Huawei Honor 6X review

This is the review of Huawei Honor 6X, a new 4G smartphone with a 5.5 inch screen, Kirin 655 Octa Core 2.1GHz CPU, 3GB RAM and 32GB of internal storage, dual rear camera 12.0MP + 2.0MP, 8MP front camera, dual sim or one sim plus micro sd card up to 256GB, fingerprint scanner and Android 6.0 with EMUI 4.1 (soon it will upgrade to Emui 5 with android 7).

Honor is creating a strong brand idea over time, with a line of high quality products and marketed at low prices. That’s why every new launch of a Honor smartphone is now seen with great interest. Honor, the now famous brand of Huawei, is used to amaze us with devices with an excellent quality / price ratio: after having produced what is probably the best smartphone from this point of view in the past year, ie Honor 8, it is preparing to cover the medium-low range in 2017 with another device that is worth every single penny to buy it.

This phone has a very well performing hardware, a good dual camera with 12+2MP to vary depth of field, 3GB of Ram and 32GB of internal storage, that you can expand with a micro sd up to 128GB, it is dual sim, has a very effective fingerprint scanner. So it has everything to be a best buy of 2017 in the mid-range category, as it costs just 189$ / 173€ (but only until May 5th). Honor 6x is not perfect, but it is really hard to find some fault in it: it’s going to compete directly to the other low-end leading smartphone, Huawei P9 Lite, although it is different in some aspects.

Available @ Gearbest

Huawei Honor 6X video review

Packaging

The Honor 6X arrives in a colored light blue box, with a 5V / 2A power supply, a USB-microSD cable, a pin to open the sim slot and a quick start guide.

Design and Materials

Honor 6x is a very well built smartphone that probably does not stand out for its originality or particular aesthetic characteristics, but its solid aluminum body and curved back, makes it comfortable to handle and even ergonomic. It never slips out of his hands and can be used quietly naked and raw without a cover.

On the back of the smartphone we find a dual camera, slightly prominent, and a very effective fingerprint sensor.

In the lower part we have the speakers, microphone and MicroUSB port: Unfortunately there’s no Type-C usb, and the thing is a bit disappointing, but there’s a  3.5mm jack on the top side.

Front of the smartphone is a bit anonymous: edge optimization is good and there is the arc 2.5d system, while the size is typical of a standard 5.5 inch phone.

Hardware (Score: 8.0)

Honor 6X is “pushed” by a “homemade” processor, or the HiSilicon Kirin 655 2.1 GHz octa core associated with a Mali T830 MP2 GPU. Performance is good for almost any kind of use, including 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal memory that you can expand with a microSD up to 128GB. It has good connectivity, thanks to LTE at 300 Mbps, Bluetooth 4.1 and even with the presence of the NFC chip. That’s a pity that it has monoband Wi-Fi b / g / n working at 2.4GhZ.

The direct competitor is the Huawei P9 Light, that features Kirin 650 CPU, has 3GB of Ram, but only 16GB of ROM, so maybe you would prefer Honor 6X.

The speaker is positioned below and has good/average quality. On the back is a precise and very fast fingerprint reader. It features these sensors: Accelerometer, E-Compass, Gravity Sensor, Proximity Sensor. Positioning is guaranteed by GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS. Every feature, GPS and sensors works pretty well, without lags or problems.

When I tested it with Antutu, the phone got a score around 55.000 points, very good for a mid range phone.

This is a comparison Benchmark among Honor 6X, 5X, Huawei P9 Lite, Samsung Galaxy A5, Sony Experia E5:

Display and audio (Score: 7.5)

The screen of this Honor 6X is a 5.5 inches Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) in IPS technology. In general, it is an average display of good Huawei / Honor products, with good color fidelity, a very high brightness and discrete viewing angles. It is possible to set the settings as desired. It is a pity for the automatic brightness that is a little slow in adapting to the various light conditions, but you see it very well even in high light conditions.

It has 401pp definition, color rendering and brightness are really great, especially if we consider the price. The color rendition is rather realistic, balanced and with good blacks to be an IPS. In short, the display is proudly promoted if we consider its market positioning. Anyway, the P9 Light colors seems more natural if compared side by side with Honor 6X.

The sound is well balanced, the volume is not high but the listening quality is good, as well as the handsfree, we have been able to speak quietly well in our car test and people could listen to us without any special problems.

