Appearance and ease of use
Honor 8 Pro has a very thin (only 6.97 mm) all-metal body without plastic inserts on the back. The antennas are placed in external grooves covered with composite material. The body has sleek shapes that are streamlined on all sides; there are no sharp corners or straight edges to be found here.
As for design, at the moment Honor 8 Pro is definitely the brightest and most attractive device in the series, although recently almost all mid- and high-end Huawei smartphones can boast of an interesting appearance.
The device is large, quite heavy, but at the same time very thin, which makes it comfortable to hold in your hands. The metal is not slippery: sandblasting and high-pressure air polishing made the Honor 8 Pro pleasant and smooth to the touch. True, fingerprints on such a surface remain noticeable.
The front panel is completely covered with protective 2.5D glass with sloping edges. There is a front camera, the usual set of sensors, and an LED event indicator is not forgotten.
There are no hardware buttons at the bottom under the screen, navigation buttons are only on-screen. By the way, the set of these buttons, including their number and relative position, can be changed independently in the settings. This is convenient: someone who is used to pressing the return to previous screen button on the left, for example, will take a long time to get used to if it is on the right on another smartphone. Here the user is completely freed from such problems.
On the back side, two camera modules are combined into a single block and covered on top with an oval-shaped protective glass. Nearby is a two-color LED flash of medium brightness.
Just below you can find a round pad of the fingerprint sensor, slightly recessed to make it easier to feel blindly. There are no complaints about the scanner’s operation: recognition is fast and clear, and, as usual, you can also use it to control scrolling, turning, the camera, answer calls and turn off alarms.
Hardware buttons are located on the right side. The one that is responsible for nutrition and blocking has small notches on its surface, making the surface rough. The other button, responsible for adjusting the volume, on the contrary, is completely smooth, making it easier to distinguish them without looking. The keys are quite hard and stick out enough to be easy to find by touch.
The card slot, as usual, is combined: a memory card can be installed in the slot for the second SIM card. Both SIM cards are in Nano-SIM format and are hot-swappable.
Basically, interface elements are located at the bottom end: there is a USB Type-C connector that supports connecting external devices in USB OTG mode, a 3.5 mm headphone jack, the main speaker is also located here, and next to it there is a speaker hole microphone.
At the top end, in addition to the auxiliary microphone used to operate the noise reduction system, you can find a small eye for an infrared transmitter. With its help, Honor 8 Pro can act as a remote control for household appliances; the corresponding program is preinstalled on the smartphone.
Honor 8 Pro is presented on our market in three already familiar color options: black, gold and blue.
Cameras
The front module has an 8 MP sensor and optics with a maximum aperture of f/2.0 without its own flash or autofocus. The role of the flash is played by the bright illumination of the screen itself at the time of shooting; there is a retouching mode for post-processing the portrait. There is no separate manual shooting mode here; adjustment of brightness, contrast and saturation, as well as an exposure compensation scale are always available.
The photosensitivity value can be set manually within the range from ISO 100 to ISO 1600. The quality of shooting does not cause any special complaints: color rendition and sharpness in the images are normal. There are no overexposed or underexposed areas, which indicates a wide dynamic range, and the sensitivity value is not too high even in indoor shots (usually ISO 200).
As for the main camera, this unit on the Honor flagship is different from that on the Huawei flagship (P10). Firstly, the modules here are the same in terms of the number of pixels (2 x 12 megapixels), and secondly, no one talks about the participation of Leica and there is no Summarit H inscription on the lenses (the maximum aperture for both lenses is the same — f/2 ,2).
As before, the RGB sensor is responsible for color reproduction, and the monochrome sensor is responsible for detail. This is how Huawei’s dual cameras differ from the dual cameras of iPhones or Asus smartphones: they do not have any monochrome modules, but use different lenses (wide-angle and telephoto). That is, these are completely different approaches to using two joint camera modules.
The popular mode of the so-called “wide aperture” has been introduced separately, when you can change the depth of field in already taken photographs, achieving the effect of blurring a particular object/plan. This is done, naturally, by software; the aperture number of the optics, of course, remains unchanged, but marketers in such cases write in the specifications about the aperture range as follows: from f/0.95 to f/16.
The menu, as usual, has detailed manual settings for photo and video shooting (shutter speed (from 1/4000 to 30 s), photosensitivity (up to ISO 3200), exposure compensation, white balance, and focusing options). Huawei smartphones always have the maximum number of scene modes, including separate creative modes for shooting light or food.
