A couple of years ago, Huawei released the P6 smartphone, which boasted a very slim body and stylish, austere appearance, thanks to which it has gained considerable popularity, even despite not the most top-end characteristics. Huawei continues the lineup and is the most relevant on this moment is the flagship Huawei P8, which was presented back in the spring and finally made it to us.

What's this?

Huawei P8 is a slim, stylish smartphone with a rather compact (by today's standards) metal body, a "convenient" 5.2-inch screen with FullHD resolution and one of the company's latest processors, 64-bit, eight-core HiSilicon Kirin 930.

Why is it interesting?

The predecessor of the P7 was quite mediocre in terms of performance and was glass on both sides. In the current flagship, Huawei approached the question differently: the performance is very close to the flagship devices. The case has retained the same recognizable common features: a strict shape and small thickness, while using much more metal, it has become more pleasant and practical.

What's in the box?

The box looks interesting and unusual. It is small in size and has a plastic cap under the outer cover. Under it, with an edge outward, like a book on a shelf, the smartphone itself is installed. All accessories are unpacked in small boxes:

Included: smartphone, power supply, USB cable, headset, paper clip for removing trays and instructions.

The presence of a headset is rather unusual. Recently, manufacturers do not consider it necessary to supply it in a set. The headset itself is quite simple and does not differ in high sound quality, which is not surprising: decent headphones will significantly add to the total cost, at the same time, the user is quite capable of acquiring good headphones on his own.

What is interesting about the appearance?

Only the front panel is completely glass in the smartphone, a small area near the camera with antennas and a strip at the bottom of the case. The smartphone has a strict rectangular shape with minimal rounded corners... In addition to the screen, the front camera, sensors, speaker and LED indicator of events. There are no buttons under the screen, only on-screen ones:

The indicator is small, but noticeable, shifted to the right edge. Its work can be customized:

The case is really very thin: only 6.4 mm, the ends have bevels and a slightly rounded shape. On the right side there is a power button, a volume rocker and both trays for SIM-cards and MicroSD:

The buttons are also made of metal, fit perfectly, do not stagger, very comfortable and pleasant to use:

Above is a 3.5 mm headphone output and a microphone for noise cancellation:

There are no functional elements on the left side:

On the bottom there is MicroUSB and two symmetrical grilles. Under one of them there is a spoken microphone, under the second - an external speaker. Despite the fact that he is alone in the smartphone, the sound quality and volume were very pleasantly surprised:

The back cover is almost completely metal. At the bottom there is a thin plastic strip, at the top there is a small insert with a camera module:

13MP main camera with Sony module, OIS and dual LED flash:

Two separate trays for nanoSIM, one of which can be used for a microSD memory card:

The smartphone is superbly assembled, there is simply nothing to complain about. All parts fit perfectly, nothing wobbles, a lot of metal. Soundly, beautiful and practical. At the Huawei presentation mentioned that the P8's case is made from a single piece of aluminum and takes 810 minutes to make. There are four color options, judging by the information on the official website, we will have two available: champagne and titanium gray. We had the first option on review. I think that it would be more suitable for a girl, gray - more masculine.

How good is the screen?

The smartphone uses a 5.2-inch IPS display with no air gap with FullHD resolution, pixel density of 424 ppi and thin bezels. The diagonal of the screen is very convenient for use and the resolution at which it is impossible to see the pixels. Correct solution: QHD at this size does not make any sense, it only loads the system and discharges the battery faster. Huawei has used the bezel effectively with a 78.3% screen-to-body ratio, which is a very good indicator. A film is immediately glued to the screen, the presence of which is practically not noticed. Viewing angles are maximized, oleophobic coating is also available, good quality... It is difficult to say about the brightness reserve in "field" conditions, the weather does not please with the abundance of the sun, so we will trust the colorimeter in this matter.

Multi-touch supported up to 10 touches:

The colorimeter showed very good results in terms of brightness and contrast: 365.371 cd / m2, black field brightness 0.396 cd / m2, contrast ratio 923: 1. The situation with the color rendition is rather strange. "By eye" the colors look bright and pleasant, the hardware measurement showed a rather strong tilt towards blue:

If you wish, you can tweak it with the following proprietary utility:

Comparison with competitors:

Device name	Brightness of the white field, cd / m2	The brightness of the black field, cd / m2	Contrast
Huawei P8	365.371	0.396	923:1
HTC One M9	368.177	1	733:1
Lenovo Vibe Z2	425.699	0.574	742:1
Xiaomi Mi4	423.5	0.64	662:1
Sony Xperia Z3	359	0.59	608:1

How are things going with performance?

