Honor 8 Report 8-21-2016: Top five ways the Honor 8 won, and lost (AMA)

lumivalo

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Hands down, the Honor 8 is a great phone. With a top-line SoC, oodles of RAM, a premium camera, beautiful display, and a flashy design, the Honor 8 is certainly a great phone.

But no phone is perfect, and the Honor 8 is no exception. Here is a list of the top five things I think Honor could have done better:

1. EMUI
EMUI, while improved, is still a major slowdown, with an interface all too similar to that fruit company (which is not inherently bad, but it is built in a way that uses a lot of processing power and battery), and some features which many may deem unnecessary. I personally enjoy much of EMUI, but I think it could be drastically improved, and with EMUI 5.0 around the corner, it's never too late for Honor to make the Honor 8 even better.

2. Battery Life
The Honor 8 has a much larger battery than many of its competitors; even flagship devices like the Samsung Galaxy s7 have a smaller battery capacity, so it would be reasonable to expect it to have battery life better or at least on par with those phones. Sadly, this is not the case. With EMUI and a battery manager that does more harm than good, battery life is, in my opinion, one of the weakest selling points of the phone. However, I do love the direction that Huawei is taking with Quick Charge on the Honor 8, so steps are being made in the right direction. While by no means terrible, the Honor 8 battery could definitely be improved on, and I know that Huawei can do it.

3. Display
Again, the display is great. I love the crispness of it. However, with VR becoming more and more widespread, a higher-resolution display could really have futureproofed this device.

4. Button Placement
Yes, this is a Huawei thing, and they're probably not going to change it. With button placement being on of the only things that the average (read: non Android Central-using) user has to differentiate devices, button placement could really be a sore point of the Honor 8. With the power button uncomfortably below the volume buttons, it can be easy to turn off the device when adjusting volume. Again, not a deal-breaker, and I mostly use the fingerprint sensor to unlock anyway, but having a more user-friendly button layout would be really helpful on the Honor 8.

5. This one's for you!
Do you have something you think the Honor 8 could have done better? Share in the comments below!

That being said, the Honor 8 is a great phone. Here are some of the things that the Honor 8 did great, and that I hope to see repeated in the next Honor phone:

1. Design
Honor blew this one out of the park. With an uber-cool design that matches even flagships like the Samsung Galaxy s7, the Honor 8 is the clear winner in the sub-$400 market for phones, with phones like the OnePlus 3 and the ZTE Axon 7 coming in second. [READ: http://forums.androidcentral.com/honor-8/713184-honor-8-design-discussion-voice-your-opinion.html]

2. Camera
With a camera setup that many suspect is the same as the one in the Huawei P9 (sans Leica branding), the Honor 8 has an incredible camera setup. While it may not have the software image processing of the Samsung Galaxy s7, the Honor 8 takes great pictures, and the dual camera setup even makes up for the lack of optical image stabilization.

3. That Kirin Processor
I have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Kirin processors in the US. HiSilicon (the semiconductor company that is owned by Huawei) makes really great chips, and the Kirin 950 that is in the Honor 8 is no exception. Early benchmarking shows that it has performance just under the Snapdragon 820, which is the processor in the Samsung Galaxy s7, a $700 flagship phone. Although Kirin processors have less developer support than Snapdragon chips, that is soon to change with Huawei releasing the kernel sources for Kirin chips, and an official tool for bootloader unlocks.

4. NFC
Many budget phones choose to leave out NFC, which puts their buyers out of luck with mobile payments. Thankfully, Honor has not made that mistake, and included an NFC chip that can be used with Android Pay, and can also write to NFC tags, making automation one step closer out of sci-fi and into reality. Android Beam, while still relatively obscure, is another NFC feature that I will be welcoming to Honor phones with open arms, following my traumatizing unsatisfactory experience with the Honor 5X and its lack of NFC.

5. For you!
What ways do you think Huawei truly triumphed? Let us know in the comments below!

What do you wish Honor had done better? What did Honor do right? Voice your opinion in the comments below!

As always, feel free to ask me anything about the Honor 8, Honor phones, Huawei, or Android in general.

Happy Androiding!

-Lumi Valo

P.S. You are probably wondering if I had slacked off and not included a fifth opinion simply to reduce work. I assure you that this was not the case; instead, I do this in all reviews and reports that I make, making a statement to OEMs everywhere that no matter how good your phone is, the users are always the most important.
 
Jun 18, 2016
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Add the glass back to the list of cons. Sure, it looks breathtaking, but it makes the phone almost disposable because of how easy it is to break. I doubt replacing a cracked Gorilla Glass back is cheap, and is not something budget-conscious users, whom this device is mainly for, would appreciate.
 

Golfdriver97

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If I had to say one thing, I think Honor got a good package for the price point. All in all, for about $400, the hardware is quite respectable.