Honor 8 Pro review: Mid-range priced phone with an impeccable camera

Huawei's subsidiary Honor has the distinction of being one of the first in the smartphone industry to embrace the dual-camera feature and the company claims that the recently launched Honor 8 Pro comes with promising camera hardware, if not better than the competitiors.

Besides the top-notch shooters, Huawei Honor 8 Pro also boasts powerful Kirin 960 octa-core backed by sumptuous 6GB RAM, 128 GB internal storage and a massive 4,000mAh battery and comes with price-tag of Rs 29,999.

Also read: IMC 2017: Samsung Android flagship Galaxy Note8 wins 'Gadget of the Year' award

Now, that OnePlus has shifted to upper Rs 33,000 price-band, Honor 8 Pro is touted to be the new king of the sub-Rs 30,000 category. But, does the Huawei device is worthy of the crown? Let us find out.

Honor 8 Pro: Design, display and build quality (4/5)

2016-series generic model Honor 8 was one of the best designed phone of the year. When held in hand, Honor 8's uniquely designed cover came with perfect mix of glass and metal. It's smooth texture on the back, gives mirror like effect and exudes premium feel, but the only qualm was the glossy shell is prone to fingerprint smudges and vulnerable to crack with just a drop on the floor.

Its successor Honor 8 Pro takes the design language to a notch up. It is slim and also boast high grade alloy rear-case, which is both pleasing to the eyes and sturdy enough to sustain accidental drops and to protect the components stay intact under-the-hood.

It features power and volume rockers to the right and the SIM tray to the left. On top, it features an IR(Infra Red) blaster (acts as wireless remote controller for smart connected devices) and a mic. Below at the base, it comes with single-grille speaker to the right, Type C USB port in the middle, a mic and finally a 3.5mm audio jack port to the left.

On the back, it houses dual-camera in the top left corner with LED flash support and an easily accessible fingerprint sensor in the middle. The antenna lines though visible on top and the bottom, the matching colouring makes them perfectly blend to the shell's dark shade.

As far as the display is concerned, Honor 8 Pro comes with 5.5-inch Quad HD (2K: 2560x1440p) screen having a staggering pixel density of 515 ppi (pixels per inch), and it does not disappoint at all. It's a delight watching high resolution videos on the screen.

Another appreciable thing about the front-panel is that it is protected by Gorilla Glass 3 shield on top with 2.5D curved glass on top, making the device even more attractive. 

Honor 8 Pro: Performance (4.0/5)

Like all previous Honor series, the new model too comes packed with in-house built HiSilicon Kirin 960 octa-core. It is ably backed by PC-grade 6GB RAM and 128GB storage.

During our tests, Honor 8 Pro responded well in terms of quick app loading, swapping between multiple apps and there was hardly any lag while playing graphics intensive games like Asphalt 8.

We tried it on popular benchmarking apps like AnTuTu and Geekbench v4.0 and fared pretty well. Honor 8 Pro scored 1,34,912 on the former, while it got 1,878 and 6,212 on single-core and multi-core tests (on Geekbench), respectively.

It runs on the Android Nougat-based EMUI 5.1 with good set of custom features. we were impressed with battery life extending feature that blocks certain apps from functioning in the background to prolong the battery life. But, there are lot of unnecessary options and pre-loaded apps, which consume a large amount of the space (more than 20GB), which might discourage pure Android enthusiasts. Thankfully, the company is using 128GB internal storage, leaving at least 100GB free space for the user.

Honor 8 Pro: Camera (4.5/5)

As marketed by the company, Honor 8 Pro comes with top-notch camera and does not disappoint much. It took stunning picture in day with near-accurate natural colour reproduction on the photo.

Like Apple iPhone 7 Plus, Honor 8 Pro too boasts portrait mode, which offers Bokeh blur effect in the subject's background.

But in the night, the autofocus seems to slow a bit, but once it latches on to the subject, it finishes the job. The detail in the image is truly praise worthy.

However, the annoying aspect of the device's camera app is the watermark it adds in the every photo at the bottom left corner. It is set by default and its bit a tedious job to dig deep in to the setting options to disable it.

As far the front snapper is concerned, it takes decent selfie and also FOV (Field-Of-View) is also appreciably wide enough to get a large group of people to take Wefie in a single frame.

For those unaware, The new Honor 8 Pro boasts two 12MP cameras on the back with f/2.2 aperture, monochrome and RGB lenses, 4K video recording capability, LED flash and auto focus. On the front, it features 8MP front-camera with a wide-angle lens.

Honor 8 Pro: Battery (4.0/5)

Despite boasting slimmer profile compared to the original Honor 8 (7.5mm thickness), the new Pro version (7.0mm thickness) comes with a bigger cell. The former houses a whopping 4,000mAh battery, more than 33 percent compared to the latter.

It is more than enough to get through the whole and also watch HD videos more than eight hours at a stretch. It also boasts of fast charging feature, which is an added bonus.

Honor 8 Pro review: Final Verdict (4/5)

All-in-all, as Honor 8 Pro successfully proves, it belongs to the flagship phone category. Except the EMUI ( not liked only by pure Android enthusiast), its hardware, especially the camera and also the gorgeous design language. Honor 8 Pro is an enticing product and what makes the phone the more compelling for the consumers to buy is its  Rs 29,999 price tag.

Pros:

• Gorgeous design and display
• Excellent camera
• Impressive CPU+RAM+Storage configuration for smooth functioning

Cons:

• Custom EMUI interface, but this is subject to the perception of the consumer. If you are a pure Android enthusiast you might not like the device. But for others who are looking for a decent flagship phone with top-notch hardware and who don't want to burn a big hole in the pocket, Honor 8 Pro is the one to go for. 

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