Although it's already been out in Asia and the US for a little while, the Honor brand (made by Huawei, but not branded as such) was just announced for a European release at a special launch event in Paris, France. We're in attendance at the big bash, typing out this hands-on first look with our review sample pool-side!
Honor 8 Review: Design
If you've seen Honor handsets before, such as the Honor 5X, then things will be familiar here with the Honor 8, including the multi-layer glass back panel, chamfered display edges, and metal frame. However, while it's fair to say that its predecessors bore some resemblance to Apple's iPhone series, with the new Honor 8 it's much more than a passing thing. This REALLY looks like an iPhone 6s, I mean seriously, everything from the antenna band to the punched speaker grille in the base. The only things that give it away are the absence of a Home key (it uses on-screen Android controls), the Type-C USB port, and the rear panel's fingerprint scanner and dual-camera sensor combo. Ok, so that's quite a few things, but compared to the overall aesthetic they don't exactly jump out straight away and, aside from the Honor branding plastered on the front and back this could easily pass for an iPhone. Is that a criticism? Well yes and no. I mean, iPhones look fantastic, let's be honest; a mixture of angles and curves, metal and glass, and putting all the ports and controls in the most sensible, ergonomic places can often lead to the same reasonable and attractive conclusion. Stylistically there's only so much you can do with the standards handset slab shape. But, I totally get the ire fans and critics may direct at what does feel like a derivative style. To be fair, the Honor 8 does distinguish itself in a few ways, as mentioned the multi-layer glass back panel similar to what we've seen before on the Honor 5X. It's 15 layers of individually treated and polished glass to give this kind of deep luminescence that catches the light in visually interesting ways. I was a little disappointed to find it lacks the textured layers seen in the Honor 5X which, submerged under the other layers did really give a sense of depth. Anyway, the other distinguishing feature is at least one of the main colour options; Sapphire Blue. The other options include Sunrise Gold (hilariously, Honor's presenter gave a shout out to "Russia and the Middle East" on this one), Pearl White, and Midnight Black.
I am actually really impressed by the Honor 8. The proportions of the phone are really nice in the hand; the fit and finish is top notch with a premium quality look and feel; and the design is top notch, if you're happy to ignore or embrace the iPhone similarities. Which I am. The features are sensibly placed and easy to use, and even the fingerprint scanner on the back, something I usually can't stand, is done in such a way that it's very easy to operate. As usual with shiny glass-backed phones, fingerprints are going to be a thing you need to get used to, unless you get a white one. Also, the bodywork is on the slippery side, so butterfingers types be warned.
Honor 8 Review: Display
I have to admit, I'm getting used to being fairly non-plussed by most smartphone displays. No two-ways about it, Samsung's utter dominance in this sector has kind of ruined other phones for me. So it's with a good dollop of pleasant surprise I'm able to say that the Honor 8's touch display has really caught my attention. It's super bright, whites are incredibly vivid and clean, and colours robust; it has contrast in spades, with things popping and leaping off the screen right into your eyeballs. And sharpness is great too, this is a 5.2in LTPS LCD panel with a 1920x1080 pixel Full HD resolution at 423ppi. Not a lot more I can say to be honest, it ticks all the right boxes; sharp, colourful, punchy.
Honor 8 Review: Hardware Specs
On the inside the Honor 8 is well equipped with the HiSilicon Kirin 950 octa-core processor, a chip that's well documented in giving both Qualcomm Snapdragon and Samsung Exynos a run for their money. It has four 2.3 GHz Cortex-A72 cores and four 1.8 GHz Cortex-A53 cores, plus 4GB LPDDR4 RAM and a Mali-T880 MP4 GPU. Naturally we'll have to wait and see to put this through its paces, but it did seem nice and snappy with zero lag on the Android interface, plus the benchmarks already in circulation look pretty good too. The phone will come in both 32GB and 64GB storage flavours, each with microSD support up to 256GB.
The battery cell is a hefty 3,000mAh setup which sounds promising, as such sizeable cells always do. We're lead to believe the Kirin SoC is also fairly battery friendly. Again, testing will make or break this, but we're optimistic for now as Huawei has proven it can do battery life well on such beasts as the Mate 8.
Honor 8 Review: Camera
The Honor 8 features a dual-sensor camera. While it isn't branded as such, by the sounds of things this is the same dual-camera sensor seen inside the Huawei P9, you know, that really good one co-developed with Leica. The setup includes two 12MP Sony IMX286 sensors with f/2.2 apertures, super fast laser autofocus, dual-LED flash. As well as that it has a pair of Image Signal Processors just like the P9 with one IPS/sensor combo effectively handling monochrome while the other handles RGB colour, before smushing them together for a much improved photo. It also allows all that fun post-capture focal point selection jiggery-pokery. The Honor 8 also has a bunch of software features bundled-in for post processing. The usual, but welcome of course.
As ever, the proof of the pudding will be in taking photos with it (wat?), but the example images Honor showed in its presentation did look impressive and easily as good as the Huawei P9's imaging capabilities.
Honor 8 Review: Price, Release Date & Availability
The starting price for the Honor 8, the 32GB version, is £369.99, which seems pretty reasonable for such a high-spec device and keeps the Honor brand's tendency towards affordability front and centre. It will be available from August 24 via Honor's online retail webstore, as well as other retailers including Clove, Ebuyer, and Expansys
