of shooting excellent shots and front camera setup consists a single 12 MP camera. It has every features that a modern smartphones are expected to have like fringerprint reader. NFC, USB OTG and many more. The screen of the device is protected by Gorilla Glass 3. But the phone lacks USB 3.0 which is the only downside that I can see.
In my opinion the device deserves a 9/10 .
Huawei Honor 8X is a decent device that comes all the essential hardware as well appropriate software for a balanced device for use as a daily driver and gaming. It packs different 4 and 6 gigs of ram as well as a powerful 710 kirin processor. To be honest it could be the best device in the segment of 10k to 15k android devices.
Specs:
1. It has an Octa core 2.2ghz kirin 710 processor.
2. 4-6 gigs of ram with 64 and 128 gb storage respectively.
3. 6.5 inch screen with FHD display.
4. 20 MP + 2MP rear camera and 16 MP front camera shot.
5. It comes with android Oreo 8.1.0.
Talking about the specs the phone is fully packed with performance hardware and solid outer build but the thing that comes to decieve the performance of the device according to me is the EMUI software. The software tends to be bloatware free and fast, but the long time run leads the device software to lag and not using the hardware to its full potential. Also the camera performance seems to be good on the hardware side but the software does a very poor job on enhancing the picture. The AI feature as the company suggests to be enhancing the photos, from my opinion it makes it loo a little bit on the Artificial side. The final verdict tends to be on the positive side as I have an HONOR device in my family and it tends to do a good job to be used as a daily driver and clicking some great pictures. For the good side i suggest people to buy this phone for its powerful hardware and design. Also keep in mind the it's a phone that could be made great by some XDA stuff , U know that better than me <><>.
Honor 8X was my upgrade from my older Honor 6X (still young with EMUI 8) The phone totally amazed me..I was amazed by its speed..the app openings and the overall speed and perfomance made me wonderstruck.. In no time I realized the capacity of a Kirin 710 chipset. It was first time I was experiencing such a fast phone in that price segment.
The design of the phone is beatiful..beautifully crafted with overall perfection..the glossy dual tone finish made me feel the phone premium in my hands...the premium phone in that segment..with minimal borders all around and smaller bottom chin, the phone with large 6.5 inch screen hold good in my one hand.
The most Interesting thing I found in the phone was its processor..such a power efficient processor combined with feature packed emui 8.2 with a lot of power saving options, gave me a screen on time of around 8hrs on such a large screen..Display is awesome with good colors..The 3,750 mAh battery could easily last for around 2 days in a single charge.
The camera was awesome.. I loved the natural bokeh effect the
f 1.8 lens creates when I took macro shots..the 20 mp camera is the best one..also the 16 mp front camera could catch almost all the details and gave smooth selfies.
The dual sim slot combined with a dedicated sd card slot helped me a lot as I could expand the storage as large as I like..No limitations like earlier honor phones having hybrid slot..
The face recogition was next thing that made me wonder..it is so fast and unlocked the screen within a short time.even when there was no light, it could recognize my face by adjusting the screen brightness level..
Although am not a gamer, I decided to test the gaming capacity..and tested the asphalt 9, it was pretty smooth and I didnot notice any lag while gaming and no serious battery drains...and its all about the magical combination of Kirin 710 and EMUI 8.2..
Overall, I loved the phone and I could say "its the most beautiful, powerful and efficient phone I have used in this segment". Great value for money.
I fallen in love with this phone.Awesome creation by Honor
Quick overview of Honor 8X :
6.5 inch Borderless Fullview display
Colorful Texture Back
GPU TURBO
20MP + 2MP AI Camera
16MP Selfie camera
3750 mAh Battery
Android Oreo 8.1 with EMUI 8.2
Kirin 710
FullView Display with Nearly Borderless Design
With incredible screen-to-body ratio of 91% , The display occupies nearly the entire front of the phone. I simply love the beautiful 6.5inch screen with awesome viewing angle and watching videos is breeze.
Glass Body with Visual Grating Effect
With Two visual effects and 15 layers of rich reflective craftsmanship on the same glass back as left border: complex intertwined and grained texture On the right border: classic, unique pattern effect of Honor flagship phones
Infact, in my usage of few days, atleast 10 people asked me about this Phone's unique design.