Huawei P8 uses an eight-core 64-bit processor of its own HiSilicon Kirin 930 with two blocks of four Cortex-A53 cores with a clock frequency of up to 2.0 GHz and 1.5 GHz, volume random access memory is 3 GB. The built-in flash memory is 16 GB, just over 10 GB is available, you can add more using a microSD memory card, but then there will be only one SIM card. A common solution with a multi-purpose tray. A proprietary application with performance and power consumption control is provided:

There are no shell brakes and applications, and indeed there cannot be. Everything "flies", in an idle state it is free on average about 2 GB of RAM, which is very pleasing, it seems that Huawei has approached the issue of shell optimization with all responsibility. All modern games also run without problems:

Heating - depending on the application / game. On Need For Speed ​​No Limits, the smartphone remains cold, Mortal Kombat X loads the system very significantly and the smartphone warms up noticeably evenly over the entire area, although up to Snapdragon temperatures 810 is still far away. The rest of the hardware is all right: the GPS module quickly finds satellites, a cold start takes about 20 seconds. As we have already written, the external speaker is good both in terms of volume and quality; the vibrating alert is also quite powerful, you can feel it in your jeans pocket. As for the sound in the headphones, it is very solid and most users will be happy with it.

The battery capacity is 2680 mAh, it is difficult to fit more into such a thin case. In fact, no miracles happened, autonomy does not apply to strengths smartphone. In everyday mode (20-30 minutes of talks, almost constant connection to the network, a few photos and about an hour of games), the smartphone survives until the end of the day, the video plays for about 9 hours.

For those who want to know more

As we wrote above, Huawei P8 uses 64-bit HiSilicon Kirin 930 (4x ARM Cortex-A53 1.5 GHz and 4xGPU Mali-T624. It is manufactured at TSMC facilities using a 16nm process technology that is complemented by 3 GB of RAM. In fact, the smartphone can compete with competitors on Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 and MediaTek MT6795, although it does not reach Samsung flagships who are ahead this year thanks to a very successful Exynos 7420. Benchmark results:

Is the interface user friendly?

The smartphone runs on Android 5.0.1 OS with EMUI 3.1 shell, and updates to Android 6.0 Marshmallow are promised in the future. As mentioned above, the shell is very well optimized and very fast.

All applications are located on desktops, there is no separate menu for them. Supported widgets, folders:

The shutter consists of two main tabs: toggle icons (can be edited) and notifications:

The on-screen button bar can be edited, there is a button for calling the upper curtain:

Native application manager with the ability to close all or individual applications and display free RAM:

A "winter" mode with increased sensitivity is provided for working with gloves. It is possible to display the control button by clicking on which the navigation buttons appear. Smart screenshot - the ability to take screenshots by double tapping the screen:

Various themes:

The settings menu is organized in a rather familiar way:

Various settings for the display, notification panel, gestures, and so on:

Quite a simple stock music player with a minimum of necessary settings:

And a set of all sorts of useful applications, starting with the weather, a voice recorder with various operating modes, a timer, an application manager and ending with exotic things like a magnifier, mirror and director mode, in which you can connect up to 3 devices via Wi-Fi and "mount" in real time video from what everyone shoots:

How are things with the camera?

The main camera has a resolution of 13 megapixels, it is used Sony module with four-color RGBW-matrix, optical image stabilization, f / 2.0 aperture and a dedicated ISP-processor. Front-camera- 8 MP. The camera interface is quite intuitive, but there are also enough settings of all sorts, they are scattered across different menus. There are modes of burst shooting, HDR, panorama, selection of a successful frame, photos with audio notes and post-focus (the camera takes several photos at once with different focal lengths). You can take a quick photo directly from a locked smartphone: you need to double-press the volume down button. A snapshot is taken and the time it took is displayed:

Photos are of really good quality, even in low light and in the evening:

FullHD video, specially filmed in the evening. The quality is very sensible:

In the dry residue

It seems that Huawei, when creating the P8, was guided not by the pursuit of incredible resolutions or screen diagonals and transcendental performance, but by the desire to make an excellent and balanced smartphone and they did it. Huawei P8 boasts a superbly assembled metal thin body, modern powerful (though not the most top-end) stuffing, a good display, main camera and a comfortable, well-thought-out shell. Of the controversial points, only a mediocre time can be distinguished. autonomous work and significant heating of the entire smartphone when high loads... The smartphone is about to go on sale for UAH 13,000.

5 reasons to buy Huawei P8:

• Excellent metal thin body;
• high performance;
• good main camera;
• high-quality screen;
• convenient and fast shell EMUI 3.1.

1 reason not to buy the Huawei P8:

• mediocre battery life.

Technical Huawei characteristics P8
Display	IPS, 5.2 inches, 1920x1080, 424 ppi
Frame	dimensions 144.9x72.1x6.4 mm, weight 144 g
CPU	64-bit HiSilicon Kirin 930 (4x ARM Cortex-A53 1.5 GHz and 4xARM Cortex-A53 2.0 GHz) with GPU GPU Mali-T624
RAM	3 GB
Flash memory	16 GB, microSD up to 128 GB
Camera	13 MP, autofocus, two-tone flash, optical stabilization images, front camera 8 MP
Wireless technology	Wi-Fi 802.11 b / g / n / a, Bluetooth 4.1 LE
Gps	GPS, Glonass, BeiDou
Battery	2500 mAh, non-removable
Operating system	Android 5.0.1 Lollipop + EMUI 3.1
SIM card	nanoSIMx2

