Honor 6X Review: Dual Camera Premium Android For Less
Honor 6X: Feature Rich, Low Cost, Dual Cameras And Great Battery Life
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which takes place in Las Vegas every January, is one of the prime spots for unveiling hot new hardware. In fact, manufacturers often keep tight-lipped about the new gear that they'll have on display, in order to deliver an unveil spectacle at the show. The show is the birthplace of big, expensive amazing machines, as well as more practical devices that hope to deliver worthy features at prices mere mortals can afford. We managed to get some hands-on time with one of the the latter at the show: Huawei’s Android-powered Honor 6X smartphone.
The Honor 6X is a full-feature, 5.5-inch, dual rear camera-equipped smartphone that weighs in at a very approachable price tag. Today, we’re finally getting the opportunity to dive deeper into the device for you.
The new Honor 6X goes for $249.99 (in gray, silver, or gold back plate colors) at the company's online store and at places like Amazon. It’s unlocked, giving you the freedom to choose your wireless carrier, but the price tag (and the phone’s rear dual cameras) first caught our attention. Huawei has a reputation for packing features into inexpensive phones and we were impressed with the Honor 8, which goes for a little under $350. The Honor 8 is a little slimmer than the 6X and has a higher-end dual-camera combo, among other differences, but both phones are in position to attract buyers averse to the painfully-high price tags of the iPhone and its premium Android competitors.
Let’s take a look at the features you can get in a $250 Android smartphone these days…
The Honor 6X sports a 5.5-inch display, which is actually a little bigger than the screen on its pricier cousin, the Honor 8. In fact, it’s the same size as the display on Apple’s iPhone 7 Plus. The IPS display offers a full HD 1920X1080 resolution, with 403 pixels per inch and brightness up to 450 nits.
Huawei chose its own Kirin 655 processor, a custom SoC with eight cores, for the Honor 6X. Four of the cores run at 2.1GHz and handle bigger workloads, while the remaining four cores are on hand for lighter tasks to reduce power consumption. Graphics come by way of an ARM Mali-T830.
Phone manufacturers have to pick and choose when it comes to delivering quality features on an inexpensive phone. Pumping up a feature that will sell the phone is key and the camera arrary has always been a safe bet. Huawei opted for two solid camera setups – three, if you include the extra camera that appears on the back of the phone.
The front camera offers 8MP shots and is backed up by software meant to improve selfies. That’s handy, but the feature that could help drive sales is the dual-camera setup on the other side of the phone. Huawei paired a 12MP camera with a 2MP camera here. These rear cameras offer a wide aperture range (F/0.95-F/16) and provide control over background bokeh effect. Huawei also enabled the Honor 6X with some powerful software for post-shot editing.
The other selling point for the Honor 6X is its battery life, which Huawei puts at 2.15 days, under normal circumstances. Even with heavy usage, Huawei says, the phone is capable of toughing out 1.5 days. We take a look at the phone’s battery performance later in the review but for now, let’s take a close look at the phone’s design…
The Honor 6X is a full-feature, 5.5-inch, dual rear camera-equipped smartphone that weighs in at a very approachable price tag. Today, we’re finally getting the opportunity to dive deeper into the device for you.
The new Honor 6X goes for $249.99 (in gray, silver, or gold back plate colors) at the company's online store and at places like Amazon. It’s unlocked, giving you the freedom to choose your wireless carrier, but the price tag (and the phone’s rear dual cameras) first caught our attention. Huawei has a reputation for packing features into inexpensive phones and we were impressed with the Honor 8, which goes for a little under $350. The Honor 8 is a little slimmer than the 6X and has a higher-end dual-camera combo, among other differences, but both phones are in position to attract buyers averse to the painfully-high price tags of the iPhone and its premium Android competitors.
Let’s take a look at the features you can get in a $250 Android smartphone these days…
 |
|
| Processor | Huawei Kirin 655 Octa-Core (4 x Cortex A53 @2.1GHz + 4 x Cortex A53 @1.7GHz) |
| GPU | Mali-T830MP2 |
| System Memory |
3GB 933MHz LPDDR3 RAM |
| Internal Storage |
32GB ROM |
| Storage Expansion |
microSD |
| Weight | 5.71 ounces |
| Dimensions | 150.9 x 76.2 x 8.2mm (5.94 x 3 x 0.32 inches) |
| Display | 5.5-inch 1920x1080 full HD, 16 Million Colors, 403ppi, IPS |
| Battery | 3340mAh (non-removable) battery |
| Rear Camera |
12MP + 2MP dual camera with wide aperture range F/0.95-F/16 and flash |
| Video | 1080p/720p HD Video Recording |
| Front Camera |
8MP With Makeup Mode, Perfect Selfie Mode, And Others |
| Audio | 3.5mm Audio Jack |
| Wi-Fi | 802.11n, BT 4.1 |
| SIM/Ports | Dual-SIM, microSD, Audio Jack |
| Networks | LTE FDD Band 20: 832–862 MHz (UL), 791–821 MHz (DL), LTE FDD Band 2: 1850–1910 MHz (UP), 1930–1990 MHz (DL), LTE FDD Band 4: 1710–1755 MHz (UP), 2110–2155 MHz (DL), LTE FDD Band 5: 824–849 MHz (UP), 869–894 MHz (DL), LTE FDD Band 12: 699–716 MHz (UL) |
| Sensors | Fingerprint Sensor, Proximity Sensor, Ambient Light Sensor, Accelerometer, Hall Effect Sensor, Compass, GPS Navigation |
| Price | $249.99 as tested and carrier unlocked |
The Honor 6X sports a 5.5-inch display, which is actually a little bigger than the screen on its pricier cousin, the Honor 8. In fact, it’s the same size as the display on Apple’s iPhone 7 Plus. The IPS display offers a full HD 1920X1080 resolution, with 403 pixels per inch and brightness up to 450 nits.
Huawei chose its own Kirin 655 processor, a custom SoC with eight cores, for the Honor 6X. Four of the cores run at 2.1GHz and handle bigger workloads, while the remaining four cores are on hand for lighter tasks to reduce power consumption. Graphics come by way of an ARM Mali-T830.
Phone manufacturers have to pick and choose when it comes to delivering quality features on an inexpensive phone. Pumping up a feature that will sell the phone is key and the camera arrary has always been a safe bet. Huawei opted for two solid camera setups – three, if you include the extra camera that appears on the back of the phone.
The front camera offers 8MP shots and is backed up by software meant to improve selfies. That’s handy, but the feature that could help drive sales is the dual-camera setup on the other side of the phone. Huawei paired a 12MP camera with a 2MP camera here. These rear cameras offer a wide aperture range (F/0.95-F/16) and provide control over background bokeh effect. Huawei also enabled the Honor 6X with some powerful software for post-shot editing.
The other selling point for the Honor 6X is its battery life, which Huawei puts at 2.15 days, under normal circumstances. Even with heavy usage, Huawei says, the phone is capable of toughing out 1.5 days. We take a look at the phone’s battery performance later in the review but for now, let’s take a close look at the phone’s design…
