Android is flooding with manufacturers. There’s HTC, Motorola, Samsung and lot many others who makes devices that runs Android. There’s this one brand who have been doing a great work recently that it caught my attention very much. Huawei has been making Android powered devices for a while now. And distinguishes them from others is that they have some softwares of their own that can finally address some of the glitches and missing features that we’ve been waiting for Google to Address. So is the case with hardware. Before we jump into details lets first take quick look at the device with this video below.
Design And Hardware:
The Huawei U8860 or simply the Huawei Honor is a new phone from Huawei that falls to the mid-high end range segment. The phone features a 4 inch touchscreen with a resolution of 480×854 resolution. The screen has approximately 245ppi which is on par with most phones of the same segment. We found the display pretty decent. However, at some occasions the screen demanded harder taps to launch apps or do any operation. Just below the display you’ll notice the touch sensitive buttons. One each for Menu, Home, Back and Search. Its a little unusual to see four touch buttons on an Android phone as these days we only see three on most phones. The search button is no longer seen anywhere. However, some users may find this very helpful as search is just a tap away.
The phone’s body is fully plastic. However, the phone does not give you any cheap plastic feeling while holding it in your hands. Huawei has wisely designed a rugged back to the phone that not only gives a good grip in hands but decreases the chances of getting scratches.
Talking about the back side of the phone, you will find the 8MP camera with autofocus and LED flash on top. Right next to it, you can see the speaker which is decently loud without any distortions at high volumes. Just below the camera and the speakers you’ll see the Huawei logo and towards the bottom another Google logo.
On the left side we have the volume rockr buttons, the right side is pretty much empty with no ports or buttons, at the bottom we have the micro USB port for connecting the cable to computer and for charging via the AC outlet. The top side has the headphone jack and the Sleep/Wake button.
On the inside, there’s a 1.4Ghz processor with Adreno GPU 205 which gives a significant boost to the graphics in games and apps, the 512MB may not standard for phone in this range. But you’ll never feel any lag.The inclusion of a 4GB ROM besides 1GB internet storage and the support for MicroSD cards upto 32GB is unbelievable. You’ll never run out of space from now on for a long time. Then of course it also has all sorts of connection support like WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth, GPS, FM Radio etc. The phone also has an 8MP camera on the front and VGA camera at the back.
But, what makes this phone stand out from others is the battery. Android is well known for its high battery consumption. Most manufacturers are trying to include large batteries to the phone so that one can use the phone for an entire day before charging it again. Phones like Motorola RAZR MAXX and Samsung Galaxy SIII has been powered with a 3300mAh and 2100mAh battery respectively to give you a longer battery life. However, one has to pay hefty price to enjoy this. While none of the companies have bothered to bring the same benefit customers in the mid range segment, Huawei has come forward with the Honor by powering it with 1930mAh. That’s right, its huge. We found the battery to last quite long.
Software:
As far as software is concerned, we have Gingerbread onboard with Ice Cream Sandwich update that’s about to release soon. But the question is, what more ? And Huawei seems to have a big answer there. While Android has several solutions for a back up solution, the best one demands you to root or hack the phone which may not be everyone’s cup of coffee. It’s surprising that Google being the king of web haven’t found a simple online solution yet to back up phone data to web which can be tied to one’s registered email address. Huawei has a cloud service of their own called the Cloud+ service that does an amazing job at data back up. It is obviously a service exclusive to Huawei devices. The Cloud+ service is a collation of many services like Cloud+ Drive, Message+, Streams, Phone Finder, SNS, Contacts Integration etc.
Cloud+ Drive:
The Cloud+ drive offers extra space on the cloud to store your movies, songs and photos or even documents. The gallery is intelligently integrated with the Cloud+ service. So when you get a single view of what’s in the cloud and phone in one place which is simply brilliant.
Cloud+ Synchronization And Back Up:
Cloud+ automatically syncs your contacts in your phone to cloud instantly and pushes the update to your other Huawei smartphone or tablet. The Cloud+ Drive gives you 16Gb on free online storage that can back up your data like photos, videos, music or any documents that are on your phones. The backup can be set to happen instantly via 3G or WiFi or you can schedule them to happen at any time you wish. All you need to enjoy this service is a Huawei smartphone/tablet and a Cloud+ account which you’ll be guided through to make during your initial boot up on your Huawei device.
Find My Phone:
You must be familiar with the famous Find My iPhone service from Apple. Well, now you can also find and recover your Huawei phone if lost as long as the phone is not wiped or turned off. You can login to hicloud.com and use your cloud account to track your phone. You can also wipe the data remotely or display emergency messages on the phone directly from the web.
Apart from the Huawei exclusive apps, you will Android pretty much the same and similar to the default UI. The software runs pretty smooth on the phone be it the menu navigation or individual app performance.
Camera:
Coming to camera, Huawei Honor does a decent job with its 8MP camera. We took the camera for a spin at the beach and we came up with the following samples. We also a shot a 720p video. Unfortunately, the Huawei Honor does not do videos in 1080p yet. However, we’re told that the feature will be soon added. Still photographers will be glad to know that the camera has a built in HDR feature. The HDR did a great job from our tests. We’ve uploaded a couple of pictures here. The first slideshow embedded below has all the pictures taken normal clarity while the second show that’s below it has all the pictures taken with HDR on. We’ll let you be the judge here. Check them out.
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To ensure you watch it the full quality, do switch to the 720p version. As you can see we’ve shot the video during a significantly low light time of the day and yet the phone has captured the scene pretty well. There isn’t a lot of editing functionality within the settings, but you can surely reply on the Play store for that.
Conclusion:
Huawei Honor has been a great device to use. With its simple design, exclusive apps and services from Huawei, the whopping 1930mAh and the fact that whole package is available for just Rs 19,990/-, this is something incredible. The phone may have some pit falls in some areas, but if you consider the whole package you are getting way more that what competitors has to offer. Huawei was one of the companies I never considered previously, but the progress they’ve made and the efforts they are putting in to bringing great Android phones is attracting my attention. It may be easy to make a high end device and give it a hefty price tag, but the actual talent is in bringing great packages for small price. Honor is the perfect example of that. The phone is available in most offline and online stores across the country.