The Honor 8 uses an RGB color sensor and a monochrome sensor to help users capture better photos. But will its photography chops be enough to attract customers?
After showcasing the Honor 8 at a special event last month, Huawei’s sub-brand Honor has officially launched the smartphone in India. The smartphone is priced at Rs 29,999. Successor to last year’s Honor 7, the next-gen Honor 8 brings new hardware, along with design improvements such as metal frame and a 2.5D front and back glass design that adds a premium look and feel to it. With the dual camera trend catching up, Honor doesn’t want to be left behind. Similar to the company’s flagship Huawei P9, the Honor 8 too features a dual camera setup – with an RGB sensor and a monochrome sensor.
There are two 12-megapixel camera sensors at the back with aperture of f/2.2 and pixel size of 1.76-micron. While the RGB sensor allows capturing rich colors, the monochrome sensor captures more light with increased sharpness. Working in tandem, both cameras help to capture crisper and detailed photos, Huawei says. The camera also features dual LED flash, hybrid auto-focus, and laser autofocus for short range and depth focus for long range. There is also professional mode which gives you full manual control to control the shutter speed, exposure compensation and more. There is also a wide aperture mode that enables you to blur background to add DSLR-like blur effects.
Honor 8 specifications
The smartphone features a 5.2-inch full HD (1080p) display covered with 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass protection. Under the hood is Huawei’s Kirin 950 octa-core processor built on 16nm architecture, paired with 4GB of RAM and 32GB onboard storage. Honor has also included a microSD card slot with support for up to 256GB. ALSO READ: Honor 8 hands-on and first impressions
Besides the dual camera setup, the Honor 8 also comes with an 8-megapixel front-facing camera of aperture f/2.4 for selfies and video calling. Connectivity options in the smartphone include 4G LTE with VoLTE support, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, NFC and Bluetooth. The smartphone also comes with the new USB Type-C port for charging and data transfer. To keep things ticking, Honor has include a 3,000mAh battery with fast charging technology (9V/2A), which can charge the smartphone from 0-47 percent in 30 minutes. The smartphone also includes a fingerprint scanner at the back for biometric authentication. There is also a built-in IR sensor on the top that lets you control your home entertainment system such as TV, music player, projector, set-top-box, and consumer electronics products such as air conditioner. On the software front, it runs on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow 6.0 wrapped under Huawei’s EMUI 4.1.
At its price point, the smartphone will compete with the likes of Lenovo Z2 Plus (Rs 17,999), LeEco Le Max2 (Rs 17,999) and Xiaomi Mi 5 (Rs 22,999), all of which are priced lower than Honor 8. Leave aside the price and specifications, one advantage Honor 8 has over its competitors is the dual-cameras at the back. The Z2 Plus, Mi 5 are powered by Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 820 quad-core processor paired with 3GB of RAM and 32GB storage. Z2 Plus is also offered in 4GB RAM + 64GB onboard storage variant. The Le Max2 is also powered by Snapdragon 820 processor paired with 32GB storage and 4GB of RAM. There is also another variant with 64GB storage and 6GB RAM, but its yet to go on sale.
In terms of screen size, the Z2 Plus comes with a 5-inch full HD display; the Mi 5 has 5.15-inch full HD display whereas the Le Max2 has a 5.7-inch QHD display. In terms of camera the Mi 5 comes with a 16-megapixel sensor with 4-axis OIS, the Z2 Plus comes with a 13-megapixel sensor, but lacks OIS, whereas the Le Max2 comes with 21-megpaixel rear camera with OIS. All three competitors also support 4K video recording capabilities. The battery capacity on its competitors is more of less the same – Mi 5 comes with 3,000mAh battery, Le Max2 has 3,100mAh whereas the Z2 Plus comes with a 3,500mAh. In the software department, all smartphones run on Android 6.0 Marshmallow OS along with respective custom UI on top.