Huawei Honor 8X — review, specifications, prices, reviews

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The Honor 8X is a representative of the mid-range smartphone class, and with a slope towards the budget side: the device costs less than 20,000 rubles. And it is beyond this point that manufacturers usually start to save money, and the first thing to go under the knife is all the design frills.

In fact, the design concept here is exactly the same. The base of the gadget is metal, behind it is glass with a beautifully shimmering in the light texture underneath, on the front — a rather compact «monobrow». There are no physical buttons on the front panel, the display occupies its maximum area. Almost 85%, by the way, which is quite good for this price category.

This is the signature style of Huawei and its sub-brand Honor. You can have different attitudes towards it: I know people who are not crazy about it, but personally I like it: it’s positive, bright, but not too pretentious. Three color choices — red, blue, and black for fans of strict classics. The second option, to my personal taste, is optimal.

After my personal Samsung Galaxy S8, I didn’t have to get used to the ergonomics of the Honor 8X at all — the sizes of the bodies are almost the same. But objectively, a gadget with a screen diagonal of 6.5 inches is, of course, quite a shovel. If before you had any 5.5 or 5.2-inch smartphone, then new impressions are guaranteed.

You shouldn’t be afraid of them, though — you’ll get used to them in no time. The more so that the matte frame does not slip in your hand, the glass back panel also does not slip out of your palm, and the volume control and power buttons are conveniently located on the right end, exactly in the place where your thumb rests.

The glass on the back, of course, very quickly gets covered with fingerprints, although on Honor 8X in red color it is not particularly striking. By the way, the glass is quite easy to scratch, so it is better to handle the gadget carefully. Fingerprint scanner works quickly and accurately — during the whole time of testing there were no questions to it.

The only thing that looks doubtful is the solution with two very noticeably protruding camera lenses outside the body. They always cling to the pocket of jeans, or scrape on the table when you put the smartphone on it without a case. And they collect all sorts of dust and other small debris.

Display, sound, and software

As mentioned earlier, the Honor 8X display is 6.5 inches diagonal. It is based on a widescreen IPS matrix with a resolution of 2340 × 1080 pixels. The extra 420 pixels in height come from the on-screen buttons and the framing «bangs» at the top of the screen. The aspect ratio is 19.5:9 and the dot density is almost 400 pixels per inch.

From a subjective point of view, it is a very high quality screen. It has a medium brightness margin (427 cd/m2), but if you turn it up to maximum, the device is absolutely comfortable to use outdoors. The minimum brightness level is also worthy of separate praise — it is comfortable to read e-books in the dark at night.

Keep in mind that the Honor 8X display has a protective film glued to it at the factory. It has an oleophobic coating, but its quality is… B-minus. Plus, the material from which the film is made, is not very strong — on the second day of testing on it it it is unclear why there was a deep long scratch exactly under the «monobrow».

The Honor 8X, like all current year Huawei smartphones, has two color presets — «bright» and «normal». By default, the smartphone works in bright mode, which implies a color space slightly wider than sRGB, gamma around 2.17 and increased color temperature (8 000 K on average with peaks up to 9 000 K).

The average DeltaE deviation of the Color Checker Expanded Palette (grayscale wide range of color tones) is 6.50 (with a normal value of 3.00). This mode actually achieves higher brightness, and colors look more lush and cooler than they really are.

But if you change to normal mode, the colors are close to normal: the gamma is 2.27, the temperature tends to 6500 K, and the curve hardly jumps, and the average DeltaE deviation on the Color Checker scale is 2.90, which already falls within normal limits. We must admit that the Honor 8X display is set up very well — by smartphone standards.

The Honor 8X runs Android 8.1 with EMUI 8.2. Huawei branded shell, as well as the design of the smartphone, can also be treated differently. But it has one indisputable advantage: the presence of a large number of additional settings in the menu.

The Honor 8X itself, however, does not claim to be a phone for lovers of high-quality audio. Yes, there is a headphone jack and aptX support, but no aptX HD. Even the Bluetooth version is only 4.2, not 5.0. And we are not talking about a separate audio chip. However, is it fair to scold a smartphone that costs less than 20,000 rubles for the absence of all this? In our opinion, no.

But there is face unlocking of the smartphone. Without any tricky sensors and infrared illumination, of course, just by the front camera. It works quickly and quite accurately, but the latter is true only if there is enough light. The darker it is around, the harder it is for the «frontal camera» to recognize the user’s face. In general, it is convenient, but there are a lot of questions about the safety of this approach.

«Hardware, performance and wireless communication

Inside the Honor 8X is Huawei’s proprietary HiSilicon Kirin 710 chipset. It is eight-core: four Cortex A73 cores with a maximum frequency of 2.2 GHz, plus as many Cortex A53 cores with a frequency of 1.7 GHz. Mali-G51 MP4 graphics with 650 MHz are also integrated.

According to the specifications, it is easy to guess that this chip is a direct competitor to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 636. In the second case, the graphics subsystem is slightly better, but the GPU Turbo algorithm — also a trademark Huawei feature — brings the graphics to the level where we can talk about at least a fair parity.

