Huawei Honor 8 Review: A Stylish, Affordable Android Smartphone
We should underscore that this is more of a test to understand what a heavy usage model might look like in terms of battery life, rather than a mainstream light-duty mixed use case.
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The benchmark result echos our subjective analysis based on day to day usage. While using the Honor 8 for things like surfing the web, watching videos, listening to music, and even a little bit of game play, it wasn't difficult to get through an entire day with battery life to spare. Of course, mileage will vary depending on how it gets used. Intensive tasks like gaming and keeping the screen brightness cranked up full blast will see the batter drain quicker than we did, just as it would with any device. To the point though, battery life here with the Honor 8 is very good.
Huawei is on a mission to be the number one brand of smartphones within the next five years, and while that's a lofty goal, competing phone makers should take the company seriously. The Honor 8 is another of a growing number of intriguing handsets from from the Chinese electronics and telecom giant, one that manages the difficult task of standing out from a crowded field in a number of ways.At a glance, users reading over the spec sheet might not be enamored by a 5.2-inch panel with a pedestrian 1080p resolution. However, this is one of the better displays on the market—it offers accurate color reproduction, 92 percent gamut coverage of the NTSC color space, and a high level of brightness. Perhaps it would look even better with more pixels packed in, but you don't feel like you're missing out anything when viewing content on the Honor 8.
Huawei also earns high praise for its construction. The 15 layers of glass that comprise the back of the Honor 8 make possible some interesting and unique color and lighting effects not found other handsets. We captured a few them in photos, but you really have to hold the Honor 8 in person to fully appreciate the aesthetic. Of course, those cool lighting tricks are negated once you slap a case on the phone, which we suggest doing because of how slippery the handset is. The good news is that even with a case, the Honor 8 is a premium looking device with chamfered edges and an ultra narrow bezel.
Where things are more of a mixed bag is performance. The Honor 8 with its octa-core Kirin 950 SoC proved it can handle CPU intensive tasks with aplomb, and battery life here is excellent. However, the GPU lacks the graphics horsepower versus some of its flagship competitors. You can still play games on it, but don't expect the kind of performance that's available from higher end phones.
This brings us to the price. At about a $350 street price, the Honor 8 is several hundred dollars less expensive than most flagships while offering near the same level of performance. It's certainly built just as well. Even better still, we've seen this phone go for as little as $330 at some retailers. That's a sale price, but with the holiday shopping season right around the corner, more markdowns could be in order. Either way, this is the kind of price point that will make smartphone buyers think long and hard whether they want to spend a few hundred bucks more on an incrementally better flagship from the competition.
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