The successor to last year's Honor 5X, the Honor 6X was first showcased at the recently-concluded CES 2017 event in Las Vegas. The smartphone comes with quite a competitive set of features, while its USP is the dual-camera setup at its back. After Coolpad Cool 1, the Honor 6X is the second budget dual-camera smartphone launched in the Indian market.
Numerous flagship smartphones such as the Huawei P9, LG G5, Honor 8 and Apple iPhone 7 Plus come with two cameras at the back, but the feature has been considered a gimmick by many. So does it actually add any value to a budget handset?
We've been using the Honor 6X for quite a while and here's our full review.
Design
Huawei Honor 6X comes in three colour variants; Grey, Gold and Silver, all having a matte finish. It has rounded edges at the back that make for a comfortable grip. The smartphone has a metallic construction and is quite solidly built. Its front is dominated by a 5.5-inch IPS LCD display and has the Honor branding below it. Above the display is the earpiece, notification LED and the usual array of sensors.
We found the lower bezel to be a little too much, especially because there are no physical keys on the front. The SIM card tray is on the left while the volume rocker and power key are on the right. At the bottom there's a microUSB port and speaker grille, while the 3.5mm audio jack is up top.
The rear panel has the protruding vertical dual camera setup with the fingerprint sensor under it and the LED flash on the side. At the bottom of the back panel is the Honor branding.
Hardware & software
On the hardware and software front, the Huawei Honor 6X is powered by the company's own HiSilicon Kirin 655 octa-core SoC with 3GB/4GB of RAM and 32GB/64GB of internal storage. The hybrid dual-SIM slot means that users have to choose between expandable storage and dual-SIM functionality. There's a 3,340mAh battery as well, up from the Honor 5X's 3,000mAh battery.
Huawei Honor 6X runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow topped with Huawei's EMUI 4.1 skin layer. It will be updated to Android 7.0 Nougat with EMUI 5.0 soon. The UI is pretty clean and easy to use. There are a few pre-installed apps but most of these can be uninstalled. There's no app drawer, so you'll have to use a third-party launcher if you want one.
Performance
During our time with the Honor 6X, we found it to be a decent device. General performance is overall satisfactory and there are no lags or freezes. The phone handles random app switching and multitasking quite efficiently. The battery can easily last a full day with moderate usage, and can even go for two days with light usage. If the battery level is quite low, an Ultra power saving mode can be activated under the battery settings. It only keeps basic functions like calling and messaging enabled, thus maximizing battery backup.
During our testing, we found the multitasking to be quite effortless as well. There aren't any overheating issues but we found numerous apps like Instagram and Google Maps crashing randomly. That said, we think it's a software bug and an update should fix it.As for call quality, we found it to be quite alright. Overall 3G/4G connectivity is also as it should be. However, this is something that depends a lot on network coverage in specific areas.
Camera
The Honor 6X has a dual-camera setup at the back, comprised of a 12MP module and a 2MP module. It can record Full HD videos at 30fps. There's also an 8MP front-facing camera included in the mix. During our time with the device, we found the overall picture quality to be really good.
The dual-camera works great for adjusting the focus after the image has been clicked, making for nice depth-of-field like shots, quite similar to what the Coolpad Cool 1 offered. The clicked images have quite accurate colour reproduction and are sharp. Front camera is decent as well. The app comes with all standard camera modes like HDR, beauty and Panorama.
Verdict
Talking about the chipset, the Huawei owned HiSilicon Kirin is relatively new compared to Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets used in other phones, but that doesn't necessarily mean, that the former will lack in performance and if you're okay shifting gears from Qualcomm Snapdragon to HiSilicon Kirin, it'll serve you well.
Overall, the Huawei Honor 6X is a really solid smartphone. It has a pretty decent spec sheet, it's well-built and the dual-camera experience is quite good. The only thing that may deter prospective buyers is the fact that it uses Huawei's relatively lesser-known HiSilicon Kirin chipset, as opposed to a Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC. However, the performance of the processor (and hence the phone) is appreciable and shouldn't even matter to most users.