Kirin 710 Powerful Chipset with GPU Turbo
With a 12nm Cortex-A73 generation-based SoC and a Mali G51 GPU & GPU Turbo boosts efficiency in graphics processing with full FPS and FPS stability for gaming, while still reducing power consumption. I have played Asphalt 9 and PUBG and both works soo smooth on this device.
3750mAh Enhanced Battery Life
Intelligent battery save system, ensures you durable user experience and EMUI 8.2 provides a seamless experience for users with a fully optimizing system. Also, this supports full Intuitive Swipe Gesture Navigation which also increases full viewing
20MP AI Camera, Performing More Than You Can Imagine & 16MP Front Camera, Enabling High Quality Selfies
Rear : AI multi-scene recognition can identify 22 different categories of objects in images and 500 scenarios in real-time. (Samples below)
Front : With an enhanced ISO and supports 4-in-1 light fusion and multi-frame image processing to create quality and beautified selfies with bokeh effects.
Using Honor 8X since 3 weeks now so probably right time to give a review based on personal usage. Seeing many reviews but not sure if they are even using 8X or just posting the review here because a review is incomplete without pictures . I am a user of Honor 5C, Honor 8 and Honor 8X so I have used EMUI 4, EMUI 5 and EMUI 8 and I am loving it as usual. This review is based on the 4+64 GB Indian Version of phone.
Lets start the review from the priority perspective. I will avoid using the specification, that’s available everywhere.
I would say Honor 8X truly justifies the tag line associated- Beyond Limits.
Camera- as usual, Honor never fails to impress me with their camera and dual rear AI cameras are doing the full justice to its reputation. My earlier Honor 8 had dual 12 MP cameras but may be latest technology, AI algorithm, EMUI 8.2, Kirin 710 or whatever is behind the scene is making a difference here. The back 20+2MP AI camera is really working as per expectation and the price range and the front 16 MP selfie camera does well.
Build quality and design- As I upgraded my phone from Honor 8 to Honor 8X now, I am used to the glass back design and I just love this one from Honor. I did not used the back cover on my Honor 8 for more than a year as it feels very premium, same goes with Honor 8X but certain advantages like nearly borderless design, a premium solid back glass, AI logo. It doesn’t feel that you are holding a mid-range phone in your palm and you can flaunt it anytime anywhere.
Display- I would start with a con here. Only thing I must say is the bigger display for someone with smaller palm to hold this properly or operate in one hand. I do not see any issue for me as I can manage handling the phone with both the hands. Display looks crisp and vibrant and color reproduction is very good. In fact, and but obvious, better than my Honor 8. This being the IPS display you may see inferior to AMOLED but you will not complaint considering the quality of display, in fact I love it. With a smaller notch and almost full screen, it feel fun. I enjoy watching YouTube videos, I watch almost 3-4 hours per day and I really enjoy the same on my Honor 8X very much.
Processor and Memory- Kirin 710 is new processor from Honor or Huawei but is doing very good job. Couple with 4 GB or 6 GB RAM (mine is 4 GB), phone is performing very well and I do not find any lag or any delay in accessing apps, playing games like Asphalt 8/9, Subway surfer, Temple run/run 2 and many more. Switching between apps doesn’t feel any delay. Kirin 710 is performing well and 4GB is sufficient in my guess for smart phone or may be I could have invested 2K more and bought 6GB RAM model but I do not regret as phone is performing well and doing the task I demand for. On storage, mine is 64 GB which is sufficient, but the best part is I can use my Samsung class 10 64 GB memory card which makes the storage upto 128 and use my both Jio SIM at the same time so data and VOLTE calls on both the SIMs and SD card at the same time. Only 54 GB from 64 GB of internal storage is available rest all is used by System. If needed, you can further expand the storage with 128 GB or more of memory card. I store all my media file in hard disk so not an issue and 128 GB is good for me. I was missing this SD card+dual sim support on my Honor 8 badly and had to compromise on SD card and need to insert only when needed.
Battery- Battery is really amazing this phone. Only let down from my previous Honor 8 was the battery which was running out of juice after full day of use but this 3750 mAh battery with optimized OS is performing well and I am getting easily more than 1 day of battery usage. I charge my phone every morning before moving out and when back home in late evening, I still have 30-40% left which is good considering the other phone which dies out in full day. This extra battery allows me to watch YouTube/hotstar videos, play a little bit of gaming in night without bothering too much to connect to power source so battery is another good feature after camera and I am really in love with my phone now.
