After tasting success with the Honor 8X in the mid-range segment in India, the brand is now following it up with the launch of the much-anticipated Honor 8C in the hopes of carving a spot for itself in the jam-packed budget segment as well.
Before we talk about my experience with the device, let’s take a quick look at the specs table for the Honor 8C:
Honor 8C: What’s in the Box
Like any other Honor phone, the Honor 8C also comes packed inside a blue cardboard box but this time Honor has added a photo of the phone on top, which is new. Open this box and you will in be greeted by the stunning device clad in plastic, followed by all the remaining contents, which are as under:
The complimentary screen protector is a pleasant surprise and is something we now see being offered with more and more budget smartphones.
There’s no doubt that Huawei knows how to make some beautiful phones, and Honor has learnt a thing of two. While Huawei is taking things up a notch with the Mate 20 Pro’s twilight back, the “cat’s eye effect” on the Aurora Blue Honor 8C I’ve been using looks stunning as well. It’s definitely not like any other phone in this price range.
The company hasn’t used glass to build the Honor 8C but instead there’s a 3D nano-level texture design technique which gives the back panel a shiny and soft-touch finish, with a mixture of glossy and matte surfaces. The rear cameras, fingerprint sensor, and the branding placement on the rear are identical to the Honor 8X.
Well, I really like how the back panel of the device lights up in various lighting conditions and even everyone at Beebom was mesmerized when they saw and held the device. The shiny back has even drawn questions from strangers in the Delhi Metro, who came up to me to ask about the phone. So, good job on the beautiful design, Honor!
Well, the display on the Honor 8C came as a pleasant surprise to me. First, let’s get the specs out of the way. The device includes a 6.26-inch HD+ IPS LCD display, with a 19:9 aspect ratio and a display resolution of 1520×720 pixels.
Even though the company has included only an HD screen on this device, you will notice that it has great color reproduction right off the bat. Tet and images look really crisp on this massive screen, making my daily Instagram ritual a lot of fun. The Honor 8C’s notched screen usually gets pretty bright – not just indoors but under direct sunlight as well, has good viewing angles, and is great for watching content.
Honor 8C: EMUI 8.2 Experience
The Honor 8C is backed by Android 8.1 Oreo-based EMUI 8.2 and one cannot find any shortcomings on the software front as EMUI is one of the best Android skins – along with Xiaomi’s MIUI. It’s feature-packed, fluid, and extremely easy to use as don’t need a tutorial to learn your way around it.
While its predecessor was powered by a Snapdragon 400-series processor, the Honor 8C touts to be the first-ever device to be powered by the Snapdragon 632 chipset. It is paired with 4GB of RAM and two storage options – 32GB and 64GB. We have the latter, the higher-end variant of the Honor 8C with us and it has been a breeze to use the phone, except for a few janks and stutters in the UI.
Turning our attention to the gaming performance, well, you can comfortably pick up the device and run some of the more taxing games. I had been playing Asphalt 9, PUBG Mobile (which has the same notch support problem as Poco F1 at launch), and Mortal Combat X on my device regularly and I didn’t experience any frame drops or lag during any of the gameplay.
If you’re someone who cares for and judges the performance by benchmark figures, the Honor 8C touts a single-core score of 852 and a multi-core score of 2942 on Geekbench whereas the AnTuTu benchmark score misses the 100k mark only by a couple thousand.
However, one cannot really judge the real-world performance of the device simply by its benchmarks and the Honor 8C, even though it scores less on benchmarks, actually does perform pretty well in everyday use.
Turning our attention to the cameras on Honor 8C, the device brings along a dual camera module, with a 13 MP (f/1.8) primary sensor and a secondary 2 MP (f/2.4) depth sensor on the rear. It also packs an 8MP (f/2.0) selfie camera on board, with a soft LED flash both on the front, as well as the rear. And they’re just average, something that has disappointed me about this smartphone.
You can see how the Honor 8C saturated the red and greens in the pictures below, thanks to the AI, making them pop and the photos ready to be shared on social media. However, the camera here is a hit and miss, which was also the case with the Honor 8X, and ouput generally isn’t under your control. The camera is able to retain details and highlights but I’m not completely satisfied with its performance, overall.
