I was going to buy a Huawei brand smartphone last year, but somehow it turned out that I saw a golden one Samsung and changed my mind. And now, after a year and a half, fate brought me together again with this Chinese brand, since my mother wanted my phone and it’s simply impossible to refuse my mother on Mother’s Day

I saw this smartphone in Mediamarkt, at a tempting price of 12222, went home to google reviews, and came back - no longer there, everyone was booked and generally only display cases. As a result, I touched and looked at a bunch of smartphones around this price category (up to 17 thousand, approximately), but the image of the Ascend P6 did not leave me, and the young man also teased me that after the thinness and design of this smartphone, the others seem thick and awkward.

As a result, I purchased it for 12 and a half on a site unknown to me before. And I will say that for the money this is just a miracle phone!

He's incredibly thin, everyone who took it in their hands admired it. By design - the brother of the iPhone, but it looks more elegant, both next to 4 and next to 5. The body is metal, aluminum, painted. According to reviews, the back is scratched, so I try to wear it in a bumper. The screen is 4.7 inches, it’s convenient to surf the Internet and read a book, and play with a toy. I teach him traffic tickets and drive home accounting“without leaving the cash register” - everything is clearly visible and very convenient.

Included:

• USB charging with adapter to socket,
• headset (passable, I had a similar plan with Samsung)
• and a silicone bumper.

Moreover, the bumper is very good quality and it is necessary, since I have not yet found covers for this model on the open market. For now, I also use the film that was originally. It is easily soiled and glossy, but again I haven’t found an alternative yet, only if you cut it out.

The hardware is not bad, the phone is fast, but everything inside is purely Chinese and unknown. Plants against zombies and fruit-ninjas are quite good. There are light and proximity sensors, thanks to them there is "tricks" - You can answer a call by placing the phone to your ear, reject a call by turning it over, silence the call by picking up the phone in your hand, and change your desktop wallpaper by shaking the phone slightly. Plus there is a “work with gloves” mode, an extremely necessary thing for the Russian winter, already tested in practice

The main camera is good, it focuses perfectly in even lighting, and the macro is absolutely perfect. The front one is also quite good, but I didn’t notice from the photo that it is 5 megapixels; I also took pictures with 2 megapixels about the same, if without backlighting. The video is also decent. The downside is the location of the camera; your finger is constantly trying to close it.

Examples of pictures taken under artificial light:

The pre-installed applications are quite satisfactory: music, a browser, a dispatcher, and a radio. WiFi reception is excellent, you can roam around the house with it anywhere. The network signal is a little lower than on my Samsung, but no one complained that I was offline.

In general, I haven’t noticed many downsides yet. Like many people, the headphone jack is not very convenient for me. There is a special recess on the bumper for them, but in this position in a pocket, for example, they do not stick. And I keep a miracle plug at home just in case, since I usually go outside with headphones. Plus, for some unknown reason, one toy crashes from time to time... maybe it’s an application glitch, although it’s an updated version.

Regarding charging, it’s unusual for me that it only lasts for a day, but if you read, make calls, play, surf the Internet on any other smartphone, everything will be the same. at least the owners of both iPhones and Samsung charge their gadgets every day.

Case problem solved

A couple of years ago, Huawei released the P6 smartphone, which boasted a very thin body and a stylish, strict appearance, thanks to which it gained considerable popularity, even despite not the most top-end characteristics. Huawei continues its line and the most relevant at the moment is the flagship Huawei P8, which was presented back in the spring and has finally reached us.

What is this?

Huawei P8 is a thin, stylish smartphone with a fairly compact (by today’s standards) metal body, a “convenient” 5.2-inch screen with FullHD resolution and one of the company’s newest processors, a 64-bit, eight-core HiSilicon Kirin 930.

Why is he interesting?

The predecessor P7 was very mediocre in terms of technical characteristics and was glass on both sides. In the current flagship, Huawei has taken a different approach to the issue: the performance is very close to flagship devices. The case has retained the same recognizable general features: strict shape and thin thickness, while using much more metal, it has become more pleasant and practical.

What is in the box?

The box looks interesting and unusual. It is small in size and there is a plastic plug under the outer cover. Underneath it, edge outwards, like a book on a shelf, the smartphone itself is installed. All accessories are packed in small boxes:

Included: smartphone, power supply, USB cable, headset, tray ejector and instructions.

It's quite unusual to have a headset. IN Lately Manufacturers do not consider it necessary to supply it as a kit. The headset itself is quite simple and does not have high sound quality, which is not surprising: decent headphones will significantly add to the overall cost, at the same time, the user is quite capable of acquiring good headphones on his own.

