When Huawei initially entered the smartphone competition, they were given a warm reception ,and while their success was not consistent, thanks to a few underwhelming releases in the mid phases, the brand seems to be finding its groove again, and what better way to do it than with an all out flagship monster. The Honor 8 may carry the ‘Honor’ tag, but one cannot ignore the clear Huawei design ideology in the device. Like the Huawei P9, the Honor 8 also features the similar 5.2 inch Full HD display while sporting the very nifty Hisilicon Kirin Chipset. The biggest takeaway however, is that both, the 32 GB as well as the 64 Gb variants feature a staggering 4 GB of on board RAM. In short, no matter which model you go for, high performance is a sure shot guarantee.
While specifications are more or less similar to high end flagships in the market, what sets the Honor 8 apart from the competition is the new dual camera setup. Yes, I know HTC did the dual camera gimmick way back when the technology was still unheard of, but the execution was far from perfect, which is why it was soon shrugged off by the brand as well. Huawei seems to have done their homework and brought out a more refined iteration of the dual camera setup, so much so that they are focusing their entire marketing blitz on that one feature. While the Leica branding may be exclusive to the P9, the Honor 8 has a few neat tricks of its own, to neutralise this little omission.
The main challenge for the folks at Huawei was to pack in all these features in a very competitive price bracket, which means they would have made a few compromises, right ? Maybe, maybe not. Lets find out –
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Design
The Honor 8 follows the design language of the premium Huawei P9, which is why, at first glance , the two devices look exactly alike, and it takes a few minutes of hands on time with the Honor 8 to really spot the subtle differences. That said, the overall build is pretty solid and the thin bezels make the entire package look like a truly premium investment. Also, the Honor 8 features a glass on the back. According to the product report, the rear of the device is constructed using a stunning 15 layers of glass, using techniques like 3D grating and lithography, which give you this amazing refracted light effect when exposed to light. You could question the durability of the overall device due to the amount of glass that’s being used, but there are protective measure you can always take so its alright.
The Fingerprint scanner on the Honor 8 has been switched back to the standard circular shape rather than the squarish one on the P9, but in terms of performance, both scanners are equally fast. The added bonus in the Honor 8 is that the fingerprint scanner also doubles as an additional control button. In simple words, you can now program some quick gestures to perform a host of tasks using just the fingerprint scanner.
