HONOR claims its latest smartphone is the "most affordable premium smartphone of 2016” – and at £190, it’s difficult to disagree. The Honor 5X packs a 5.5inch 1080p display, a 13MP rear camera, 5MP selfie camera, fingerprint sensor and solid aluminium unibody design.
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| The Honor 5X is available in a choice of either Gold, Silver or Grey |
The Honor 5X is a stunning achievement.
The Huawei-made smartphone packs an impressive 5.5inch display with a solid 401-pixels-per-inch, a 13MP rear camera, 5MP front-facing video call camera, fingerprint sensor and diamond-polished, aluminium unibody design.
And it’s priced at an uber-competitive £189.99.
Honor has dubbed its latest smartphone, the "most affordable premium smartphone of 2016” – and honestly, it’s difficult to disagree with this marketing tagline.
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| Don’t be fooled by the price, the fingerprint sensor on the Honor 5X is one of the best |
NewsNewsBlog.blogspot.com flew out to Munich earlier this week for the European launch of the budget handset. We got the chance to take the Honor 5X for a spin, and these are our early impressions –
Out of the box, the Honor 5X feels great. The chamfered aluminium unibody feels like it belongs on a smartphone far out of the price range of the Honor 5X.
In other words, you’d never guess this was a £190 handset.
The front of the all-metal design is dominated by a 5.5inch 1080p IPS LCD, with an impressive 401-pixels-per-inch.
Unlike similarly-priced competitors, like the Moto G, the Honor 5X’s display is vibrant and colourful.
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| Honor has fitted the "most affordable premium smartphone of 2016” with a 13MP camera |
Flip the smartphone over and you’ll find a 13 megapixel camera, as well as the same reliable fingerprint sensor shipped with the Huawei-made Nexus 6P. The inclusion of the fingerprint sensor is a huge deal – and one that helps the Honor 5X stand head-and-shoulders above rivals, including the OnePlus X and the Motorola Moto G.
The fingerprint sensor is reliable and lightning-fast, as it was on the Nexus 6P. And aside from the obvious security implications, Honor has tweaked its mobile OS to allow smartphone owners to assign app shortcuts to individual fingers.
So, for example, you can use an index finger to simply unlock your brand-new Honor 5X. Or you can use your middle finger to unlock the smartphone and immediately launch your favourite messenger, like WhatsApp.
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| Honor's new smartphone supports dual SIM cards, one nano-SIM and one micro-SIM |
There’s a multitude of possibilities, from quickly launching the camera app, to speed dialling your nearest and dearest – up to five different shortcuts can be programmed for five different fingerprints.
Power users might find this software feature a useful time saver, but the average customer will just enjoy the ease and security of using a fingerprint to secure their smartphone. Honor says its rear-mounted fingerprint sensor gets more accurate over time, although we haven’t spent enough time with the device to verify that.
The Honor 5X has a 13MP rear camera with a f/2.0 aperture and 28mm wide-angle lens. It'll turn out a solid photo in good light conditions, but things quickly deteriorates when the sun sets. But that’s OK, most flagship smartphones struggle in low-light conditions – and let’s not lose sight of the fact that this is a £190 smartphone.
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| The SnapDragon processor keeps things ticking along nicely |
The Honor 5X, available in a choice of either Gold, Silver or Grey, also has a 5MP front-facing camera for your video calls and selfies.
It also supports dual SIM cards, one nano-SIM and one micro-SIM, which is sure to appeal to frequent flyers. Internal storage is a little disappointing at 16GB, but the Huawei-made smartphone lets you expand that to up to 128GB via microSD card.
But by far the biggest problem with the Honor 5X is the operating system.
Out of the box, the Honor 5X – which is powered by a 1.5 GHz Qualcomm SnapDragon 616 processor and 2GB of RAM – runs Android 5.1 Lollipop, smothered by the Emotion User Interface, dubbed EMUI 3.1.
This heavy-handed Android skin is clearly inspired by Apple’s iOS. Stock app icons look like rejected proposals by the intern in Sir Jony Ive’s design studio, and the Android App Drawer has been removed – leaving smartphone owners to carefully sort and arrange installed apps on the Home Screen.
Android’s handy notification and quick settings dropdown has been separated into two panels, one for a chronological look back at your app activity, and another for a selection of shortcuts to settings.
It’s undoubtedly clunky – not to mention, unsightly.
Fortunately, smartphone owners can install a third-party launcher, like Nova, Apex or Google Now, to help strip back the worst of the EMUI 3.1 interface.
You’ll still have to put-up with the problematic notifications dropdown, but that might be a small price to pay for this otherwise staggeringly good budget smartphone.
- NewsNewsBlog.blogspot.com will have a full review of the Honor 5X soon.
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