Huawei Honor 6X Review: Mid-range dual-cam, justified price

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Software and Performance

OS / Software

Once again, Honor 6X runs the old Android 6 Marshmallow with proprietary EMUI 4 which is mostly disliked in the crowd out there. There are various issues people think as of, mainly the lack of app drawer and some also report it to have bloatware or junk apps out of the box.

To me seriously? Even though, those two things are key elements in Android which respectively are better to have or skip, I think the former is a personal choice to reject a system. I like it that way, anyway. Huawei might think to avoid any junk apps as well.

In fact, EMUI offers a lot to handle your phone with most of the aspects applications run in the background. Phone Manager is an important item with the Huawei smartphone.

The good thing is that this phone is set to receive EMUI 5 based on Android 7.0 Nougat software update. It might be just an update for most phones but for Huawei and Honor devices, it’s a leap.

EMUI 5 is a huge set of changes within the system and user interfaces of the whole experience, whether it’s the design and layout or the notification panel. The new software now has a most wanted feature – an app drawer.

Right now, out-of-the-box, Honor 6X won’t have these things but expect to receive the software update sooner or later. However there is no problem with the old EMUI at all if you are not to curious about app drawer, it works fine.

The bloatware is not something that most Chinese smartphones use to ship with. You can however delete them right as you would normally do.

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User interface is not different than any of the other EMUI 4 offerings. There are only home screens that can be rearranged in anyway how the users like. There are ways how the home screens swipe through, there are widgets which we can add into home screens along side the app icons and folders. You can switch from 4 columns grid view to 5 columns if you prefer. But as you know there is no separate app-drawer, all the apps will appear on the home screens and you could uninstall them right as you would from an app drawer.

Lock screen can be customized with Magazine style which shows a different wallpaper whenever you wake the phone from sleep. Swiping in any direction the the screen gets unlocked but swiping from the bottom edge, a set of quick controls and shortcuts appear. Along with a standard pin code or pattern unlock feature, the fingerprint security is there to take you straight to the home screen without even showing the lock screen.

Home Screens and Features

Home screen offers with multiple walls of app icons and a sticky bottom row that serves with the feature to use for most frequent functions of the phone e.g. Calling, Messaging, Internet browsing etc. You can customize that however.

Swiping anywhere on the home screen, but not from top-edge, initiates the search feature that provides search box on top with recently used apps or functions below it. This feature searches through everything on the phone, in contacts, in messages, in emails, in apps, in settings etc. If you don’t find anything, it also provides a link to search online for the keyword you have put in.

Notifications and Shortcuts

Notification center can be pulled down from the top status bar that brings two sections. There are shortcuts in the right tab, and the notifications on the left.

The third screen above is customization section that opens right from the shortcuts section and serves with all the available shortcuts where the upper half lists the shortcuts which are currently present on the main shortcuts section (middle screen above). The shortcuts in the lower half are unused which can be dragged to the upper half to display in the main shortcuts section.

It’s pretty much same across EMUI 4.1 in other Huawei devices as well.