The camera can shoot video in a maximum resolution of 4K, there is also a shooting mode at 60 fps, regular Full HD @ 30 fps, as well as slow motion. For 4K video, the H.265 codec is used, and for videos at 60 frames per second and the rest, H.264 is used. There is an optical stabilization function for video, but it is not available in the two maximum modes 4K and 60 fps; it appears only in Full HD @30 fps.
- Video No. 1
(47 MB, 3840×2160@30 fps, H.265, AAC) - Video No. 2
(46 MB, 1920×1080@60 fps, H.264, AAC)
Below are examples of photographs with our comments on quality. Anton Solovyov commented on the work of the camera.
 | Good sharpness across the frame and in the plans. |
 | Car license plates are difficult to distinguish. |
 | Good detail even in medium plans. |
 | The camera handles macro photography well. |
 | The text is well done. |
The camera’s HDR mode works well.
| Auto | HDR |
 |  |
The monochrome camera works great. However, it has not changed that much during its existence.
We also tested the camera on a laboratory bench using our method.
| Auto | B&W |
 |  |
Lighting ≈3200 lux. | |
 |  |
Lighting ≈1400 lux. | |
 |  |
Lighting ≈130 lux. | |
 |  |
Lighting ≈130 lux, flash. | |
 |  |
Lighting <1 lux, flash. | |
The camera can be called good. The program does not eat up details, although in some places you can notice small areas of blur and obvious sharpening. However, this is not very noticeable.
In the laboratory test, it can be seen that in light the camera can boast of good detail, but in twilight it is not very good. If you want to preserve more details, you can use a monochrome module: due to its main feature, it is capable of processing almost 100% of the sensor in any scenario. Of course, this is a little mathematical “cheating”, but, nevertheless, such pictures look better.
As a result, the camera can handle many scenarios quite well. Both cameras.
Screen
Honor 8 Pro is equipped with an IPS display with 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass protection. The screen dimensions are 71×127 mm with a diagonal of 5.7 inches. The resolution is 2560 × 1440, the pixel density here is very high, about 515 ppi.
The frame around the screen is narrow, only about 3 mm on the sides and up to 15 mm on the top and bottom, which looks quite elegant on such a large area of the front panel.
The display brightness can be adjusted manually or set to automatic settings based on the ambient light sensor. The AnTuTu test diagnoses support for 10 simultaneous multi-touch touches. It is possible to manually adjust the color tone; you can also use the “blue filter” mode. The screen is compatible with gloves.
A detailed examination using measuring instruments was carried out by the editor of the “Monitors” and “Projectors and TV” sections, Alexey Kudryavtsev. Here is his expert opinion on the screen of the sample under study.
The front surface of the screen is made in the form of a glass plate with a mirror-smooth surface that is scratch-resistant. Judging by the reflection of objects, the anti-glare properties of the screen are better than those of the Google Nexus 7 (2020) screen (hereinafter simply Nexus 7). For clarity, here is a photo in which a white surface is reflected in the switched off screens (on the left — Nexus 7, on the right — Honor 8 Pro, then they can be distinguished by size):
The screen of the Honor 8 Pro is darker (brightness according to photographs is 106 versus 120 for the Nexus 7). The ghosting of reflected objects in the Honor 8 Pro screen is very weak, this indicates that there is no air gap between the layers of the screen (more specifically, between the outer glass and the surface of the LCD matrix) (OGS — One Glass Solution type screen).
Due to the smaller number of boundaries (glass/air type) with very different refractive indices, such screens look better in conditions of intense external illumination, but their repair in the case of cracked external glass is much more expensive, since the entire screen has to be replaced. On the outer surface of the screen there is a special oleophobic (grease-repellent) coating, which is even better in efficiency than that of the Nexus 7, so fingerprints are removed much easier and appear at a lower speed than in the case of regular glass.
When manually controlling the brightness and displaying the white field in full screen, the maximum brightness value was about 560 cd/m², the minimum was 5 cd/m². The maximum brightness is very high, which means, given the excellent anti-glare properties, readability even on a sunny day outdoors should be at a good level.
In complete darkness, the brightness can be reduced to a comfortable value. There is automatic brightness adjustment based on the light sensor (it is located to the left of the front speaker slot). In automatic mode, as external lighting conditions change, the screen brightness both increases and decreases.
The operation of this function depends on the position of the brightness adjustment, with which the user can try to set the desired brightness level in the current conditions. If you do not interfere, in complete darkness the auto-brightness function reduces the brightness to 5 cd/m² (too dark), in an artificially lit office (approximately 550 lux) it sets it to 145 cd/m² (normal), in a very bright environment (corresponds to the lighting on a clear day outdoors, but without direct sunlight — 20,000 lux or a little more)
increases to 560 cd/m² (to the maximum, which is what you need). We were not entirely happy with the result, so in complete darkness we moved the slider slightly to the right, and for the three conditions above, we got the following values: 19, 155 and 560 cd/m² (suitable values). It turns out that the auto-brightness function works adequately and to some extent allows the user to customize their work to individual requirements. At any brightness level, there is no significant backlight modulation, so there is no screen flicker.