What is interesting about the appearance?

Only the front panel, a small area near the camera with antennas, and a strip at the bottom of the body are completely glass in the smartphone. The smartphone has a strict rectangular shape with minimally rounded corners. In addition to the screen, there is a front camera, sensors, a speaker and an LED event indicator on the front. There are no buttons under the screen, only on-screen ones:

The indicator is small but noticeable, shifted to the right edge. Its operation can be configured:

The case is really very thin: only 6.4 mm, the ends are beveled and slightly rounded. On the right side there is a power button, a volume rocker and both trays for SIM cards and MicroSD:

The buttons are also made of metal, fit perfectly, do not wobble, are very convenient and pleasant to use:

At the top there is a 3.5 mm headphone output and a microphone for noise reduction:

There are no functional elements provided on the left side:

On the bottom edge there is MicroUSB and two symmetrical grilles. Under one of them there is a conversational microphone, under the second there is an external speaker. Despite the fact that it is the only one in the smartphone, the quality and volume of the sound was a very pleasant surprise:

The back cover is almost entirely metal. There is a thin plastic strip at the bottom and a small insert with a camera module at the top:

13-megapixel main camera with Sony module, optical image stabilization and dual LED flash:

Two separate trays for nanoSIM, one of which can be used for a MicroSD memory card:

The smartphone is superbly built, there’s just nothing to complain about. All parts fit perfectly, nothing wobbles, a lot of metal. Solid, beautiful and practical. At the Huawei presentation mentioned that the P8's body is made from a single piece of aluminum and takes 810 minutes to manufacture. There are four color options, judging by the information on the official website, we will have two available: champagne and titanium gray. We had the first option for review. I think it would be more suitable for a girl, gray is more masculine.

How good is the screen?

The smartphone uses a 5.2-inch IPS display without an air gap with FullHD resolution, 424 ppi pixel density and thin frames. The screen diagonal is very convenient to use and the resolution at which it is impossible to see the pixels. Correct decision: QHD with such dimensions does not make any sense, it only loads the system and drains the battery faster. Huawei has used the front panel of the smartphone effectively: the screen to total area ratio is 78.3%, which is a very good indicator. A film is immediately glued to the screen, the presence of which is practically unnoticed. The viewing angles are maximum, there is also an oleophobic coating of good quality. It’s difficult to say about the brightness reserve in “field” conditions; the weather is not encouraging with an abundance of sun, so in this matter we’ll trust the colorimeter.

Multi-touch up to 10 touches supported:

The colorimeter showed very good results in terms of brightness and contrast: 365.371 cd/m2, black field brightness is 0.396 cd/m2, and contrast is 923:1. The situation with color rendering is quite strange. “To the eye” the colors look bright and pleasant; the hardware measurement showed a rather strong bias towards blue:

If you wish, you can adjust it using this proprietary utility:

Comparison with competitors:

How's the performance going?

The Huawei P8 uses an eight-core 64-bit processor of its own HiSilicon Kirin 930 with two blocks of four Cortex-A53 cores with clock frequencies of up to 2.0 GHz and 1.5 GHz, and a RAM capacity of 3 GB. The built-in flash memory is 16 GB, a little more than 10 GB is available, you can add more using a microSD memory card, but then there will be only one SIM card. A common solution is with a universal tray. A proprietary application is provided to monitor performance and energy consumption:

There are no shell or application brakes, and there cannot be any. Everything “flies”; when idle, there is an average of about 2 GB of RAM free, which is very pleasing; it seems that Huawei approached the issue of optimizing the shell with all responsibility. All modern games also run without problems:

Heating - depending on the application/game. On Need For Speed ​​No Limits, the smartphone remains cold, while Mortal Kombat X loads the system very significantly and the smartphone noticeably warms up evenly over the entire area, although it is still far from reaching the temperatures of the Snapdragon 810. The rest of the hardware is fine: the GPS module quickly finds satellites, and a cold start takes about 20 seconds. As we already wrote, the external speaker is good, both in volume and quality, the vibration alert is also quite powerful, you can feel it in your jeans pocket. As for the sound in the headphones, it is very good and most users will be satisfied with it.

The battery capacity is 2680 mAh, it is difficult to cram more into such a thin body. In fact, no miracles happened; autonomy does not apply to strengths smartphone. In everyday mode (20-30 minutes of calls, an almost constant connection to the network, several photos and about an hour of games), the smartphone survives until the end of the day, video plays for about 9 hours.