Camera (Score: 8.7)

The main camera has a 12 megapixel sensor, coupled to a second 2-megapixel sensor. This second sensor allows the software to take pictures with varying depth of field, as already seen on other similar models. You can change the depth of field even after taking the shots, so it can be a very good tool for impressive pictures. This function is not bad, but just as in other Huawei smartphones, it is not perfect expecially in difficult conditions and with particular contours, but if used properly, in some cases it may give back more than good results, especially if we photograph people.

By analyzing the camera software, you can apply real-time filters and there are several shutter modes, including the manual mode, that provides control over a large number of parameters, such as white balance, ISO values, shutter speeds. Panoramic mode is also available to make landscape photos by combining multiple photos, and then auto timers, very effective beauty filters, and you can choose from various scene modes such as portrait, panorama, sport, night, portrait, beach, snow, sunset, fireworks, backlight and flowers. In this way, the phone adopts the most suitable photographic parameters for the scene you are taking.

There is also the HDR function, which when activated allows you to take pictures where there are lights and shadows to optimize exposure by joining in a single photo data from multiple photographs taken automatically.

The front camera has 8MP, and takes very good shots, even in low light conditions.

If, however, we analyze the quality of the actual shots, we have a definition and a reproduction of the details superior to other smartphones on this price range, the photos are really great, with good focusing speed and optimum management Of high lights. What has slightly disappointed me is the white balance and generally the color rendering: if the photos are flat in the daylight, in the evening everything tends to be too yellow. At 90% this is a software problem, so it can be solved with some updates.

Under all other aspects the camera is pretty good, even in the evening the light captured is not bad and it has good results with a noisy noise obviously within the sensor limits, solving this small defect can become great considering the price of the smartphone .

The software is always very rich: there is pro and night mode, with videos that are shot up to 1080p and 30fps, the device does not have optical stabilization but the digital one does quite well its work.

Functions and sensors

 Below the rear cameras there is the fingerprint sensor, wich is very fast and reliable and allows you to easily unlock your phone by pushing your finger over, without the need to enter passwords or signs, thus speeding up your phone’s unlock. It is possible to record more than one fingerprint in order to use both hands or enable access to more people.

There are also GPS and all the most important sensors such as accelerometer, ambient light sensor, gravity sensor, proximity sensor.

Battery (Score: 9.0)

The Honor 6X battery is a non-removable 3340 mAh. The results you get are really remarkable and even with intense use it will be difficult to get to the end of the day without even a little residual battery. It also enjoys prolonged web browsing or GPS navigation sessions. At the end of an intense test day, I still got 30% of power.

By accessing the battery dedicated menu, you can set various parameters for energy saving and some power functions to optimize battery consumption. But probably you won’t need them.

Software (Score: 8.5)

Honor 6x is based on Android 6.0 but will soon receive 7.0 Nougat. The EMUI on board is 4.1, a software that we know really well, seen and revised, and one of the best Android customizations currently on the market. The software does not differ from what has already been seen in other recent Huawei and Honor smartphones. EMUI 4.1 is a drawer-free launcher and then with all the apps directly on the home. Anyway on the EMUI 5, arriving soon, there will be a drawer. We have multitasking with horizontal tabs and two sliders from above, one for notifications (chronological) and one for fast toggles. Among the various advanced features we mention the multiwindows to start two windows at the same time, the lower customizable keys, one-hand mode, phone management software, and very nice themes that you can also download online.

There are many settings including the ability to personalize the navigation bar, turn on one-handed option with a simple swipe, there’s the app to record our physical activity, FM radio and a software suite as always complete: Honor inserts an app for each activity. As usual, there’s an application for managing your phone, here we have to remember to protect the apps we want to run in the background, so that they can receive their notifications: as we always recommend doing it for apps like whatsapp , Messenger and all social and communication programs.

There are also other Huawei / Honor apps, such as the video player and the music player, while the browser is Chrome that offers very satisfying performance. Always on (unless if you disable it) also the pedometer of the Wellness app.

Price (9.5)

The price is really interesting for what you get, in fact you can find it for 189$ / 173€ from Gearbest. It has very similar specifics to Huawey P9 Light that is a very good phone, but can be found for €200+, so this phone is much more convenient and can be considered one of the best buy phones of 2017.

Conclusions (Overall score: 8.7)

This is a very good phone, comparable to Huawei P9 light, with very performing hardware, 3GB of Ram and 32GB of internal storage that can be expanded with a micro sd card, dual sim, LTE300, a good dual camera 12+2MP, and a very affordable price. In my opinion this is the best buy for midrange category in early 2017, overtaking the Huawey P9 light for performance and storage capacity.

Available @ Gearbest

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