Honor 8C Camera Samples: Low Light
The low light performance of the Honor 8C’s camera is the worst thing about the phone, and you can see that there’s a lot of noise in each and every photo we captured. While the AI here tried to retain details in the shadows and highlights in low light, it’s not doing any wonders here. The selfies in low light are even worse. Check out the samples below:
Honor 8C Camera Samples: Selfies
However, the regular selfie photos captured using the Honor 8C are quite good in daylight conditions. The shots captured are able to retain details but are a bit on the softer side, which could possibly due to the AI in play. You can, however, use the adjustable selfie light to click better pictures at night – just marginally better, though.
Honor 8C Camera Samples: Portrait Mode
Are you ready for more bad news? This one is not so grave but portrait mode on Honor 8C is only on for the rear camera. Yes, it seems Honor totally forgot that selfie portraits are popular among users. That’s a shame as the edge detection and background blur in the samples below, make us want to see it in the front camera too. Having said that, some of these photos do look oversharpened and oversaturated.
Honor 8C Camera Samples: AR Lens and More
Honor 8C also brings in tow a number of other features that are buried under the “More” tab in the camera app. Here you’ll find not only an HDR mode and Pro mode but also a comical “AR Lens” feature that allows you to change the background as well.
Honor 8C Camera Samples: Videos
Finally, on the video front, the device is capable of capturing Full-HD (1080p) videos at 30fps from the rear cameras and only HD (720p) videos at 30fps via the selfie lens. The video quality, just like the photos, is sub-par, but one can make do with the same at this price point.
Honor 8C: Connectivity
There’s no dearth of connectivity options on the Honor 8C. It includes a triple-slot tray, which allows you to use two nano SIM and a microSD card at the same time. More and more phone makers are steadily making a switch to the triple-slot tray to offer users a chance to upgrade their storage.
In addition, you get all of your usual connectivity options including 802.11 a/b/g/n (no 5GHz support here), and Bluetooth 4.2 low energy, along with A-GPS, GLONASS and BDS for better location-based features.
I think I would soon be tired of repeating that most budget phones nowadays feature only a single bottom-firing speaker and it is not the most reliable location. It’s ridiculously easy to muffle the speaker while playing games.
As for the sound quality, well, the speaker sounds a bit tinny and doesn’t output any bass or treble, simply punching up the vocals and making the music sound dull. It’s sufficiently loud to make everyone take note in a silent office space but isn’t the loudest speaker out there in the budget segment.
It offers you access to 15 volume steps, which is a decent number but the sound only kicks in at around 50% and before that you hear murmur. The sound output using the headphone jack is great and I have no major complaints there.
The Honor 8C comes packed with a massive 4,000mAh battery pack and it’s one of the highlights for the device. The company promises battery life of up to two days, under regular conditions, on a single charge.
As for the charging, the Honor 8C comes equipped with a 10W power adapter that helps juice up the 4,000mAh battery on board from 10% to 75% in about 80 minutes. This may not be as fast as OnePlus, but it’s good enough and would get the job done, completely charging the device in around 2 hours.
Well, we have made it to the final and most exciting section of the review. This is where we’ll talk about whether Honor 8C (starts at Rs 11,999) makes for a good buy or not. Honor 8C is one attractive device with its bright rear panel, notched display, the Snapdragon 632 (which isn’t half bad) chipset, and fluid EMUI software experience.
If you’re looking for a great all-rounder device, but can compromise a bit on the camera front, then the recently launched Realme U1 (starts at Rs 11,999) should be your go-to option. However, if it’s the cameras that are of utmost importance for you, then Redmi Note 6 Pro (starts at Rs 13,999) is much better than these competitors.
CONS
Honor 8C Review: Can Beauty Make up for Poor Cameras?
Ultimately, the Honor 8C may be a worthy upgrade from its predecessor, but, the appeal of the device and it’s mesmerizing rear panel is somewhat lost in the light of the poor camera.