There are no complaints about the performance of the system and the behavior of the smartphone during web surfing, watching videos, working with documents, mail or chatting in messengers. The available 4 GB of RAM is absolutely enough for the normal implementation of multitasking.

In games, the device also does not lose face: absolutely all the top mobile projects can be played at least on medium graphics settings. At the same time, the phone does not heat up like an iron, but just gets a little warm. There is, of course, trattling: in the corresponding test in 15 minutes after its start the performance fell by 19% of the declared maximum. The loss is noticeable, but not so critical — we’ve seen worse.

There is a lot of built-in memory: 128 GB inside a smartphone for less than 20,000 rubles is really cool. By the way, not even all flagships can boast of this. And even 64 GB in the junior modification of the Honor 8X for 18 thousand looks great. And that’s despite the fact that the developers didn’t skimp on a separate slot for microSD-card.

The quality of communication is fine: LTE is only Cat. 4, but in real life, you can hardly reach the maximum data transfer speed limit of 150 Mbit/s. Wi-Fi catches signals in both bands and transmits and receives data very quickly.

In the work of

The latest development from Huawei — the Kirin 710 processor — is responsible for the performance of the smartphone. This chipset has replaced the outdated Kirin 659.

The Kirin 710 is made using a 12-nanometer process. It uses four high-performance 2.2GHz ARM Cortex-A73 cores. Plus four power-efficient 1.7 GHz ARM Cortex-A53 cores. The architecture is big.LITTLE. Wi-Fi 802.11ac, LTE Cat.12, Bluetooth 4.2. The type of RAM is LPDDR4.

The Kirin 710 is equipped with the ARM Mali-G51 MP4 gas pedal. It is the first HiSilicon single-crystal platform to support GPU Turbo technology.

Performance in synthetic tests is average. So in the popular test package AnTuTu smartphone scores 140 thousand points. It should be noted that there is no trotting at all. The results of the other synthetic tests can be found in the screenshots below.

In this video you can see how different games work on Honor 8X. Almost all games can be set to maximum graphics settings.

This screenshot shows what sensors are installed on the smartphone.

The smartphone has 4 GB of RAM. At the moment, this amount is enough for all tasks. The memory speeds are shown on the screenshot below.

There are two versions of the smartphone with 64GB and 128GB of permanent memory. I had a 128 GB version (115 GB available), this is enough for absolutely any task, but if you do not have enough space, you can always expand the memory using a memory card.

By the way, the external memory card can be used as the main memory of the smartphone. The memory card itself must be formatted in the smartphone and restart the latter.

The volume of the speaker for calling was quite high, in the peak values were up to 100 dB. The sound is in mono format, at full volume the speaker is not phoned out. In some way to highlight the sound quality is impossible, the usual loud speaker. The conversational speaker is also good volume, the interlocutor heard perfectly. There were no problems with the reception and transmission of speech.

Up to 5 fingerprints can be assigned to the fingerprint scanner. The scanner itself works very quickly.

The scanner itself can act as a multifunction button. For example, you can use the scanner to take pictures or to flip through pictures in the gallery.

The front camera can act as a user ID. Face unlocking is instantaneous. But the most amazing thing is that in total darkness unlocking works too! And it works just as fast as in good light!

The smartphone supports all modern geolocation methods. It was able to «catch» a maximum of 23 satellites, which is a very good indicator.

There is support for two SIM cards of the «nano» format. There is one radio module, there is a call forwarding mode. The smartphone supports 4G (LTE). 4G output is supported by both SIM-cards.

Under load, the internal components of the smartphone heat up very slightly. So the CPU managed to warm up to 43 degrees, and the battery to 39 degrees.

USB-OTG function is fully implemented in the smartphone. In the presence of USB-OTG cable without problems you can connect various peripherals. The vibration level is quite strong.

Extracting information from a non-functioning android

Even if the problem can be solved without a financial investment, by simply reflashing it, users have an important question — how to save the data that is stored in the phone memory. There’s no problem with the memory card: you just have to remove it from the device. But how to save the data from the internal drive? For example, remove contacts.

If you’ve backed up your system or at least turned on Google sync, getting your contacts will be very easy. All you have to do is go to the Contacts app on the Google site to see a complete list of your synced contacts. If you want to transfer them to another device, all you have to do is add your Google account to it.

To make it just as easy to get other information, you should periodically back up Android. Then if your phone reboots and a reset doesn’t help, you can safely reflash it without worrying about the safety of your information.

You can, for example, install custom Recovery and copy the data to the memory card with the «Backup» function.

Honor and huawei engineering menu: how to enter, codes, configuration and calibration of smartphone — huawei devices

Setting up the honor band 5

Honor Band 5 settings can be roughly divided into two parts: profile settings and feature settings. The first is performed in the «Me» tab. Here you set goals for number of steps and weight, as well as specify personal data such as gender, date of birth, height, and weight. This data is needed to calculate activity parameters more accurately.

