Honor 8: Crafted with 15 layers of glass

Unboxing this beautiful phone from Huawei, I was compelled to spend a fair bit of time flipping it over and just moving it around in the light, letting it shine in patterns.

The Honor 8 is pretty enough to beat the Galaxy S7 at its own game and looks like it would have cost upward of ₹40,000. Mind you, it is not cheap at ₹29,999 in any case.

It is said to be made with 15 layers of glass. In blue, the phone is entirely stunning.

But my goodness is it slippery! It is glass back and front and that 2.5D curve along the edges while lovely to look at and hold, can slip out of your hand like an eel in oil. It can slip even when you are not holding it, in fact, sliding along smooth surfaces all on its own.

Reports are that the cases available for it are not particularly good quality and there also is a problem putting a screen protector on it because of the way the glass wraps around the edges. This is a problem with many phones these days.

This is a 5.2-inch phone and so it is not as slippery as it would have been in a bigger size, but care must still be taken with it although the phone is by no means flimsily built.

The Honor 8 works pretty speedily. It is based on Huawei’s own HiSilicon Kirin 950 chipset and octa-core processor with 4GBRAM and 32GB internal expandable storage. It works with Huawei’s heavy customisation to the interface on top of Android 6.0. That means lots of not uninteresting features to play with but a distance from original or pure Android. And users either love or hate that. Even so, it works smoothly, though not all hardware is top notch. The 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution screen is not terribly crisp, though perfectly workable and nor are the viewing angles perfect. On the other hand, its colour balance is adjustable as are many other parameters on the device. The Honor 8 has a 3,000mAh battery which mostly sees you through the day though there have been mixed reviews on this. I saw no drastic drops in battery performance.

The fingerprint sensor on the back of the phone, for instance, not just works instantly but can cleverly be used to trigger off apps. You can make it turn on the torch with a tap or trigger the camera quickly. There are also gestures one can use to start up designated apps such as a C to open up the camera or E to launch Chrome. Then there are other software tricks like using the knuckle to take a screenshot cutout, an interesting but strange feature.

It is the camera that is the star of the show on this phone, just as it was on the P9, the more expensive version of this device. It is better than you usually get on phones in this price category, but not the best. There are two 12MP cameras, one monochrome and one colour, which combine to result in richer images. Not a good performer in very low light, the primary camera set has a f2.2 aperture while the 8MP front camera has a f2.4 aperture. In good light, the images are realistic, though sometimes saturated, and detailed. On the whole though, the images are really nice. The camera app has a plethora of settings including control over main parameters in a Pro mode. You get some amount of depth of field and can do things like light painting. But optical image stabilisation is lacking, affecting video quality.

A few other things are missing as well, for example an FM Radio and reliable support for VoLTE connectivity. There is no dual SIM, no 4K recording. It does have NFC and an IR blaster so you can use it as a remote.

The Honor 8 competes with several popular phones such as the Asus Zenfone 3 and Lenovo Z2 Plus. Most of all, it competes with the OnePlus 3 which outdoes most flagships with its 6GB RAM, slim design, excellent screen and great camera. It is also cheaper. Huawei, it is generally felt, still needs to work on its pricing in India, though the company has tried to address this issue by launching two other budget devices along with the Honor 8.

Price: ₹29,999

Love: Beautiful glasswork body, feature-rich camera. Smooth and fast. software features.

Hate : Overpriced, very slippery, no Volte support, No fast charger in box, No FM radio, Display, screen smudged easily, No OIS.