This smartphone uses an IPS type matrix. Microphotographs show typical IPS subpixel structure:
For comparison, you can see the gallery of microphotographs of screens used in mobile technology.
The screen has good viewing angles without significant color shift even with large viewing deviations from perpendicular to the screen and without inverting shades. For comparison, here are photos in which the same images are displayed on the screens of Honor 8 Pro and Nexus 7, while the screen brightness is initially set to approximately 200 cd/m², and the color balance on the camera is forced to switch to 6500 K.
White field perpendicular to the screens:
Note the good uniformity of brightness and color tone of the white field.
And test picture:
The colors on the Honor 8 Pro’s screen are clearly oversaturated, and the color balance varies slightly between screens.
Now at an angle of approximately 45 degrees to the plane and to the side of the screen:
It can be seen that the colors have not changed much on both screens, but on the Honor 8 Pro the contrast has decreased to a greater extent due to the strong highlighting of blacks.
And a white field:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC17OKplieY
The brightness at an angle of the screens has decreased (at least 5 times, based on the difference in shutter speed), but the Honor 8 Pro’s screen is still darker. When deviated diagonally, the black field brightens greatly and acquires a reddish tint. The photographs below demonstrate this (the brightness of the white areas in the direction perpendicular to the plane of the screens is the same!):
And from another angle:
When viewed perpendicularly, the uniformity of the black field is very good:
Contrast (approximately in the center of the screen) is high — about 1300:1. Black-white-black response time is 28ms (15ms on, 13ms off). The transition between 25% and 75% gray halftones (based on the numerical value of the color) and back again takes a total of 43 ms. The gamma curve, constructed using 32 points with equal intervals based on the numerical value of the shade of gray, did not reveal any blockage in either the highlights or the shadows.
This device has some kind of dynamic adjustment of the backlight brightness in accordance with the nature of the displayed image. As a result, the resulting dependence of brightness on hue (gamma curve) may not correspond to the gamma curve of a static image, since the measurements were carried out with sequential display of shades of gray on almost the entire screen.
For this reason, we carried out a number of tests — determining contrast and response time, comparing black illumination at angles — (however, as always) when displaying special templates with a constant average brightness, and not monochromatic fields in the entire screen. It should be noted that in this case, the brightness correction is weakly expressed and has a not entirely obvious dependence on the image, but it would be better not to have it at all.
Color gamut is noticeably wider than sRGB:
Looking at the spectra:
We have already seen this in the case of, for example, Sony Xperia Z2 and other mobile devices. Sony indicates that these screens use LEDs with a blue emitter and green and red phosphors (usually a blue emitter and a yellow phosphor), which, in combination with special matrix filters, allows for a wide color gamut.
Yes, and red phosphor apparently uses so-called quantum dots. For a consumer device, a wide color gamut is not an advantage, but a significant disadvantage, since as a result, the colors of images — drawings, photographs and films — oriented to the sRGB space (and the vast majority of them) have an unnatural saturation. This is especially noticeable on recognizable shades, such as skin tones. The result is shown in the photo above.
The shade balance on the gray scale is average, as the color temperature is well above the standard 6500K, but at least the deviation from the blackbody spectrum (ΔE) is mostly below 10, which is considered acceptable for a consumer device. At the same time, color temperature and ΔE change little from hue to hue — this has a positive effect on the visual assessment of color balance.
This device has the ability to adjust the color balance by adjusting the hue on the color wheel.
In the graphs above, the curves are Without corr. correspond to the results without any color balance correction, and the curves Corr. — data obtained after shifting the point to the position indicated in the image above. It can be seen that the change in balance corresponds to the expected result, since at least the color temperature has approached the standard value.
To summarize: the screen has a very high maximum brightness and has excellent anti-glare properties, so the device can be used outdoors without any problems, even on a sunny summer day. In complete darkness, the brightness can be reduced to a comfortable level. It is also possible to use a mode with automatic brightness adjustment, which works adequately.
Also, the advantages of the screen include an effective oleophobic coating, the absence of an air gap in the layers of the screen and flicker, high contrast and excellent uniformity of the black field. The disadvantages are the low stability of black to the deviation of the gaze from perpendicular to the screen plane and an excessively wide color gamut.