In the same menu, the following settings are made:

• Turns the automatic data synchronization ON/OFF.
• The automatic device search for pairing is activated.
• Goal notifications (steps) are configurable.
• Heart rate warning and heart rate threshold setting.
• Selects a measure system.
• You set up data synchronization with cloud storage.

To access the wristband feature settings, click the wristband icon in the upper-right corner of the Home tab or select the wristband under My Devices in the Self tab.

The settings for the Honor Band 5 are as follows:

Dials. The previous version of the fitness bracelet currently has a choice of watch faces limited to 4 options. For the Honor Band 5, the choice is much greater — about 40 options.

Huawei TruSleep. Turning this feature on allows you to analyze your sleep state in the most effective way with breath analysis, diagnosis of 6 types of sleep problems and advice on sleep improvement from Harvard Medical School. Without TruSleep turned on, the bracelet also monitors sleep, but in this case you will only see the duration of sleep divided into light and deep phases. Turning TruSleep on increases the wristband’s power consumption.

Reminder. With this option enabled, the bracelet will vibrate every hour to remind you to stretch.

Constant heart rate monitoring. There are several modes of heart rate measurement options:

1. Single measurement. The measurement is triggered from the wristband.
2. Smart mode. The bracelet automatically measures your heart rate depending on your activity.
3. Real-time mode. When you turn on this mode, the tracker measures your heart rate 24/7, providing the most detailed data possible. But, this is the most energy-consuming mode of operation.

Alarm clock. You can set up to 5 alarms in the app, one of which is «smart». The latter monitors the phases of sleep and wakes the owner at the most favorable moment (in the phase of rapid sleep). That is, if you set the alarm for 6 hours, and the alarm clock recorded the phase of rapid sleep at 5:

Do not disturb. When this mode is activated, the screen will not turn on when you raise your hand, and the wristband will not receive notifications about calls and messages. You can set a Do Not Disturb time schedule and select one of the Do Not Disturb scenarios.

Notifications (enable notifications on the bracelet and select applications for which notifications are allowed).

Weather reports. To display the current day’s weather on your wristband, you must activate this function and allow the app to access geodata.

Notification of Bluetooth disconnection. When you activate this feature, the bracelet will notify you by vibrating when the tracker and smartphone are disconnected.

Function Setup. Here you can change the order in which function icons appear on the wristband screen and delete unused ones.

Activation of the screen by raising the wrist.

Rotate to switch. Enabling this feature allows you to switch interfaces by rotating your wrist.

Autoloading of service packs via Wi-Fi.

Software upgrade.

Resetting settings.

Disabling the wristband.

The Secret Codes Huawei Honor.

Phone honor, huawei restarts by itself

Technical characteristics of huawei honor 8x

Managing the honor band 5 bracelet

The tracker is equipped with a touch screen. Commands on the screen are performed by tapping, swiping, and holding your finger on the screen. For convenience, there is a button to return to the main screen at the bottom of the display. The entire control logic can be seen in the image below.

The wristband menu consists of the following items

• Home screen.
• Pedometer. When you tap the icon, 5 options are displayed on the screen:

1. Number of steps
2. Calories
3. Distance
4. Average-High Exercise Time for the current day in minutes.
5. Hours of activity. For example, 8/10 means that you were active for 8 hours and not active for 2 hours.

• Pulse. To start a single heart rate measurement, you press a button and wait a short time. The measurement takes about 45 seconds, and the values are updated every 3 seconds.

• SpO2. The oxygen sensor is one of the main differences between Band 5 and Band 4. Many people think this feature is just a marketing ploy, but that’s not entirely true, and for some users it can actually be useful. Values between 90 and 100% are the norm. If the oxygen content is between 70% and 89%, it is worth resting, and if the value is below 70%, the manufacturer recommends contacting specialists.

It is very easy to check that the sensor really works. It is enough to exhale and hold your breath as long as possible. After a few seconds, the oxygen percentage will start to decrease, and after resuming the breath, the reading will start to go up.

• Sleep (the duration of sleep for the current day). You do not need to activate sleep monitoring manually. The bracelet will record the beginning of sleep and awakening itself.
• Workout menu. Honor Band 5 allows you to monitor 10 types of workouts: outdoor running, treadmill running, walking, outdoor walking, biking, exercise bike, elliptical, rowing machine, swimming, and free workout.

In all modes, you can set goals for steps, distance, and calories burned. If you select an outdoor workout, your smartphone’s GPS is activated. During a workout, the bracelet displays your heart rate, pace, time, and distance, but only two settings are shown on the screen at a time, and you cannot customize their order.

You can start a workout either from the bracelet menu or a special section in the Health app.

• Messages. Up to 10 messages are stored in memory. The bracelet has no problems with Cyrillic, the message is displayed in full and quite readable.
• Settings menu (timer, stopwatch, brightness, smartphone search, dials, battery status, as well as reset, reboot, shutdown, and information about the bracelet.
• AliPay payment. This function can be turned off right away, as it is useless outside of China. Back home, the bracelet can be used to pay for purchases by reading the QR code of the AliPay payment system.

Again, you can rearrange the order of the functions in the application and delete unused functions.