For those who want to know more

As we wrote above, Huawei P8 uses a 64-bit HiSilicon Kirin 930 (4x ARM Cortex-A53 1.5 GHz and 4xGPU Mali-T624. It is produced at TSMC facilities using a 16-nm process technology, which is complemented by 3 GB of RAM. In fact, the smartphone can compete with competitors based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 and MediaTek MT6795, although it does not reach Samsung flagships, which are ahead this year thanks to a very successful Exynos 7420. Benchmark results:

Is the interface user-friendly?

The smartphone runs on Android 5.0.1 OS with EMUI 3.1 shell, with future updates to Android 6.0 Marshmallow promised. As mentioned above, the shell is very well optimized and works very quickly.

All applications are located on desktops; there is no separate menu for them. Supported widgets, folders:

The curtain consists of two main tabs: toggle icons (can be edited) and notifications:

The on-screen button panel can be edited; there is a button for calling the top curtain:

Standard application manager with the ability to close all or individual applications and display free RAM:

There is a “winter” mode with increased sensitivity for working with gloves. It is possible to display a control button on the screen by clicking on which navigation buttons appear. Smart screenshot - the ability to take screenshots by double tapping the screen:

Various design themes:

The settings menu is organized quite familiarly:

Various display settings, notification panel, gestures and so on:

A fairly simple standard music player with a minimum of necessary settings:

And a set of all sorts of useful applications, starting with the weather, a voice recorder with various operating modes, a timer, an application manager and ending with exotic things like a magnifying glass, a mirror and a director’s mode, in which you can connect up to 3 devices via Wi-Fi and “edit” in real time video from what everyone shoots:

How are things going with the camera?

The main camera has a resolution of 13 megapixels, uses a Sony module with a four-color RGBW matrix, optical image stabilization, f/2.0 aperture and a dedicated ISP processor. Front-camera- 8 MP. The camera interface is quite clear, but there are also plenty of settings, scattered across different menus. There are modes for burst shooting, HDR, panorama, choosing a good shot, photography with an audio note, and post-focus (the camera takes several photos at once with different focal lengths). You can take a quick photo directly from a locked smartphone: you need to press the volume down button twice. A photo is taken and the time it took to take it is displayed:

The photos come out of really good quality, even in low light and in the evening:

Video in FullHD, specially filmed in the evening. The quality is very good:

Bottom line

It seems that Huawei, when creating the P8, was guided not by the pursuit of incredible resolutions or screen diagonals and sky-high performance, but by the desire to make just an excellent and balanced smartphone, and they succeeded. Huawei P8 boasts a superbly assembled thin metal body, modern powerful (albeit not the most top-end) hardware, a good display, a main camera and a comfortable, well-thought-out shell. Of the controversial issues, we can only highlight the mediocre time battery life and significant heating of the entire smartphone under high loads. The smartphone is about to go on sale for 13,000 UAH.

5 reasons to buy Huawei P8:

• Excellent metal slim body;
• high performance;
• good main camera;
• high-quality screen;
• convenient and fast EMUI 3.1 shell.

1 reason not to buy Huawei P8:

• mediocre battery life.

The Honor X series of smartphones is extremely popular among users of Honor products. It is, perhaps, more successful than other devices of this brand in combining worthy specifications and for real affordable price. At one time, we witnessed the triumph of the 5X model, as well as a completely worthy continuation in the form of Honor 6X. Today it’s time to analyze in detail all the technical capabilities of the next representative of the legendary family - a smartphone called Honor 7X, presented at the end of the year in London.

Main characteristics of Honor 7X (model BND-L21)

• SoC HiSilicon Kirin 659, 8 cores Cortex-A53 ([email protected] GHz + [email protected] GHz)
• GPU Mali-T830 (MP2)
• Operating system Android 7.0, EMUI 5.1
• Touch display IPS 5.93″, 2160×1080, 407 ppi
• Random access memory (RAM) 4 GB, inner memory 32/64/128 GB
• Nano-SIM support (2 pcs.)
• microSD support up to 128 GB
• GSM/GPRS/EDGE networks (850/900/1800/1900 MHz)
• WCDMA/HSPA+ networks (850/900/1900/2100 MHz)
• Networks LTE Cat.6 FDD (B1/3/7/8/20), TD (B40)
• Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n (2.4 GHz)
• Bluetooth 4.1 BLE
• GPS, A-GPS, Glonass
• Micro-USB 2.0, USB OTG
• Main camera 16 + 2 MP, autofocus, f/2.2, video 1080p
• Front camera 8 MP, f/2.0, fixed. focus
• Proximity and light sensors, magnetometer, accelerometer, gyroscope, step counter
• Fingerprint's scanner
• Battery 3340 mAh
• Dimensions 157×75×7.6 mm
• Weight 165 g

Contents of delivery

Honor 7X is supplied for sale in a laconicly designed box made of hard matte blue cardboard with a white logo.

