While Europe and China has enjoyed the early release of the Honor 8, it was time for the Honor 8, along with it’s brother, the Honor 5A to reach Malaysian shores. While Huawei has maintained their Honor and Huawei division for quite some time, the Honor 8 is pretty much the best of what their Honor division could offer. While the Honor 8 is being touted as the successor to the Honor 7, the mid-range Honor lineup needed a refresh with the Honor division debuting their new offering for the sub-$150 (RM599) smartphone, the Honor 5A. The Honor 5X was undoubtedly an excellent smartphone with a few critical flaws as we claimed in our review of the Honor 5X, but it was time for Honor to fill that classic sub-$150 gap for them.
Huawei’s Honor 8 – The Dual-Cam Flagship
Talking about the main theme of launch, the launch was pretty much geared towards the Honor 8.
Huawei’s Honor 8 itself looks like a pretty attractive device. Sporting a beautiful body sandwiched in 2.5D curved glass, the Huawei’s Honor 8 picks up the trend of building beautiful devices.
On the inside, the Huawei has held their Kirin 950 Octa-Core CPU @ 2.3GHz responsible for powering the 5.2-inch Full HD display, fingerprint sensor, 4GB RAM, 32/64GB of internal storage, Type-C Fast-Charging port along with dual cameras on the rear of the device, which is the core attraction of this device other than the design.
The Rear Camera Setup
Huawei has chosen to opt for dual 12MP rear shooters and a single 8MP camera for the Honor 8 carrying on the dual camera legacy as its predecessors. While Huawei didn’t take the same approach as the HTC One M8’s 3D images, the dual camera setup on the Honor 8 takes advantage of merging the images taken by both of the lenses forming a uniform capturing experience.
According to Huawei, each camera sensor is responsible with one of the sensors being responsible of capturing the black and whites. Meanwhile the other camera is responsible for capturing the color.
Unfortunately, what isn’t so pleasant is the video recording capabilities. The Honor 8 allows users to record videos up to 1080p/30FPS. Although real world performance is yet to be seen, for a phone at this price, it seems like Huawei forgot about adding some goodies to their camera other than the Dual cameras. Considering the absence of 4k recording capabilities along with the absence of OIS as well, it’s still a good phone for those who want to capture high-quality stills.
Battery
Huawei has also confirmed that the Honor 8 comes with a 3000mAh battery that supports “Smart Power 4.0” which allows you to juice up to 47% in 30 minutes. Thankfully, both, the Standard and the Premium variants comes with their Quick Charge Charger.
Both variants of the Honor 8 are expected to last approximately a fully day of music, 10-hours of non-stop offline video playback and 9 hours of online video streaming which is pretty respectable along with the fact that they include a fast-charger in the box.
Colors & Variants
While the Honor 8 gives you the choice of 4 color options, Blue, White, Silver and Black, the colors are limited to two tiers, the Standard 32GB model and the Premium 64GB model. Both tiers get to enjoy their own flavors of colors, with the standard variant being locked to Black and White. Meanwhile, the premium variant enjoys the Honor 8 in Gold and Blue.
Pricing, Availability & Conclusion
The Huawei Honor 8 will be available for sale on the 8th of September starting at RM1699 for the Standard 4GB/32GB variant. The premium variant of the Honor 8 in Blue and Gold will retail for a price tag of RM1899. Both variants of the Honor 8 will be available on the 8th September, after 10:08am on their VMall online store and at their selected partners.
Overall, I would say that the Honor 8 is a beautiful phone without a doubt. Considering the specifications and the features available in this device I would say would be a strong competitor in the market. Although, it seems like the Honor 8 just made the phones out of reach for many other than just the price. Nonetheless, still an excellent option for those out in the market looking for a new smartphone.
Honor 5A – The “Fill-In-The-Blanks” Smartphone
While Huawei praised the Honor 8 for most of the part, we never expected the 5A to show up. The Honor 5A is back to gain it’s solid mid-range market just as it’s predecessors did, the Honor 4C and 4X from last year. The Honor 5A holds quite a unique price point after it’s elder brothers, the slightly expensive 5C and 5X.
To fill in the gap, the Honor 5A introduces decent specifications for the price.Packing Huawei’s in-house Kirin 650 Octa-Core CPU. the Honor 5A comes with 5.5-inch 720p display, 2GB RAM paired with 16GB of internal storage.
Pricing, Availability & Conclusion
The Huawei Honor 5A comes is two colors, black and gold with a unique pattern embedded onto the device back just as Huawei did with the Honor 4C and 4X. As of the pricing, yet again Huawei has priced the Honor 5A agressively with a good price tag of RM599 for the black and RM629 for the Gold color Honor 5A.
Judging from the specifications alone, the phone should be able to get you through your daily tasks and light gaming just fine. While not overkill, it’s should perform well in non-intensive tasks.
Note: Huge Thanks to Huawei Malaysia to inviting us out to their launch event here in Malaysia.
