Early last month, Huawei’s sub-brand Honor unveiled the new Honor 8X at an event in China. Soon thereafter, it was confirmed that the new device was making its way to India and would be launched in the country on October 16. For the unaware, the Honor 8x, which is the direct successor to the widely popular Honor 7X, is powered by a Kirin 710 processor, coupled with up to 6GB RAM and up to 128GB of internal storage.
In the build quality and design department, the Honor 8X is quite a bit similar to other mid-range devices from the company. The device has a very premium glass sandwich design with a metal frame in between. Up front, it has a massive 6.5-inch FHD+ IPS LCD display with a small notch up top, minimal bezels on either side, and a rather small chin, giving the device a 91% screen-to-body ratio. In order to get such a small bezel on the bottom, Honor has used technology similar to the one used by Apple on the iPhone X in which the LCD connectors have been folded back behind the display instead of resting underneath it. Do note, however, that Honor has simply folded the connector behind the display, while Apple, on the iPhone X, bent the display under itself to achieve the chin-less bottom on the iPhone X and XS.
Display
The 6.5-inch FHD+ IPS LCD display is definitely one of its highlighting features, especially because it makes the device look far more premium than any of its competitors. The minimal bezels on all sides, along with the small notch, result in a very immersive user experience, the likes of which I’ve barely seen in any other mid-range device till date. The color reproduction of the display is quite accurate and it can get bright enough to help with sunlight visibility.
Much like most other mid-range devices in the market today, the Honor 8X features a dual camera setup on the back and a selfie shooter up front. Honor’s X series of smartphones has already built up a reputation for their camera prowess and the Honor 8X shouldn’t be all that different. The dual camera setup on the device features a 20MP f/1.8 sensor coupled with a 2MP sensor for depth perception. The device features AI scene detection, which works to automatically enhance images depending on the object in the frame.
As you’d expect, the Honor 8X also features portrait mode capabilities and in our preliminary testing of the device, we found that portrait mode images captured by the device are pretty good. The camera app on the device also features a Night mode which allows users to adjust the shutter speed and ISO to capture better low-light images. Other camera modes include a full-fledged Pro Mode, an impressive Slow-mo Mode and also a Light Painting mode with which you can click amazing light painting images.
As mentioned earlier, the Honor 8X packs in a Kirin 710 chipset clocked at 2.2GHz, coupled with up to 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. The device has a triple slot SIM tray with a dedicated microSD card slot that supports cards up to 400GB in capacity. The device includes all the usual connectivity features, including 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, AGPS, Glonass and BeiDou for location tracking. Backing it all up is a respectable 3,750mAh battery which should easily last you a day with heavy use. Complementing the hardware is Huawei’s EMUI 8.2 based on Android 8.1 Oreo.
EMUI 8.2 includes a bunch of customizations over stock Android Oreo, providing users with a ton of useful (and sometimes not so useful) features. Bloatware has been kept to a minimum and the device allows users to uninstall all the preinstalled apps that might not be of use, which is great. One of the biggest issues that I have with EMUI is its cluttered Settings menu and the same persists on the Honor 8X. However, the company is currently working to release EMUI 9 based on Android 9 Pie, which has a more streamlined Settings menu. Provided the Honor 8X gets the update, the software related issues might soon become a thing of the past.
Well, that rounds up our first impressions of the new Honor 8X which is scheduled to launch in India on October 16. The device looks quite promising and if Honor is able to price it under the Rs. 20,000 mark, then it definitely has the potential to become the next best mid-ranger. However, in case it’s priced within the rumored Rs. 20,000-Rs. 23,000 price bracket, then it’ll definitely be squashed by more powerful devices like the Xiaomi Poco F1 and the Honor Play.
