Honor 8X, practice exam | Digital trends

Honor is in a very good position. The company offers a range of phones – at least two of which are new this year – and their price is reasonable, their specifications are solid and they are easy to recommend. The latest is the Honor 8X, and at first glance, it seems to be another item to add to the list, but the line between them is becoming more and more blurred and it's hard to know which one to buy rather than the other. ;another.

Although this is definitely not a bad thing, we do not want it to become a compliment. We used the Honor 8X to determine if it was not really different from other Honor phones.

Glass design

The Honor 8X is an elegant, colorful and high-performance smartphone with a large screen, an Octa-Core processor, two cameras with artificial intelligence and a so low selling price that you can install one in the hand, in the hand of your partner and even the hand of someone else for less than the price of a single new Apple iPhone XS Max. We mention Apple's biggest phone because the Honor 8X also has a 6.5-inch screen, with a resolution of 2,340 x 1,080 here.

Replace the Honor 8X name in the above sentence for Honor 10, Honor Play or, to some extent, Huawei Mate 20 Lite. Few things will change. You must therefore explore in depth to find small differences in the specifications. . No obvious differentiator happens when you buy the Honor 8X either, but it is a clear improvement over the Honor 7X. This time he has a glass back panel for the added class. The new design looks great – one edge reflects the light differently from the rest of the back panel – and choosing between blue and red is a real dilemma. It's prettier than the game of honor and is close to the absolute delectability of Honor 10.

Due to the 19.5: 9 aspect ratio of the screen, the bodywork is long, underlined by the reduced chin bezel which measures 4.25 mm, all for an impressive screen / body ratio of 91%. The body has a thickness of 7.8 mm and, as in the game Honor Play, the edges are rounded for an optimal comfort, and the curve 2,5D of the screen means that this one melts well in the body in metal. Everything is very neat, but there is nothing we have not seen before from Honor.

At first, the screen was not very beautiful, a disappointment after the brilliant Honor Play, and we wondered if there was a problem with the new comfort mode eyes on the Honor 8X. Honor says the 8X is the first phone to have a TÜV RheinlandCertified comfort mode to reduce the flow of blue light. In fact, after searching through the menus, we discovered that Vivid viewing mode was enabled by default, which gave the Honor 8X's display an LSD-like appearance. Tip: Always check your settings, kids.

The Vivid mode also affected the camera, where the photos took a too blue hue in the preview and gallery. It's still a bit, but it's less on the screen than Huawei's artificial intelligence in the camera.

Camera

The dual lens rear camera features a 20 megapixel lens associated with a 2 megapixel depth detection lens and A.I. lens is an activated option with a special AI button. The effectiveness varies. In the worst case, the colors are so accentuated that the scene becomes completely removed from reality. The best cases come when it balances an HDR style glow with enhanced subtle colors.

The bokeh mode is a winner: it accurately captures the contours and blurs the background around them.

You have many other features, such as 3D portrait mode, slow motion video, and the addition of Night Shooting mode with AI-optimized Huawei image stabilization. In our brief tests, it's not as efficient as the Huawei P20 Pro, where we initially saw the feature. It opens the shutter for about four seconds and does not require a tripod. He uses the AI ​​instead to stabilize the shot. it is worth experimenting, provided you take a picture in normal mode too, because sometimes shooting in Night mode can be very noisy.

When the Honor 8X gets a good photo, it's hard to believe that the photo comes from a phone that costs so little, do not expect it to be consistent. This is true for bokeh mode and when shooting under generally good lighting. This is certainly one of the main reasons to own the Honor 8X.

The selfies are taken with a 16 megapixel lens located in the notch above the screen, and we will do other tests to see how it will behave.

Specifications and other features

What else? There is a fingerprint sensor on the back of the phone – which is mounted quite high on the body, sometimes forcing a handle adjustment to reach it – a quick-release feature of the face for convenience, plus a 3,750 mAh battery, a slot for MicroSD card, SIM, Kirin 710 processor and 4 GB of RAM. The settings of the Huawei GPU Turbo game are also integrated. A strong line-up, but nothing we've seen before from Honor. The Android 8.1 operating system comes with Huawei's EMUI 8.2 user interface, which is very familiar.

Disadvantages? In addition to occasional camera errors, we are disappointed to see a micro-USB charging port rather than a Type-C USB port on the Honor 8X. We are sure that economic reasons explain its use, but we would prefer that the new port be adopted. NFC technology is also not guaranteed in all markets where the Honor 8X arrives. As a result, Google Pay is not always available. It will arrive in the United States, but the time and price have not yet been announced.

Price and availability

The Honor 8X is a powerful mid-range package and is somewhere between 250 and 300 euros. In China, the price starts at about $ 200, which is the cost of Honor 7X. It was launched in the United Arab Emirates at 999 AED (about 280 USD). We are still waiting for the official UK and European prices, but if they manage to get closer to the price of the Honor 7X, it will be very advantageous. What she does not do is stand out. The 8X is an Honor command on the cruise control, which follows the Honor 7X with a safe device that, if it were on a boat, would be a great way not to rock it in the least. It can be said that it's all you want from a midrange phone; But not only do we know that Honor has the talent to create hands-on phones like the Magic 2, but there is also a lot of competition in the market.

We're going to spend more time with the Honor 8X to see if his personality suddenly shines through, but for now, we'll tell you the Honor Play, which, as a game-centric phone, has more than one reason – to be the Honor 8X, without ruining the phone for non-gamers. Yes, it's a bit more expensive, but it's a very targeted and desirable product.