Our test device included standard Charger without support for fast charging (5V 2A), USB cable and card eject tool.

Appearance and ease of use

In design, Honor 7X is more reminiscent of a new product from the Huawei Nova 2 series than the flagship of its Honor 9 line. If the most noticeable detail of the case design is the luxurious glass back panel with a mirror backing, then here the case is completely made of brushed metal.

At the same time, on Huawei Nova 2, our hero looks almost like two peas in a pod, with the exception of small touches, such as the shape of the grooves for the antennas and the location of the flash. There is also no bezel around the round fingerprint scanner area, and this is rather a plus. But straight grooves for antennas without curly bends are more of a disadvantage, since they visually make the design rough and straightforward.

There are no miracles; a smartphone with a six-inch display cannot be elegant. The Honor 7X body is large, heavy, and the hard matte metal surfaces glide very well in dry palms, everything is as usual. Fingerprints are also surprisingly visible on these matte surfaces.

The protective glass has sloping edges and an LED event indicator is installed above the screen. Here, by the way, there are no angular curves of the screen itself, like many other “full-screen” devices with displays that have increased from 5.5 to 6 inches due to smaller frames.

The frame around the screen has not gone away; this is not a “frameless” option, as such “full-screen” smartphones are now called. From the sides it sometimes even turns out to be wider, but the segments at the top and bottom of new products with 18:9 screens have narrowed to about a centimeter or even more, this is a fact, and rather gratifying. But such smartphones do not have a fingerprint scanner or hardware touch buttons under the screen.

The fingerprint scanner has been moved to the back, its round area is located next to the eyes of the dual camera. These elements have the same diameter and are placed symmetrically, but due to the fact that both cameras protrude, it still looks worse than if the modules were combined behind a single glass, like the iPhone Plus series, For example. There is also a single LED flash on the back. It is curious that these three elements are located strictly along the groove with the antennas.

The lenses protrude beyond the surface, but the area of ​​the back wall is so large (and it does not have bevels) that the smartphone lying on the table almost does not sway when you touch the screen. It is quite possible to work with a smartphone in this way.

You can install two SIM cards in your smartphone (both Nano-SIM formats) or replace one of them with a microSD memory card. Hot swapping of cards is supported.

The mechanical buttons on the right side are large, comfortable, and there are no complaints about them.

At the top end you can find only a small hole for the auxiliary microphone, and the 3.5 mm audio output for headphones, the conversation microphone and the main speaker are located at the bottom end.

The smartphone is available for sale in three colors: black, blue and gold.

Screen

Honor 7X is equipped with an IPS display covered with 2.5D glass with sloping edges. The physical dimensions of the screen are 68x136 mm with a diagonal of 5.93 inches, aspect ratio 18:9. At the same time, the screen resolution is 2160x1080 with a pixel density of about 407 ppi. The frame around the screen is approximately 4 mm thick on the sides, and a centimeter thick on the top and bottom.

It is possible to use automatic brightness adjustment based on the operation of the ambient light sensor. Multi-touch tests diagnose support for 10 simultaneous touches.

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 slightly worse than those of the Google Nexus 7 (2013) 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 7X, then they can be distinguished by size):

The Honor 7X's screen is a little brighter (brightness according to photographs is 123 versus 116 for the Nexus 7). The ghosting of reflected objects in the Honor 7X 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 better in efficiency than that of the Nexus 7. Therefore, 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 490 cd/m², the minimum was 2.5 cd/m². The maximum brightness is high, and given the good anti-glare properties, screen 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; the user can use it to try to set the required brightness level in the current conditions. We slightly increased the brightness in complete darkness and got the following result: in complete darkness, the auto-brightness function reduces the brightness to 20 cd/m², in an artificially lit office (approximately 550 lux) it sets it to 190 cd/m², 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 490 cd/m². We were quite pleased with the result. It turns out that the auto-brightness function works adequately and 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 matrix. The microphotographs show a 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 photographs in which identical images are displayed on the screens of Honor 7X 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 a test picture:

The colors on the Honor 7X screen have a natural saturation; the color balance between the Nexus 7 and the tested screen is slightly different.

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 7X the contrast has decreased to a greater extent due to the greater highlighting of blacks.