Call quality is good on this phone or may be I am using VOLTE so that makes a difference as well. Haven’t had the issue with loudness or quality as HD calling is good enough and doing good.
Sound- better than my earlier Honor 5C or Honor 8 but may be I think this could have been improved or may be a software update can fix. there are few enhancement like histen and equalizers which really works fine. I dont hear music much but yes they are very much handy in watching videos. I love the equalizer settings, I was missing this in my Honor 8.
Light mode- Another good option is direct option to get night shot as it was missing in my Honor 8 and I had to go to more and then light option.
EMUI 8/Android 8 (software) - I did not upgraded my Honor 8 to EMUI 8 as EMUI 7 was doing good for me but after using EMUI 8 on Honor 8X, I think I can surely upgrade to EMUI 8 on Honor 8. Got one update also. I have sued earlier EMUI so not challenge for me. I love the EMUI and inbuilt features like call blocking, spam detection, phone manager, info message VS actual message, battery modes etc.
Super Slow motion- this is another good option given and you can change the resolution as well for the video. anything compromised on camera department was fulfilled by this and this really fun. I haev used the super slow motion and videos are really fun to watch
Face unlock- Not a fan of it as anytime you pick your phone will try to unlock your phone with face but really a good feature to use and flaunt if you want. I enrolled few times but deleted all the time as fingerprint is working good.
Verdit/Conclusion-With so many upgrades over my earlier phones, if I compare with my earlier Honor phones 5C and 8 and not to any earlier versions of X series, I am really in love with this phone and I will definitely recommend this to my friends and family members and I wish I win one so that I can gift one to my family member. A must go phone in this price and I am very happy with it. Way to go Honor and thanks for considering every budget segment while releasing your phones.
All the very best for 2019
My favourite phone of 2018 is the one and only Honor 8X
Design and Display
Huawei’s Honor has come up with a massive design overhaul with the new 8X when compared to its predecessor. Gone are the big bezels on the front, the new 8X boasts a massive 6.5-inch Full HD+ IPS notched display with a new 19.5:9 ratio that shares a screen-to-body-ratio of 91% – thanks to the 2.5D curved glass screen. Since the notched display is such a norm in 2018, the Honor had done a great job by implementing the enormous screen which makes the notch almost negligible. Though the notch appears to be puny, it still packs a front facing camera, the speaker grill, and the essential sensors. Coming to the display, it certainly feels edge-to-edge, and the viewing angles of this massive display are great, images look sharp and bright with vivid colors popping out. We haven’t had any issues in handling the massive display in broad sunlight as well. The Honor 8X is an excellent device for binge-watching with its vibrant big screen, and the wider viewing angles are a bliss.
On the rear, the Honor 8X boasts a glass build with two visual effects in the same Blue finish, that appears to be two-tone in certain reflections but still looks visually appealing. The back also boasts dual camera setup and an LED flash along with the typical Honor branding. The device also retains the fingerprint sensor at the rear as its predecessor. This two-tone color body phone also equips the headphone jack at the bottom alongside the speaker grill.All-in-all the Honor 8X’s metal and glass design allures you with its extremely slim form factor and its large screen-to-body ratio which essentially feels more than premium for its mid-range price segment.
Hardware and Performance
Coming to the most anticipated part of this device, how does the Honor 8X perform? Unlike, the Honor Play that released earlier this year which, runs on a Kirin 970 SoC, the new Honor 8X comes with a 12nm Kirin 710 Soc. The new Kirin 710 is in direct competition to the Qualcomm SD 660, which is one of the powerful SoC for the mid-range segment. This Kirin 710 SoC with 64-bit architecture, comprises of 4x ARM Cortex-A73 @ 2.2GHz and 4x ARM Cortex-A53 @ 1.7GHz CPU and an ARM Mali G51 MP 4 GPU. Furthermore, the device comes with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of onboard storage. This Kirin SoC paired with the provided RAM helps the Honor 8X run consistently, and we haven’t witnessed any lags while multitasking to gaming.
