5 reasons why you should think of buying Honor 8 Pro
In times when the launch of smartphones is accompanied by much fanfare and mega events, Chinese smartphone maker Huawei on July 6 unveiled its latest flagship at an event that was rather pale in comparison to the one which competitor OnePlus organised recently.
Thankfully though, the announcements made at Huawei's big day did match up to the ones from the OnePlus 5 launch event. Enter, the Honor 8 Pro!
From the stables of Huawei's sub-brand, Honor, the 8 Pro is a smartphone launched in the competitive mid-range segment that is currently flush with great options. Packing great specs at a price of Rs 29,999, the smartphone finds itself embarrassing flagships from other established brands but ends up finding its toughest fight when it runs into the OnePlus 5.
However, regardless of the competition, the Honor 8 Pro is a brilliant smartphone and one that deserves to be viewed in isolation of the competition surrounding it. Here's why it makes for a great phone.
Great specifications
The Chinese smartphone maker is known for bringing top-of-the-line hardware with its flagships, and the Honor 8 Pro is no different in that regard.
Launched as the Honor V9 in China earlier this year, the Honor 8 Pro packs Huawei’s own Kirin 960 octa-core processor, coupled with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage which can be further expanded via a microSD card slot. With the specs on offer, it's a phone that is truly worthy of being called a flagship.
The Kirin 960 SoC clocked at 2.36GHz, though not as desired as Qualcomm's top-of-the-line 64-bit Octa-core 835 SoC, is still a great performer. Benchmarks reveal that owing to its four ARM A73 CPU cores and four A53 CPU cores, the Kirin SoC performs on a par with Qualcomm's offering.
However, its Mali-G71 MP8 GPU does fall short of benchmark scores of the Adreno 540 GPU housed inside the 835 SoC.
Beautiful display
The Honor 8 Pro comes equipped with a 5.7-inch Quad HD (2560 x 1440) display with a pixel density of 515 ppi, and to its credit, it has managed to do this without bloating the price of the phone. The smartphone is one of the very few to offer such a high-resolution display at the price point, and the display as such gives it a direct advantage over rivals such as the OnePlus 5, which only comes with a 1080p screen.
The Honor 8 Pro's panel is beautiful to look at, and owing to its high-resolution is capable of producing crisp images.
Dual camera
Huawei's offering also comes with what looks to be becoming the flavour of the season – dual camera setup. Unlike its competition, Huawei does not claim the setup to be "the best in the market" but its primary 12-megapixel RGB (colour) sensor sitting next to a secondary 12-megapixel monochrome sensor at least on paper looks capable enough to capture great images.
Both sensors have an aperture of f/2.2. The rear camera setup also comes with phase detection and laser autofocus as well as a dual-LED flash. On the front, there is an 8MP shooter with an aperture of f/2.0.
Though no DxO mark scores are available for the camera unit yet, but once they are, expect them to give good competition to the likes of Galaxy S8, OnePlus 5 and the current king of the mountain – the U11.
Battery performance
The phone comes with a 4000mAh battery pack under the hood which on paper looks great, but in the real world, usage keeps the 16nm Kirin SoC and the massive Quad-HD display powered on for a full day on moderate to heavy use. However, it does come with fast charge support that comes in handy.
Price
Arguably the biggest selling point of the phone is the Rs 29,999 price tag. Given its top-of-the-line specifications, which include 6GB RAM and 128GB storage, the phone overall is great value for money.
The phone may not be the greatest performer, and may lose out to flagships from some of the established brands, but at the price point, it makes for a great deal. For Rs 29,999, the phone at best is a flagship killer that can very well give other flagships – especially the OnePlus 5 – more than a few sleepless nights.