And a white field:

The brightness of the screens at an angle decreased (by at least 5 times, based on the difference in shutter speed), but in the case of the Honor 7X the drop in brightness is slightly greater. When deviated diagonally, the black field is lightened to a medium degree and acquires a 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 good:

The contrast (approximately in the center of the screen) is high - about 1600:1. The response time for the black-white-black transition is 22 ms (10 ms on + 12 ms off). The transition between halftones of gray 25% and 75% (based on the numerical value of the color) and back takes a total of 37 ms. The gamma curve, constructed using 32 points with equal intervals based on the numerical value of the shade of gray, did not reveal a blockage either in the highlights or in the shadows. The exponent of the approximating power function is 2.09, which is slightly lower than the standard value of 2.2. In this case, the real gamma curve almost does not deviate from the power-law dependence:

We did not detect the presence of dynamic adjustment of the backlight brightness in accordance with the nature of the displayed image, which is very good.

Color gamut is close to sRGB:

The spectra show that the matrix filters moderately mix the components with each other:

As a result, visually the colors on this screen do not differ from natural ones. The balance of shades on the gray scale is good, since the color temperature is not much higher than the standard 6500 K, and the deviation from the blackbody spectrum (ΔE) is below 10, which is considered an acceptable indicator 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.

The curves in the graphs above 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 make the correction. Note that this function is implemented more for show, since there is no numerical reflection of the correction and there is no field for measuring color balance.

To summarize: the screen has a 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 an air gap in the layers of the screen and flicker, an effective oleophobic coating, good color balance and a color gamut close to sRGB. In general, the quality of the screen can be considered high.

Camera

The front camera has a sensor with a resolution of 8 megapixels. The lens has an f/2.0 aperture and fixed focus. The shooting quality here is average; there’s nothing particularly praising the Honor 7X’s selfie camera. Pictures taken in good lighting on the screen of the smartphone itself still look quite good, but when you start to look at the detail of pictures taken indoors, you can see that it is low, the matrix is ​​noisy and its sensitivity is still not enough.

The rear camera here is double, but simpler than that of Nova 2. The main module has a 16-megapixel sensor, and the auxiliary one is only 2 megapixel. The camera is equipped with an f/2.2 aperture lens, there is no stabilization.

There is no intelligent technology scene recognition, as in older models, but everything else is present, including a “wide aperture” mode for blurring the background. Naturally, there is also a Pro manual settings mode. In manual mode, you can adjust white balance, focus, photosensitivity, and exposure compensation.

The camera can shoot video in a maximum resolution of 1080p at 30 fps. There are no higher modes, no stabilization. The shooting quality is acceptable, not bad for this level of smartphone, but there’s nothing particularly to praise it for. Sound is recorded with high quality using sensitive microphones; the noise reduction system does not introduce noticeable distortion.

• Video No. 1 (44 MB, 1920×1080@30 fps, H.265, AAC)
• Video No. 2 (32 MB, 1920×1080@30 fps, H.265, AAC)

The camera turned out good. There are sometimes areas of blur at the edges, but overall the detailing even in distant plans is quite decent. In low light, the camera generally copes well. She is also good at shooting text and macro. In the pictures you can find traces of noise reduction and sharpening, but none of this is noticeable. As a result, the camera can be fully recommended for documentary and art photography.

Telephone and communications

Communication capabilities of Honor 7X include support for data transfer at speeds of up to 300 Mbps in LTE Cat.6 networks. In the urban areas of the Moscow region, the device behaves confidently, does not lose connection in places where reception is uncertain, and quickly restores the connection. Bluetooth has version 4.2, one Wi-Fi band is supported (2.4 GHz), there is no NFC module.

The navigation module works with GPS (with A-GPS), with the domestic Glonass and the Chinese Beidou. During a cold start, the first satellites are detected within tens of seconds, and the positioning accuracy is high. There is a built-in magnetic field sensor for compass operation.

The phone application supports Smart Dial, that is, while dialing a phone number, a search is immediately carried out by the first letters in contacts. Methods for setting up sorting and display of contacts are standard for the Android interface; there is a blacklist for unwanted contacts. There is a function for automatically recording telephone conversations from the line. Medium power vibration alert.

The smartphone cannot support both SIM cards in 4G mode at the same time in active standby mode. Here, one SIM card (not the one selected for data transfer in 4G) will always work while waiting only in 2G. The interface does not allow you to select a specific SIM card in advance for sending SMS - only for voice calls and data transfers (this is a standard situation for all Huawei smartphones). The cards operate in Dual SIM Dual Standby mode, there is only one radio modem.

