Honor 8C holds the crown of being the first phone to feature a Snapdragon 632 processor and is backed by a 4000mAh of battery. That being said, Honor has released a number of smartphones in 2018 capturing every possible price segment, they have budget devices like the Honor 7S, 7A capturing under 8k price segment and a wide range of mid ranged devices with the Honor 9N, Honor Play; and flagship grade devices like the Honor View 10. The Honor 8C is a mid-ranged budget device, filling the INR 10,000-12,000 price bracket which is ruled by Xiaomi Redmi 6 Pro.
With a new chipset under the hood, and priced just shy of the Honor 8X at INR 11,999, does the Honor 8C offer everything you need from a smartphone? Let’s find out in our Honor 8C Review.
Display & Design
When it comes to design and aesthetics, the Honor 8C is a looker and nothing in this price segment can beat 8C in terms of looks. The back of the device is made of plastic and has curved edges, glass body, gradient color scheme, and a near bezel-less display make the Honor 8C look much more premium than its price tag would suggest.
Honor is still sticking to their infamous glass-sandwich design and it looks gorgeous. Honor tried to keep the device simple with making not many differences to their pre-existing smartphones and they could have easily recycled one of their previous budget devices by just replacing the back gradient design. Overall, the Honor 8C feels well-built with attractive back and we’re glad to see a budget smartphone with a FullView display and minimal bezel around.
On the bottom of the smartphone, there is still a Micro-USB 2.0 port and a single speaker to the right side. The 3.5-mm headphone jack occupies the top profile along with a microphone beside it. The power and volume buttons are situated to the right of the smartphone and the hybrid SIM tray to the left.
The Honor 8C features a 6.26-inch notched IPS LCD display, with a 1520 x 720 pixels HD+ resolution. The display offers an 81.9% screen-to-body ratio, and a 19:9 aspect ratio. The phone offers decent viewing angles and colors appear bright and vibrant. Honor advertised that the display has an eye-comfort mode that is TuV Rheinland certified, meaning that the blue-light filter is certified to be protective for your eyes.
Honor 8C specs:
- Body: 157.2 x 76 x 0 mm (6.19 x 2.99 x 0.0 in) | 167 g
- Display: 6.26″ IPS LCD, 720 x 1520 pixels, 19:9 ratio (~269 ppi density)
- Rear camera: Primary 13MP, f/1.8 aperture, phase detect autofocus; secondary 2MP depth sensor with f/2.4 aperture.
- Front camera: 8MP, f/2.0 aperture, fixed focus lens.
- OS/Software: Android 8.1 Oreo, EMUI 8.2.
- Chipset: Qualcomm SDM632 Snapdragon 632 Octa-Core processor (4×1.8 GHz Kryo 250 Gold & 4×1.8 GHz Kryo 250 Silver) | Adreno 506 GPU
- Memory: 32/64 GB, 4 GB RAM storage; microSD card slot (dedicated).
- Battery: 4000mAh, 5V/2A charging
- Connectivity: Dual SIM; Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.2; microUSB 2.0, 3.5mm jack.
- Misc: Fingerprint reader (rear-mounted);
Performance
The Honor 8C despite landing well below the only fractionally more expensive Honor 8X, is still one of the more powerful phones at the price. The Honor 8C is a snappy chunk of hardware being powered by a Qualcomm SDM632 Snapdragon 632 Octa-Core processor. The Snapdragon 632 SoC features Kryo 250 CPU and reportedly offers up to 40% improvement over its predecessor i.e Snapdragon 630. We ran benchmarks on the Honor 8C powered by the Snapdragon 632 chipset and here are our results :
The Honor 8C is powered by an Adreno 506 GPU which isn’t quite up to scratch with 3D gaming performance, and lack of GPU turbo makes high graphics intensive games like PUBG and Asphalt 9 totally unplayable, but basic low-key games like Subway Surfers, Monument Valley, Temple Run 2 and Angry Birds run flawlessly.
Talking about the battery the Honor 8C houses a 4,000 mAh battery that keeps the show going for almost one full day. Even after heavy usage with multimedia playback, online media streaming, gaming, and camera usage, the phone manages to go on for a complete day and this device is definitely a powerhouse.
Camera
The Honor 8C sports a dual rear camera setup- 13-megapixel primary lens with f/1.8 aperture + 2-megapixel lens with f/2.4 aperture. The front-facing camera is an 8-megapixel shooter with f/2.0 aperture with a single LED soft flash on the rear. There is AI beauty as well which can reportedly recognize over 500 scenarios in 22 categories. The camera is just about adequate and does the job.
In bright lighting conditions, the photos are decent, the color reproduction is not that great but sometimes the Exposure level in Auto mode is a bit on the higher side but there is an Exposure slider with which users can take better photographs. Turning on HDR doesn’t help things either. The ‘Portrait mode’ generally works fine, allowing you to adjust the background blur even after the photo has been captured. In low-light conditions, things get even worse. Photos are full of digital noise and compression artifacts, and while toggling the ‘AI’ option doesn’t help either.
The camera app on Honor 8C is similar to the one we’ve seen on other older Honor smartphones. The app has smart features such as smart shopping feature that lets you just scan the object to identify that item on Amazon; A.I mode and other usual modes such as light painting, HDR, timelapse, Slow-mo, Panorama, AR lens and many more.
There is also a Pro Mode which allows users to manually control ISO, Shutter Speed among other camera modes for more control with respect to the output.
Here are some of the camera samples captured through the lens of Honor 8C, have a look at these.
Pro Tip: The HDR mode is disabled by default, make sure you enable it before capturing any picture and you’ll see a huge bump in the way the images come out post-processing.
Should you buy the Honor 8C: The Verdict
The Honor 8C has an impressive device which is built well with a unique “Cat’s Eye Design” back, a powerful Snapdragon 632 processor and a humongous 4000mAh of battery. And combined with a starting price of INR 11,999 the device is a good buy at this price. The display on this device is great but it’s still an HD+ display and not Full HD 1080p which is standard at this price segment. Also, comparing Honor 8C to company’s own sub INR 10,000 priced device the Honor 9N also features a Full HD 1080p display. And ironically the Honor 8C being 20% more expensive than the Honor 9N still lacks an FHD display.
However, Honor C falling in a similar price bracket of few of the existing devices like Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 6 Pro have much more to offer and costs just a few hundred bucks more for the same RAM and storage variant. The Xiaomi 6 Pro has a full HD+ display, which is hard to ignore when you are looking for a phone in the price segment. There’s another rival to the Honor C, the older Asus Zenfone Pro Max M1, which comes with a 5,000mAh battery, Full HD display, and dual-rear cameras. Honor 8C is a good option to recommend, but if it was priced under INR 10,000 then this phone would be an even better deal for many potential consumers.
Pros
- Premium Build Quality.
- Beautiful Cat’s Eye Design Back (Exclusive for Blue color).
- Impressive battery life.
- Snapdragon 632 Octa-Core processor.
- Dedicated micro-SD card slot.
Cons
- An HD 720p display.
- AI camera mode tends to produce unrealistic photos.
- Weaker Speaker.
- No 4K video recording.
- Micro USB port with lack of fast charging.
