Review of the Huawei Honor 5C smartphone

Play video

To test the “omnivorous” nature of video playback (including support for various codecs, containers and special features, such as subtitles), we used the most common formats, which make up the bulk of the content available on the Internet. Note that for mobile devices it is important to have support for hardware video decoding at the chip level, since it is most often impossible to process modern options using processor cores alone.

According to the testing results, the test subject was not equipped with all the necessary decoders that are needed to fully play most of the most common multimedia files on the network, in this case audio. To successfully play them, you will have to resort to the help of a third-party player — for example, MX Player.

Further testing of video playback was performed by Alexey Kudryavtsev.

We did not find the MHL interface, like Mobility DisplayPort, in this smartphone, so we had to limit ourselves to testing the output of video files on the screen of the device itself. To do this, we used a set of test files with an arrow and a rectangle moving one division per frame (see

“Methodology for testing video signal playback and display devices. Version 1 (for mobile devices)»). Screenshots with a shutter speed of 1 s helped determine the nature of the output of frames of video files with various parameters: the resolution varied (1280 by 720 (720p), 1920 by 1080 (1080p)

Note: If green ratings are given in both the Evenness and Skips columns, this means that, most likely, when watching films, artifacts caused by uneven alternation and skipping of frames will either not be visible at all, or they will not be visible at all. quantity and visibility will not affect viewing comfort. Red marks indicate possible problems with playback of the corresponding files.

According to the criterion of frame output, the quality of playback of video files on the screen of the smartphone itself is good, since frames (or groups of frames) can (but are not required) be output with more or less uniform alternation of intervals and without skipping frames. When playing video files with a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels (1080p) on a smartphone screen, the image of the video file itself is displayed exactly along the border of the screen, one to one in pixels, that is, in the original resolution.

Battery life

The capacity of the removable battery installed in the Honor 5C is the same 3000 mAh as in the Huawei P9 and P9 lite models, as well as in the similar Honor 5X. The battery life in the corresponding modes was also similar to that of the Honor 5X. This is an acceptable level of autonomy for a modern mobile device, no complaints. Testing, as usual, was carried out without using any energy-saving modes, although, of course, the device has them.

Productivity

The hardware here is exactly the same as in Huawei P9 lite. The new 8-core SoC HiSilicon Kirin 650 is made using 16-nanometer technology, and in terms of CPU and GPU performance it is 60% and 100% faster than the Kirin 620, respectively. The SoC includes two clusters of four Cortex-A53 processor cores with frequencies of 2.0 and 1.7 GHz. The Mali T830 MP2 video accelerator is responsible for the graphics. The updated i5 coprocessor is responsible for the operation of all sensors on the device.

The smartphone has 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of built-in flash memory (which leaves the user with less than 10.5 GB of free space). This volume can be increased using microSD cards, but then you will have to remove one of the SIM cards, since there are only two card slots. Oddly enough, there is no possibility of connecting external flash drives to the USB port in OTG mode. By the way, Huawei P9 lite did not have OTG support either.

Most of all, HiSilicon Kirin 650’s results are close to another fresh mid-level platform — MediaTek Helio P10, which runs the Sony Xperia XA smartphone, which is similar in positioning. Only here the graphics are a little worse, but in terms of complex and specialized browser tests there is parity between them.

Based on the testing results, we can confidently say that HiSilicon Kirin 650 is a mid-level platform, not higher. A device with this filling confidently copes with most tasks, and you can also play games. World of Tanks runs at high fps values, heavier games show no higher than 30 fps, but also do not suffer from noticeable slowdowns.

Testing in the latest versions of complex tests AnTuTu and GeekBench 3:

For convenience, we have summarized all the results we obtained when testing the smartphone in the latest versions of popular benchmarks. The table usually adds several other devices from different segments, also tested on similar latest versions of benchmarks (this is done only for a visual assessment of the obtained dry figures).

Testing the graphics subsystem in 3DMark, GFXBenchmark and Bonsai Benchmark game tests:

When testing in 3DMark, the most powerful smartphones now have the ability to run the application in Unlimited mode, where the rendering resolution is fixed at 720p and VSync is disabled (which can cause the speed to rise above 60 fps).

Браузерные кросс-платформенные тесты:

Что касается бенчмарков для оценки скорости движка javascript, то стоит всегда делать скидку на то, что в них результаты существенно зависят от браузера, в котором запускаются, так что сравнение может быть истинно корректным только на одинаковых ОС и браузерах, а такая возможность имеется при тестировании не всегда. В случае с ОС Android мы всегда стараемся использовать Google Chrome.

Результаты теста AndroBench на скорость работы с памятью:

Экран

Смартфон оснащен сенсорным экраном IPS, его физические размеры составляют 65×115 мм, диагональ — 5,2 дюйма. Разрешение экрана составляет 1920×1080, плотность точек равняется 423 ppi. Ширина боковой рамки вокруг экрана составляет примерно 4 мм по бокам. Производитель приводит цифры: экран занимает 74% поверхности передней панели.