Software and multimedia

The software platform used is Android OS, not the latest version 7.0, and Huawei's own shell, the latest version EMUI 5.1 - everything is the same as in other modern devices from the manufacturer. Naturally, there is the possibility of updating over the air (OTA).

The interface is designed in a familiar corporate style. There is a virtual button, a multi-window mode, the ability to reduce the keyboard and the working area of ​​the screen in size. Pre-installed applications, as usual, there are many, some of them are useful, others are clearly unnecessary. There are several of Huawei's own utilities, including a useful phone manager responsible for system monitoring, memory cleaning, virus scanning and protection, spam blocking, etc.

As for the so-called “full screen mode”, which appeared due to the changed aspect ratio and, accordingly, additional space on the screen, it is not occupied by default, gaping with black bars. It is possible to enter the settings and select the option of using “full screen mode” for each application, and after rebooting the application will be displayed in full screen.

To listen to music, you use, as usual, your own audio player with a familiar interface. Previously, it did not have any manual settings at all, and in new versions a Huawei Histen audio effects section has appeared, in which you can turn on the 3D sound effect and choose from equalizer presets - but all this becomes available only with connected headphones. In any case, both in headphones and through the speaker, the smartphone sounds quite satisfactory; the Honor 7X does not offer anything special in terms of sound, but the sound cannot be called low-quality.

The microphones have good sensitivity, the voice recorder is quite suitable for any task. There is a built-in FM radio, and this is good news.

Performance

The Honor 7X hardware platform is based on the HiSilicon Kirin 659 SoC. The chip configuration includes eight ARM Cortex-A53 processor cores in two clusters with a maximum frequency of 2.36 and 1.7 GHz. The SoC is made using a 16-nanometer process technology. The ARM Mali-T830 (MP2) video accelerator with support for the OpenGL ES 3.2 graphics API is responsible for graphics processing. The amount of RAM is 4 GB, the built-in flash memory in the case of our copy is 64 GB. Of these, 2.48 GB of RAM is free and only 48.5 GB of storage space, usually more than 50 GB. There are modifications of Honor 7X with a different amount of built-in memory.

It is also possible to expand the memory by installing microSD cards, but applications are not installed on the memory card. You can connect external flash drives in USB OTG mode.

SoC HiSilicon Kirin 659 is a relatively new solution designed for mid-range smartphones and tablets. The SoC is quite productive, at the level of Qualcomm Snapdragon 625; in the AnTuTu test, the hero of the review demonstrates a quite decent 60K-plus points, this is a confident average level.

Kirin 659 provides the system with sufficient performance and in real scenarios allows the smartphone to cope with any modern tasks. There are no problems with games either, all the games we tested, including Injustice 2 and Mortal Kombat X, run without any slowdowns; Lineage 2 can also be played quite comfortably without delays. However, the smartphone is designed more for today; there is no noticeable reserve of power for years to come.

Testing in comprehensive tests AnTuTu and GeekBench:

For convenience, we have compiled all the results we obtained when testing the smartphone in the latest versions of popular benchmarks into tables. The table usually adds several other devices from different segments, also tested on similar latest versions benchmarks (this is done only for a visual assessment of the obtained dry figures). Unfortunately, within the framework of one comparison it is impossible to present the results from different versions of benchmarks, so many worthy and current models- due to the fact that they once went through an “obstacle course” on previous versions of test programs.

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

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).

Browser cross-platform tests:

As for benchmarks for assessing the speed of the javascript engine, you should always make allowance for the fact that their results significantly depend on the browser in which they are launched, so the comparison can only be truly correct on the same OS and browsers, and this is possible during testing not always. For Android OS, we always try to use Google Chrome.

AndroBench memory speed test results:

Thermal photographs

Below is a thermal image rear surface obtained after 10 minutes of battery testing in the GFXBenchmark program:

It can be seen that the heating is more localized in the upper part of the device, which apparently corresponds to the location of the SoC chip. According to the heat chamber, the maximum heating was 39 degrees (at an ambient temperature of 24 degrees), which is not very much.

Playing 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. Also, you shouldn’t expect a mobile device to decode everything, since the leadership in flexibility belongs to the PC, and no one is going to challenge it. All results are summarized in a table.

