The Chinese make almost every single part for handset vendors and this does not stop them to venture out to make their own mobile devices. Huawei for instance, has become one of the well known Chinese handset makers.
They have launched some pretty decent smartphones and are doing well. The company has also started venturing abroad and marks India as one of their biggest markets. They had recently launched the Honor smartphone in India, and we got our hands on the device.
The Android smartphone is not a bad deal for the price it is being offered, and it does have some decent specifications. It has a 1.4GHz single-core processor, Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) though we have updated it to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), a 4.0 inch display and an 8MP camera at the back.
PACKAGING
The Honor comes in a pretty standard packaging including the USB data cable, a wall charger with a USB port, and a pair of headphones.
BODY AND DESIGN
The handset is pretty simple and has a clean design. Somehow the looks seem to be inspired from the Galaxy S II, but we aren’t complaining.
There’s the 4 inch display which is bright, and the size is also perfect as it isn’t too wide or big to use with one hand. There’s the usual four Android capacitive buttons right below the display. The volume control rocker is on the left and the power/sleep button at the top with the 3.5mm audio jack.
The microUSB is at the bottom. The smartphone has a grippy plastic back cover thanks to the speckles and the back also hosts the 8MP camera with LED flash and the speaker.
Inside there is a 1930mAh battery which seems to provide a good backup and of course slots for your SIM and microSD card.
ANDROID UI
The handset comes with Android 2.3 Gingerbread, but we managed to update it to Android 4.0 ICS. The UI is pretty simple and is a blend of stock Ice Cream Sandwich and a skin on top of it. You can keep a simple ICS look or go in for 2 other themes which change the icons a bit.
The app drawer is the same stock one as we have seen on Ice Cream Sandwich on the Galaxy Nexus. The lock screen not only unlocks your handsets, but also has shortcuts to your calling app, messages and camera app. You can also control your music from the lockscreen. There is also a dedicated backup app that allows you to backup your data and apps.
Rest is pretty much your Android standard stuff.
Surprisingly the UI doesn’t lag all that much and is pretty smooth. We did a little testing on the benchmark testing as well and the results were decent. The handset fell between the Nexus S and the Evo 3D which is seems good enough.
MULTIMEDIA
The handset is blessed with a nice 8MP camera that can take decent shots and can make videos in 720p resolution, yes there is no 1080p recording.
There are two music players included with the handset one stock from ICS and one from Huawei which looks nice. The performance of both the players is great and the sound output via the audio jack as well as the speaker is good.
CONCLUSION
The Honor is not a bad smartphone and works well. If you feel that it’s going to feel cheap because it’s a Chinese made handset, well let me tell you that it doesn’t feel cheap at all. On the contrary, it somewhat looks better than most of the smartphones out there.
If you don’t mind the brand and want a decent Android smartphone, then this is a good buy. However there are a lot of better options out there that you can opt for, even with dual-core processors.