Honor 8 Review – Huawei’s e-brand smartphone for most ages

Introduction & Hardware Overview

Introduction & Hardware Overview

One thing, anyone may understand easily about Huawei, is that the company has different branding categories to target different market demands. Mate-series – the high-end smartphone with larger screen, P-series – the high-end mainstream smartphone with photography skills, Honor – a mixture of high-end, mid-range and lower-end features targeting most from millennials. Huawei has other smartphone ranges for mid-range, budget and lower-end markets.

Let’s not go so beyond the subject – as we are talking about Huawei Honor 8 here which you can directly compare to the company’s high-end Huawei P9. Technically and according to prices Huawei P9 can be considered as lower high-end smartphone and Honor 8 as an higher mid-range smartphone where most of the features are similar in both devices. Honor 8 touches the price tag just a little bit down the Huawei P9’s.

The company launched Huawei Honor 8 in Pakistan early in October for PKR. 48,499/- while The P9 was initially launched for 54k which is now selling around for the similar price as of Honor 8. But the only option in P9 was 3GB RAM with 32GB storage.

Update: Huawei has cut down prices for Honor series where Honor 8 is now costing only $350 via hihonor.com. Read more in the final remarks page after review.

Hopefully, this review will make you decide which one to choose if you are hard-stuck with only these two options. If there is any third option, it might be an easy job to leave both of these and go for the other – we’ll see later if there is any contender with the similar price.

Before we go any further, just have a little clue about Huawei Honor 8 to build interest in reading.

PROS CONS
Pleasing and Impressive Design
Nice camera for still photos
Nice Performance
Better Battery Timing
Fast Fingerprint Scanner
No 4K video recording
Over heated with camera usage
EMUI might not impress everyone
Update: Overpriced Now

 

While you can certainly pick the Honor 8 for its boosted RAM and doubled the storage option, however P9 has some edge with a little improved processor, better display with Gorilla glass protection, in fact better handling (why we’ll see below), lighter in weight, slimmer than Honor 8 and most importantly the P9’s camera is on par with its Leica optics even though both have similar image sensors.

The variant of P9 that you will get for the similar price also doesn’t feature near field communication (NFC) which is present in Honor 8 and for fun, you get IR blaster in Huawei Honor 8 to remotely control infrared supported devices.

Frankly, both of the phones have a brilliant design to fall for but I personally would prefer to have P9 instead as Honor 8 seems to be over smooth that you can not put it somewhere even a little sloppy. Second, the shiny glass on the back is too attractive but as prone to finger prints.

Features Specifications

Checkout the side by side specifications of Honor 8 and Huawei P9. You can also checkout the review of Huawei P9.

Huawei Honor 8 Huawei P9
Model Huawei FRD-L19 Huawei EVA-L19 / EVA-L29
OS / Software Android 6.0 / Emotion UI 4.1 Android 6.0 / Emotion UI 4.1
SoC
CPU
GPU
HiSilicon Kirin 950
4x Cortex-A72 2.3GHz + 4x Cortex-A53 1.8GHz
Mali-T880MP4 clocked at 900MHz
HiSilicon Kirin 955
4x Cortex-A72 2.5GHz + 4x Cortex-A53 1.8GHz
Mali-T880MP4 clocked at 900MHz
RAM 3GB / 4GB LPDDR4 3GB / 4GB LPDDR3
NAND 32GB / 64GB + microSD 32GB / 64GB + microSD
Display 5.2-inch, LTPS IPS Display, 1920×1080, ~423ppi
Screen-to-body ratio: ~72.5%
5.2-inch, IPS-NEO LCD, 1920×1080, ~423ppi
Screen-to-body ratio: ~73%
Gorilla Glass Protection
Dimensions 145.5 x 71.0 x 7.45 mm
153 grams
145.0 x 70.9 x 6.95 mm
144 grams
SIM Size 2x NanoSIM 2x NanoSIM
Camera Primary 2x 12MP (color + monochrome), 1/2.9” Sony IMX286 Exmor RS, 1.25µm pixels,
Laser AF + depth, HDR, dual-tone LED flash
f/2.2 lens aperture,
2x 12MP (color + monochrome), 1/2.9” Sony IMX286 Exmor RS, 1.25µm pixels,
Laser AF + depth, HDR, dual-tone LED flash
Leica Optics: f/2.2 lens aperture,
Camera Front 8MP, 1.4μm pixel size,
f/2.4 lens aperture
8MP, 1.4μm pixel size,
f/2.4 lens aperture
Battery 3000 mAh (11.46 Wh), non-replaceable 3000 mAh (11.46 Wh), non-replaceable
Network 2G / 3G / 4G LTE 2G / 3G / 4G LTE
Connectivity 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.2 LE, GPS/GLONASS, USB Type-C Reversiblle
IR Blaster, NFC
802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.2 LE, GPS/GLONASS, USB Type-C Reversible
NFC (EVA-L09 only)