Further testing of video playback was performed 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 “Method for testing video 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) and 3840 by 2160 (4K) pixels) and frame rate (24, 25, 30, 50 and 60 fps). In the tests we used the MX Player video player in the “Hardware” mode. The test results are summarized in the table:

4K/30p

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

According to the frame output criterion, the quality of playback of video files on the screen of the smartphone itself is good, since in most cases 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. The brightness range displayed on the screen corresponds to the standard range of 16-235: perhaps in the shadows a couple of shades merge with black, but in the highlights all gradations are displayed.

Battery life

The non-removable battery installed in the Honor 7X has a capacity of 3340 mAh - this is a good amount even by today's standards. And with such a battery, the smartphone demonstrates results that are quite consistent with its level in autonomy tests. Considering the large screen with high resolution, the results are quite decent.

In real life, the device behaves the same way as most modern smartphones: it confidently survives until the evening charge, but you can’t count on more.

Testing has traditionally been done at normal power consumption levels without using power-saving features.

Continuous reading in the Moon+ Reader program (with a standard, light theme) at a minimum comfortable brightness level (brightness was set to 100 cd/m²) with auto-scrolling lasted 12 hours until the battery was completely discharged, and when continuously watching videos in high quality (720p) with At the same brightness level via a home Wi-Fi network, the device operates for about 10 hours. In 3D gaming mode, the smartphone can work for no more than 5 hours.

Honor 7X does not support fast charging, from complete network adapter(2 A 5 V) the smartphone was charged for 2 hours 20 minutes with a current of 1.5 A at a voltage of 5 V. The smartphone also does not support wireless charging.

Bottom line

Prices Huawei smartphone Honor 7X start at €299 (or £269). In Russia, the device began to be sold in official retail on December 5; the recommended retail price for a modification with 64 GB of flash memory is currently 17 thousand rubles. For a nice smartphone from a popular brand with an attractive appearance, a practical all-metal body, a high-quality 6-inch screen with high resolution and a narrow frame, as well as quite decent hardware with good performance and support for LTE Cat.6 with high data transfer speeds, this is a completely reasonable price. The smartphone does not shine with shooting quality, but it would be stupid to expect this at such a price. We can also negatively highlight the lack of NFC (and therefore Android Pay). Otherwise, Honor 7X turned out to be a completely worthy successor to the glorious family of Huawei Honor in general and the Honor X line in particular.

In the spring, Huawei pleased fans with the new flagship P9 Plus, which received two cameras with lenses seemingly made by Leica. It has become a truly powerful and beautiful top-end device, but has a rather high price. In April, Huawei Honor 5C was presented, which received the same design, but differed in more modest hardware. The cost of a smartphone is now about 200 dollars, and in China it can be found for 160.

The device is also known as Honor 7 Lite, under which it is sold in some regions. There is also a version of Huawei GT3, which differs only in the presence of a fingerprint scanner. Its price is about 250 dollars. Interestingly, it is sold in Ukraine Huawei GT3 , and in Russia, some EU countries, as well as China and its neighboring countries - Honor 5C. This is due to the fact that the Honor sub-brand is officially represented only in about three dozen countries. The differences between the models are insignificant, but the review is devoted primarily to the Huawei Honor 5C version.

Specifications Huawei Honor 5C

According to the specified characteristics, the device is quite consistent with its price. On paper this is a strong average, but how things stand in real life - read below.

Design, case materials, dimensions and weight

In appearance, Huawei Honor 5C resembles the flagship P9 Plus. It is made in a metal case with the same style. Available in silver, gold and black/gray color options. The dimensions of the smartphone are 14.7x7.4 mm, thickness is 8.3 mm, and the device weighs 156 grams. Considering the screen size, the performance does not stand out compared to similar models from other companies.

The front panel of the smartphone does not have hardware touch keys - they are located on the screen. Above the display there is a speaker, a sensor eye and a front camera lens. A chrome frame surrounds the perimeter of the screen. Back panel contains two plastic inserts, an almost square camera lens (also with a shiny edge) and a flash. The smartphone differs from its “big brother” in the location of the lens and the absence of a glossy black insert under it.

The side edges resemble metal, but are made of ribbed plastic. At the bottom there is a speaker and a MicroUSB port, at the top there is a 3.5 mm jack. On the left side there is a card slot, on the right there are volume control and power/lock buttons.

CPU

The smartphone chipset is HiSilicon Kirin 650, the company’s own development. It is equipped with eight Cortex A53 cores, grouped into 2 clusters: 4 2 GHz cores and 4 – 1.7 GHz. In terms of processor, the chip's closest competitors are MediaTek Helio X10/P10 and Snapdragon 616. However, the hero of the review the better, which is made using the 16 nm process technology (versus 28 m). The core power is enough for any everyday tasks.

