In Huawei you’ve got an OEM that knows what exactly it is millennials are looking for in a smartphone. The Chinese company has just unveiled its second major smartphone in the U.S. – Huawei Honor 8 – with a major target being the same millennials that it targeted with the Honor 5X.
However, you will be surprised at what the Honor 8 brings to the fold, especially when looking at its price in comparison to the current flagship leader – Samsung Galaxy S7. Apparently, the Huawei phone is already open to pre-orders as at the time of this writing, but the phone should start official shipping towards the end of this month or in early September.
According to Huawei, the Honor 8 is a phone that will take care of all millennials’ needs, including watching movies and sports, listening to music as well as sharing photos and videos with friends. But this doesn’t mean the company is leaving behind the things to do with fashion and cultural trends. By looking at the Honor 8, you will agree that indeed Huawei has delivered. The phone has a sleek design, an excellent camera, powerful specs, a decent battery life and an even better price tag.
With its late launch, Huawei Honor 8 will have to battle against the Galaxy S7, which is the current go-to flagship for U.S. buyers. Here’s why we think the new Honor 8 has what it takes to bring the Galaxy S7 down.
Unique design and roomy display
From the looks, you will agree that the Huawei Honor 8 has one of the best designs you can want in a smartphone. Although it has three color variants, you’ll be intrigued by the sapphire blue variant. The other two are pearl white and midnight black.
To make it unique, Huawei went for a glass back that went through a 15-layer process to make it remarkably reflective, something that gets even better with different lighting. This glass rear goes on to cover the rear snapper, making the phone look and feel even more beautiful. There is nothing to worry about in case the glass body of this Honor 8 breaks. Huawei has a PROMISE to take care of the phone in case of such an event, at least for the first three months after buying it.
The Huawei Honor 8 is almost same size as the Galaxy S7, but slightly bigger. There is a 5.2-inch 1080p screen on the Honor 8, but you get a slightly smaller and better quality 5.1-inch QHD panel on the S7. On the naked eye, there won’t be significant differences in the display qualities of these two screens.
A classy camera
The Huawei Honor 8 comes with a 12MP dual-lens camera setup on the rear. This is a big plus for the phone since it means you get to capture more detail in the images as opposed to single-lens setups. The image quality can further be bettered with the camera software, which allows editing after capturing it. In fact, the Honor 8’s camera is similar to the Huawei P9, only that the former lacks the latter’s Leica branding.
It doesn’t end there with the camera specs of the Honor 8. The phone also comes with a quick launch feature where the camera app can be launched via the volume button or even the fingerprint scanner. This can happen whether the phone is locked or unlocked. With this feature, users of the phone won’t be missing any quick moments they wished to capture and share with friends on social media. You will also find a similar shortcut on Samsung Galaxy S7 by double-tapping the home button, but unlike the Huawei Honor 8 where the shortcut starts the camera app and goes on to capture an image, the Galaxy S7’s shortcut only launches the camera app and nothing more.
Great battery life
Last year, Huawei tested a certain technology that allowed them to fast-charge a smartphone’s battery from 0-48% in about five minutes. However, this is nowhere near the Honor 8. Instead, you can only get the 3000mAh battery unit from 0-50% in about half an hour, which is what you get with Samsung Galaxy S7’s fast charging technology.
MicroSD card slot and software
Like the Galaxy S7, the Huawei Honor 8 also allows users to add a memory card on its 32GB and 64GB default storage options. However, where the former allows adding a microSD card of up to 256GB, the latter can only take in 128GB, which is still not bad.
Huawei uses its own EMUI 4.1 skin on top of Android 6.0 Marshmallow, but it is expected that the phone will receive Android 7.0 Nougat via an OTA once it is out, but this might take some time.
Affordable price
While the only major difference under the hood is the fact that Huawei always uses its own Kirin processors, with the Honor 8 picking up the 950 SoC, while Samsung’s U.S. variant has a Qualcomm-made Snapdragon 820. Since there is a more advanced Kirin 955 (it has been used on the Huawei P9), the 950 version is slightly inferior when compared to the Snapdragon 820 SoC, leave alone the Kirin 955.
Still, you get 4GB of RAM on both handsets, but given the two storage options, the low-end Honor 8, which has 32GB of storage, has a pre-order valuation of $399.99. As for the 64GB model, you will have to part with $449.99. This device can be bought from the official Huawei Honor U.S. website or from major retailers such as Best Buy, Amazon, Newegg as well as B&H.
On the contrary, the 32GB version of Samsung Galaxy S7 is available for $594.94 on Amazon.