Huawei Honor 6X: Review

Huawei’s sub-brand Honor with the launch of Honor 6X has been on a roll. The Honor 6X has got great improvements in terms of design, build quality and hardware. Fortunately, we were given a chance to have a preview of the device and we have been using this device for over 25 days now. Do give a read to our review and find out why Honor 6X is a worthy successor of Honor 5X.

Design

The Honor 6X looks much better than its price suggests. The build quality of the device is top notch and you can’t really complain about anything. The Honor 6X has a curvier design, the edges are tapered and the corners have been rounded off which makes the device sit comfortably in the hand. The hardware buttons are placed at the traditional location. The left side houses the power and volume keys, the 3.5mm headphone jack sits at the top, the hybrid sim tray is placed on the right and on the bottom there is a micro-USB charging port and two speaker grills (one being an actual speaker and another one being microphone). At the back you have a dual camera setup and a fingerprint sensor that sits just below the camera module.

Specs Recall

5.5-inch FHD IPS LCD display | Octa-core HiSilicon Kirin 655 processor | Mali-T830 GPU | 3GB RAM | 32GB storage | 12-megapixel + 2-megapixel rear camera | 8-megapixel selfie camera| Li-Ion 3349 mAh battery | Android Marshmallow OS | Hybrid Dual SIM | Rear Fingerprint Sensor

Performance

The Honor 6X is powered by an Octa-core HiSilicon Kirin 655 processor, backed by 3GB of RAM. Having a mid-range processor, the Kirin 655 houses more processing power than its predecessor and shows significant improvement in performance. In terms of performing day to day tasks and multitasking, the device performs well, all thanks to a great processor and an improved EMUI.

For Gaming we tried graphics intensive games like Need for Speed: No Limits, Asphalt 8 and N.O.V.A 3, and the performance was spot on. Along with a fancy camera module, performance is also the highlight of this device.

Software

Huawei Honor 6X runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow operating system with company’s EMUI 4.1 out of the box. The UI looks more like iOS as there is no app drawer, the colors are more pastel, and with transparency effects. The EMUI is fast and responsive and we didn’t encounter any hiccups during our review period. The Emotion UI packs a lot of tricks under it’s sleeves such as:

• The Notification panel is split into two tabs: one tab for notifications, and another for Quick Settings.
• The fingerprint sensor apart from unlocking can be device supports various gestures that can be used to take a photo, answer a call, stop an alarm, show your notification panel, or browse through photos.
• The themes available at the Theme store are beautiful and fortunately, all of them are available for free.

The only downside here is that Honor 6X doesn’t ship with Android 7 Nougat, but Honor is promising an OTA update in the coming months.

The Dual Camera Setup

As predicted by our team, the year 2017 is going to be a year of dual camera smartphones and Huawei’s implementation with the dual camera module with the Honor 6X is interesting. Just to recall the Honor 6X features a 12-megapixel primary camera with Sony IMX386 sensor and the 2MP auxiliary sensor is purely used to capture depth information which can be taken advantage of using the camera’s wide aperture mode. The wide aperture mode lets you adjust the aperture from f/16 to as down as f/0.95 for a very stylistic bokeh effect. Interestingly the phone stores the image’s original data that can be used later to change the aperture and points of focus even after capturing the shot. The overall camera has been very impressive and every time the Honor 6X manages to capture a good amount of sharpness and excellent dynamic range. The focus is fast and the images are pleasant surprisingly for a mid range phone.

The honor 6X has a solid camera for a budget phone that even does reasonably well in low light and at night. In bright light conditions, the rear camera for honor 6X makes its place as one of the best camera smartphones in budget smartphone segment. Here are a few camera samples captured using the honor 6X do have a look.

Fingerprint Sensor

The Honor 6X houses a rear fingerprint sensor which is symmetrically aligned below the dual camera module. The fingerprint sensor is metallic and is easy to locate on the rear. The device unlock response time on unlocking the device using a fingerprint sensor is lightning fast. And I can conclude that the Honor 6X houses the fastest and most accurate fingerprint sensor on a budget smartphone. In our prolonged review period, we never encountered any misses or delays in unlocking the device using the fingerprint sensor. Sometimes I even tried to compare the fingerprint sensor of Honor 6X with the OnePlus 3, and the competition was a too close to call.

What’s Good?

• The Build quality of this device is top notch. The device looks much better than its price suggests.
• The dual rear camera is an asset for this device and transforms the Honor 6X into a perfect bokeh effect capturing machine.
• Support for Dual SIM cards as well and expandable storage with a hybrid SIM slot.
• Lightning fast fingerprint Sensor.
• The device is a beast in terms of performance. It can handle any task or any graphic intensive game, like a charm.

What’s BAD?

• Although it doesn’t make much difference but it’s high time Huawei should shift to USB Type-C connector for charging as well a data transfer.
• The Emotion UI is good, I loved it. But for a user who loves stock Android might not love the EMUI.
• The Android 7.0 Nougat OTA is still in works and according to sources it will be out by Q3 2017, so some users might feel left out for a few months.

Verdict

Honor with the launch of Honor 6X have once again proved that they have the ability to make superior camera smartphones. The USP of Honor 6X is it’s Dual Rear camera module which can capture shots in wide aperture mode. With impressive camera, premium metal unibody design, powerful performance and fastest fingerprint sensor in budget price segment; you can’t ask for more at a budget price. If you are considering picking up this device, the great news is that it will put only a very small dent in your wallet. At INR 12,999 for the 3GB|32GB storage variant we can straight away recommend the device to anyone who is looking for a device that performs well and has great camera. The greatest competitive for Honor 6X will be Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 but that device is not easy to get and has an inferior build quality and camera compared to Honor 6X. The 4GB|64GB variant of Honor 6X at INR 15,999 is a bit overpriced in my opinion but the 3GB|32GB variant is worth every penny spent and is going to be the most competitive smartphone in this price range.

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