Huawei Honor 8 review—Decent hardware, but you can do better for $400

You can be forgiven for not being familiar with Huawei (pronounced “wah-way”). Other than the Nexus 6P, the Chinese company hasn’t had much presence in the US. Despite mostly not dealing with the United States, Huawei is the largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the world and the third-largest smartphone OEM behind Samsung and Apple.

At the beginning of this year though, Huawei finally started bringing phones to the US. Today we’re looking at the value entry from Huawei’s sub-brand, “Honor,” called the “Honor 8.” The Honor 8 occupies Ars’ favorite $400 price point, which hits the (hopefully) perfect balance of high-end specs without all the often-gimmicky bells and whistles of $700-$800 phones.

SPECS AT A GLANCE: Huawei Honor 8
SCREEN 1920×1080 5.2″ (423ppi) LCD
OS Android 6.0 with EMUI 4.1
CPU Eight-core HiSilicon Kirin 950 (four 2.3GHz Cortex A72 cores and four 1.8 GHz Cortex A53s cores)
RAM 4GB
GPU Mali-T880 MP4
STORAGE 32GB plus a Micro SD slot
NETWORKING 802.11b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, NFC
BANDS WCDMA: B1/B2/B4/B5/B8

GSM: 850/900/1800/1900MHz

LTE FDD: B1/B2/B3/B4/B5/B7/B8/B12/B17/B20

PORTS USB 2.0 Type-C, 3.5mm headphone jack
CAMERA Dual 12MP rear camera, 8MP front camera
SIZE 145.5 x 71 x 7.45 mm (5.73 x 2.8 x 0.29 in)
WEIGHT 153 g (5.4 oz)
BATTERY 3000mAh
STARTING PRICE $399
OTHER PERKS NFC, 9V/2A quick charging, fingerprint sensor, notification LED, IR blaster

Design and build quality

The Honor 8 can best be described as the Huawei P9‘s cheaper cousin. Huawei’s more expensive phones, like the P9, get metal bodies, while the cheaper devices like the Honor 8 get glass backs with a metal frame. The Honor is basically built like a Samsung flagship, but for around half the price.

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Source: Ars Technica – Huawei Honor 8 review—Decent hardware, but you can do better for 0