So if you want a well-rounded, value-for-money smartphone, go for the Huawei Honor 6X. But if you want an alternative that uses the more common Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset and also offers dual-camera experience, the Coolpad Cool 1 is definitely worth checking out.
Numerous flagship smartphones such as the Huawei P9, LG G5, Honor 8 and Apple iPhone 7 Plus come with two cameras at the back, but the feature has been considered a gimmick by many. So does it actually add any value to a budget handset?
We've been using the Honor 6X for quite a while and here's our full review.
Design
Huawei Honor 6X comes in three colour variants; Grey, Gold and Silver, all having a matte finish. It has rounded edges at the back that make for a comfortable grip. The smartphone has a metallic construction and is quite solidly built. Its front is dominated by a 5.5-inch IPS LCD display and has the Honor branding below it. Above the display is the earpiece, notification LED and the usual array of sensors.
We found the lower bezel to be a little too much, especially because there are no physical keys on the front. The SIM card tray is on the left while the volume rocker and power key are on the right. At the bottom there's a microUSB port and speaker grille, while the 3.5mm audio jack is up top.
The rear panel has the protruding vertical dual camera setup with the fingerprint sensor under it and the LED flash on the side. At the bottom of the back panel is the Honor branding.
Hardware & software
On the hardware and software front, the Huawei Honor 6X is powered by the company's own HiSilicon Kirin 655 octa-core SoC with 3GB/4GB of RAM and 32GB/64GB of internal storage. The hybrid dual-SIM slot means that users have to choose between expandable storage and dual-SIM functionality. There's a 3,340mAh battery as well, up from the Honor 5X's 3,000mAh battery.
Huawei Honor 6X runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow topped with Huawei's EMUI 4.1 skin layer. It will be updated to Android 7.0 Nougat with EMUI 5.0 soon. The UI is pretty clean and easy to use. There are a few pre-installed apps but most of these can be uninstalled. There's no app drawer, so you'll have to use a third-party launcher if you want one.
Performance
During our time with the Honor 6X, we found it to be a decent device. General performance is overall satisfactory and there are no lags or freezes. The phone handles random app switching and multitasking quite efficiently. The battery can easily last a full day with moderate usage, and can even go for two days with light usage. If the battery level is quite low, an Ultra power saving mode can be activated under the battery settings. It only keeps basic functions like calling and messaging enabled, thus maximizing battery backup.
During our testing, we found the multitasking to be quite effortless as well. There aren't any overheating issues but we found numerous apps like Instagram and Google Maps crashing randomly. That said, we think it's a software bug and an update should fix it.As for call quality, we found it to be quite alright. Overall 3G/4G connectivity is also as it should be. However, this is something that depends a lot on network coverage in specific areas.
Camera
The Honor 6X has a dual-camera setup at the back, comprised of a 12MP module and a 2MP module. It can record Full HD videos at 30fps. There's also an 8MP front-facing camera included in the mix. During our time with the device, we found the overall picture quality to be really good.
The dual-camera works great for adjusting the focus after the image has been clicked, making for nice depth-of-field like shots, quite similar to what the Coolpad Cool 1 offered. The clicked images have quite accurate colour reproduction and are sharp. Front camera is decent as well. The app comes with all standard camera modes like HDR, beauty and Panorama.
Verdict
Talking about the chipset, the Huawei owned HiSilicon Kirin is relatively new compared to Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets used in other phones, but that doesn't necessarily mean, that the former will lack in performance and if you're okay shifting gears from Qualcomm Snapdragon to HiSilicon Kirin, it'll serve you well.
Overall, the Huawei Honor 6X is a really solid smartphone. It has a pretty decent spec sheet, it's well-built and the dual-camera experience is quite good. The only thing that may deter prospective buyers is the fact that it uses Huawei's relatively lesser-known HiSilicon Kirin chipset, as opposed to a Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC. However, the performance of the processor (and hence the phone) is appreciable and shouldn't even matter to most users.
So if you want a well-rounded, value-for-money smartphone, go for the Huawei Honor 6X. But if you want an alternative that uses the more common Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset and also offers dual-camera experience, the Coolpad Cool 1 is definitely worth checking out.
0 comments:
Post a Comment