For a smoother gaming experience, the Honor 8X bundles GPU Turbo optimization, this does not mean that it boosts up the frame-rates, but it certainly helps in optimizing battery in the background while gaming and helps you smoother the gaming experience. In our testing, the predominant games such as PUBG and Asphalt 9 ran sleekly on the Honor 8X without any jitter or screen lag.
On the software front, the Honor 8X ships with Android 8.1 Oreo out-of-the-box with Huawei’s EMUI 8.2 OS, which had been refined since the new 8.2 update. However, the lack of app drawer by default is amiss, and the appearance of app icons certainly look clunky. There are some pre-installed stock apps, and then there are few outdated games, which the UI asks us to install while setting up the phone. If you are a Google’s native app lover, you can easily hide these EMUI’s native apps. On the whole, the Android Oreo paired with refined EMUI gives you a smoother experience and the Honor 8X can easily be considered as a daily driver for handling social media apps and messaging apps without any second thoughts or whatsoever.
Lastly, the Honor 8X comes with a mono speaker instead of a stereo; however, it has a fair and decent quality which is sufficient for video watching and gaming. For authentication, as stated earlier, the device features a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor and also has a Face Unlock feature that works quite fast utilizing the front camera. The 8X also features NFC and supports third-party apps for payments as well
Camera
While the Huawei has come up with the dual cameras on its P20 Pro, the company’s sub-brand Honor is in a spree of hosting dual cameras set up on its all smartphone line-up regardless of the price segment. And, the company’s latest offering the Honor 8X is no exception, it rocks a 20MP primary camera sensor along with the 2MP depth camera sensor with an aperture of f/1.8. Adding to this, the 8X also has an added AI feature along with portrait modes. While the primary 20MP camera does all the action, the secondary 2MP camera doesn’t add any new mode like a telephoto lens or an ultra-wide lens, but it does indeed help in capturing depth control while capturing a portrait image. The dual cameras also feature a phase detection autofocus system and an LED flash
By all means, shots taken on the primary camera does appear good, the images captured are pretty sharp and vibrant covering right amount of details – thanks to the additional effect of the AI mode, which when enabled recognizes the photo scene while capturing and helps in getting more color punchy images/photos. However, if you are that person who prefers to capture more natural lighted images without oversaturated colors, we would recommend disabling the AI mode.
The AI mode additionally features AI beauty effect that can adjust or retouch images along with multi-scene recognition, which claims to identify 22 different categories of objects in images in various scenarios.There’s also an ultra-low light mode for the primary camera when enabled, the camera stitches together a series of shots and this stitching of multiple shots results in images looking much sharper rather than the pictures took with this mode disabled.
As the budget of the Honor 8X is constrained, the primary camera can only record upto 1080p up to 60fps. While the primary camera lacks OIS, it does have super-slow-motion video recording, where a user can film short videos at 16x slow-motion mode at 480fps.
On the front, the Honor 8X features a 16MP selfie camera sensor with a f/2.0 aperture alongside HDR capabilities and video recording upto 1080p at 30 frames per second. The level of detail on the images are quite good despite that, the colors on the image occasionally feel washed out.
There’s also a portrait mode paired up with the beauty mode as well. The former mode is a software feature which creates a fake bokeh effect that can be disabled at any time. There’s also an additional feature for the front-facing camera that uses AI algorithms for portrait selfies that eventually offers four different studio level portraits.
Battery
To power up the massive 6.5-inch display, Honor has armed the Honor 8X with a 3,750mAh battery. On a moderate day-to-day use, the Honor 8X can easily get through a day with constant messaging apps and social media apps as well as a tad bit of gaming and video watching as well.:laugh:
To power-up the battery quickly, there’s a suitable 5V/2A adapter which does help in fast charging. However, the micro USB charging is quite dated in 2018.
Verdict
If you are looking for a device that looks and feels expensive and also should perform the regular day-to-day tasks with the least compromises, then the Honor 8X is the way to go. Specifically, in this mid-range price segment – this large display certainly matters when compared to the contemporaries, along with the combination of Kirin 710 SoC and added GPU turbo optimization surely helps the Honor 8X to excel with its offering. Aside from the micro USB charging, the cameras, AI benefits, overall slim and the trendy notch design add up to the Honor 8X to make it a perfect value for money. As for the value of money, the new Honor 8X starts at Rs 14,990. This undoubtedly is the new choice I would recommend you to get amongst the lot.