Huawei Honor 5C graphics – Mali T830, consisting of two clusters. The solution is not the fastest, but modern. Even heavy games will run on medium settings. In AnTuTu 6, the chipset scores about 50 thousand points.

Memory

The smartphone's RAM capacity is 2 GB, LPDDR3 generation. The amount of RAM used at start is about a gigabyte. 800-1000 MB of RAM remain available to the user. This is enough for normal multitasking, since its operation depends more on optimizing memory management than on the space that is empty at the start. If necessary, programs will receive more RAM.

The drive in Huawei Honor 5C has a capacity of 16 GB, approximately 10 GB of which remains available for downloading data. There is a slot for a MicroSD memory card up to 256 GB, but it is combined with the second SIM card slot.

Battery

The smartphone is equipped with a non-removable battery with a capacity of 3000 mAh. Considering the new technical process (and also remembering the Galaxy J7 2016, the chipset of which is created according to 14 nm standards), we were hoping for excellent battery life. But, unfortunately, the optimization of power consumption of the Huawei Honor 5C is worse than that of the Korean. Therefore, the device demonstrates nothing more than just good battery life.

In games, the smartphone will be discharged in about 5 hours. Watching a video from YouTube will take 6-7 hours, and from a memory card (at auto brightness) – about 10 hours. With moderate use, you can count on 2 days of battery life. The complete charger has a current of 1 A, replenishing the charge lasts up to 3 hours.

Cameras

The smartphone is equipped with a 13-megapixel main camera from an unknown manufacturer. It was not possible to clarify its detailed characteristics; it is only known that the aperture opens up to f/2. In terms of shooting quality, the camera does not stand out much from others Chinese smartphones this price category (Meizu M3, Xiaomi Redmi 3, etc.). During the day, the images are bright, the dynamic range is wide, and the detail is average. In the evening, the lack of light affects the quality, noise, artifacts, and blurriness appear.

The front camera has a resolution of 8 MP, its aperture is f/2. It is equipped with a fixed focus, so it takes excellent photographs at close range, but blurs the background. The device records video in FullHD at 30 frames per second.

Screen

The smartphone is equipped with a 5.2-inch IPS display with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. It has excellent color rendering, natural color temperature and a good level of brightness. Viewing angles are good: when tilted, the backlight becomes duller, but the shades are not distorted. The sensor is covered with glass with a low-quality oleophobic layer (prints remain); it is mounted using OGS technology (closely glued to the matrix).

Communications

Huawei Honor 5C has two SIM card slots, both of Nano format. One of them is combined with a MicroSD connector. Support for networks of all current generations is declared; in countries where smartphones are officially sold, there will be no problems with 3G and 4G. Wi-Fi is designed only for 2.4 GHz networks, Bluetooth complies with version 4.1, and NFC is also present on board. Navigation works with GPS, GLONASS and BDS satellites.

Sound

The smartphone has only one speaker, despite the presence of two symmetrical grilles at the bottom. Behind the second is the main microphone. The sound quality is typical for a budget phone, the volume is average, and the range is poor in bass. In headphones, the playback quality is also average, nothing more. The sound is clear, with bass, but not up to par with models with a DAC.

operating system

Huawei Honor 5C runs Android 6 OS with Emotion UI 4.1 add-on. The operating system works stably, but some firmware may have problems, such as rare slowdowns or the kernel refusing to go to sleep (which causes about 10% of the charge to be lost overnight).

Conclusion

In addition to the variations mentioned at the beginning, there are several more revisions of the smartphone. For China, Huawei Honor 5C is produced with a fingerprint scanner (like the GT3), but with NFC (the GT3 does not have it). In addition, residents of the Middle Kingdom can choose between 2/16 and 3/32 GB of memory. This situation is typical for the Huawei company, which adapts smartphones for different markets in such a way as to make a good markup and maintain competitiveness. However, you should remember: when buying a variation for another country, you may be left without 3G or 4G due to differences in frequencies.

Pros:

• high-quality and attractive case;
• good front camera;
• good screen;
• NFC.

Flaws:

• damp OS;
• poor oleophobic coating.

Huawei Honor 5C is optimal for people for whom 5″ is not enough, but 5.5″ is too much. In this case, it will be a good alternative to the Meizu M3 series and third generation Xiaomi Redmi products. It will also suit people who use contactless payments and other functions that require NFC. These competitors simply don’t have it. The smartphone is universal, so it will appeal to those who use the device in mixed mode, without focusing on individual tasks (photos, music, games, movies, etc.).