Яркость дисплея имеет автоматическую регулировку на основе датчика освещения. Есть и датчик приближения, который блокирует экран при поднесении смартфона к уху. Технология мультитач позволяет обрабатывать 10 одновременных прикосновений. Активировать экран с помощью двойного постукивания по стеклу нельзя.

Подробную экспертизу с использованием измерительных приборов провел редактор разделов «Мониторы» и «Проекторы и ТВ» Алексей Кудрявцев. Приводим его экспертное мнение об экране исследуемого образца.

Лицевая поверхность экрана выполнена в виде стеклянной пластины с зеркально-гладкой поверхностью, устойчивой к появлению царапин. Судя по отражению объектов антибликовые свойства экрана чуть хуже, чем у экрана Google Nexus 7 (2020) (далее просто Nexus 7). Для наглядности приведем фотографию, на которой в выключенных экранах отражается белая поверхность (слева — Nexus 7, справа — Honor 5C, далее их можно различать по размеру):

Экран у Honor 5C немного светлее (яркость по фотографиям 116 против 110 у Nexus 7). Двоение отраженных объектов в экране Honor 5C очень слабое, это свидетельствует о том, что между слоями экрана (конкретнее между внешним стеклом и поверхностью ЖК-матрицы) нет воздушного промежутка (экран типа OGS — One Glass Solution).

Due to the smaller number of boundaries (glass/air type) with very different refractive indices, such screens look better in conditions of strong external illumination, but their repair in the case of cracked external glass is much more expensive, since it is necessary to replace account for the entire screen. On the outer surface of the screen, apparently, there is a special oleophobic (grease-repellent) coating, but its effectiveness is much worse than that of the Nexus 7. However, fingerprints are still removed a little 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 540 cd/m², the minimum was 8 cd/m². The maximum brightness is very high, and given the good anti-glare properties, readability even on a sunny day outdoors should be at an acceptable 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 slider. If it is 100%, then in complete darkness the auto-brightness function reduces the brightness to 8 cd/m² (a bit dark, but after adaptation you can read the screen), in an office illuminated by artificial light (about 400 lux) it sets it to 540 cd/m² (excessively bright), in a very bright environment (corresponding to lighting on a clear day outdoors, but without direct sunlight — 20,000 lux or a little more), the brightness increases to the same 540 cd/m² (to the maximum — this is how it should be); if the adjustment is approximately 50%, then the values ​​are as follows:

8, 170 and 540 cd/m² (suitable values), regulator at 0% — 8, 8 and 540 cd/m² (the second value is greatly underestimated, which is logical). In general, the automatic brightness adjustment function works adequately and allows the user to some extent 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 when viewing large deviations from perpendicular to the screen and without inverting shades. For comparison, here are photographs in which the same images are displayed on the screens of Honor 5C and Nexus 7, while the screen brightness is initially set to approximately 200 cd/m², and the color balance on the camera is forcibly switched to 6500 K. There is a 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 5C screen are a little oversaturated and the color balance is slightly different. As additional tests have shown, an increase in color saturation is achieved by a slight increase in color contrast; a side effect is a decrease in shade gradations closer to pure colors. 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 5C the contrast has decreased to a greater extent due to the strong highlighting of blacks. And a white field:

The brightness at an angle of the screens decreased (at least 5 times, based on the difference in shutter speed), and decreased approximately equally. When deviated diagonally, the black field brightens greatly and acquires a slight purple 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 average:

Contrast (approximately in the center of the screen) is average — about 650:1. Black-white-black response time is 15ms (8ms on, 7ms off). The transition between 25% and 75% gray halftones (by color value) and back takes a total of 25ms. 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, but it would be better not to have it at all.

Color gamut close to sRGB:

The spectra show that the matrix filters mix the components with each other to a moderate extent:

As a result, visually the colors have an almost natural saturation (almost due to increased color contrast). The grayscale balance is average, as the color temperature is above the standard 6500K, but the deviation from the blackbody spectrum (ΔE) is 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. (The darkest areas of the gray scale can be ignored, since color balance there is not very important, and the error in measuring color characteristics at low brightness is large.)

This device has the ability to adjust the color balance by adjusting the hue on the color wheel.

On 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 the color temperature has approached the standard value and ΔE has decreased on average.

However, it doesn’t make much sense to perform the correction. Note that this function is implemented more for show, since there is no numerical reflection of the correction, there is no field for measuring color balance, and the adjustment range is insufficient, since even at the edge of the circle you have to find a compromise between a color temperature close to 6500 K and the minimum value ΔE.

To summarize: the screen has a very high maximum brightness and has good 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.

The advantages of the screen include the absence of air gaps in the layers of the screen and flickering, as well as a color gamut close to sRGB and an acceptable color balance. The disadvantages are an ineffective oleophobic coating and low black stability to gaze deviation from perpendicular to the screen plane. Nevertheless, taking into account the importance of characteristics for this particular class of devices, the quality of the screen can be considered high.