Huawei / Huawei is a leading Chinese smartphone manufacturer. At the end of 2017, Huawei accounted for 9.6% of smartphone sales in the world, it was second only to Samsung (22.8%) and Apple (15.3%). Given that the share of Huawei in the global market is constantly growing, and Apple's share is gradually falling, it can be predicted that in the coming years Huawei will bypass the apple company in sales and come into second place in the world. Unlike many Chinese brands that have relied on budget models, Huawei is not afraid to compete with Apple and Samsung in the premium segment. To increase the appeal of its brand, Huawei has partnered with already established Western companies: Google (co-released by the Nexus 6P), Leica (cameras for flagship models), GoPro (exclusive mobile app Quik for fast video editing).

The following review will help you choose the best Huawei model for buying in 2019 best smartphones from Chinese brand... The top 10 is based on reviews in Yandex-Market, technical characteristics and price-quality ratio.

10 Honor 5A

The average price in Russia is 8,000 rubles. The model of August 2017 scored 68% of the fives in reviews in Yandex-Market. Technical characteristics of the model: 5-inch screen with a resolution of 1280x720 pixels, Android 5.1 operating system, 16 GB of constant and 2 GB of RAM, support for two SIM cards, support for memory cards up to 128 GB. The battery capacity is 2200 mAh. The main camera is 13 megapixels, the front one is 5 megapixels. 4-core processor MediaTek MT6735P.

9 Honor 5X

The average price in Russia is 11,900 rubles. You can buy Huawei Honor 5X on AliExpress for 8.9 thousand rubles (delivery to Russia is free). The 5X is the former flagship of the Honor family. At the moment, this model has 47% of the top fives in the Yandex-Market. The smartphone is made in a metal case made of aircraft-grade aluminum, with a 5.5-inch Full HD display of 1920x1080, Android 5.1 operating system, 16 GB of permanent memory and 2 GB of RAM, a main camera of 13 megapixels, a front camera of 5 megapixels, support for two SIM cards and memory cards. The model has a fingerprint scanner. The Honor 5X uses a 3000 mAh battery. At the same time, the device supports SmartPower 3.0 - a combination of software and hardware energy saving technologies and a number of work scenarios that can save up to 30% of battery power. According to laboratory tests, Honor 5X will be able to operate non-stop for up to 1.5 days in moderate mode (in intensive mode - one day). 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 MSM8939 processor.

8 Huawei ShotX 16Gb

The average price is 15,000 rubles. This model scored 56% of the top fives in reviews in Yandex-Market. Specifications: 5.2-inch screen with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels, Android 5.1 operating system, 16 GB of constant (9 available to the user) and 2 GB of RAM, support for two SIM cards, the slot for the second SIM card is combined with the slot for the memory card. The battery capacity is 3090 mAh. 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 MSM8939v2. There is a fingerprint scanner.

The 13-megapixel autofocus camera with dual LED flash functions as both the main one and the front one due to the fact that it is installed in a folding module that can be moved from the back to the front. This makes Huawei ShotX one of the best selfie phones in the world. the front camera on most smartphones is of much worse quality than the main one, and does not have flash and autofocus.

7 Huawei Nova

The average price in Russia is 18,850 rubles. You can buy Huawei Nova on AliExpress for 11.3 thousand rubles (delivery to Russia is free). This model, which went on sale in September 2017, gained 73% of the top fives according to reviews in Yandex-Market. Specifications: 5-inch screen with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels, Android 6.0 operating system, 32 GB of constant (22 available to the user) and 3 GB of RAM, a slot for a second SIM card is combined with a slot for a memory card. The battery capacity is 3020 mAh. 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 MSM8953 processor. There is a fingerprint scanner. The main camera is 12 megapixels with autofocus and LED flash, the front camera is 8 megapixels.

6 Huawei P9 32Gb Dual sim

The average price in Russia is 23,000 rubles. You can buy Huawei P9 32Gb Dual sim on AliExpress for 21.5 thousand rubles (delivery to Russia is free). The flagship Huawei, which appeared in April 2017, scored 74% of the top fives in reviews in Yandex-Market. Specifications: 5.2-inch screen with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels, Android 6.0 operating system, 32 GB of permanent and 3 GB of RAM, support for two SIM cards, a slot for a second SIM card is combined with a slot for a memory card. The battery capacity is 3000 mAh. 8-core HiSilicon Kirin 955 processor. Metal case.

There are two main cameras at once. They use 12-megapixel sensors (Sony IMX286), one of which captures the colors of the captured image, and the second reads monochrome information. The resulting data is then programmatically combined and written to the resulting files. Huawei emphasizes that the famous German company for the production of Leica cameras took part in the creation of the camera (for example, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev uses the Leica camera). The front camera received an 8 megapixel sensor.

5 Huawei Mate 8 32Gb is the most popular Huawei phone in China

The average price in Russia is 33,000 rubles. You can buy Huawei Mate 8 32Gb on AliExpress for 20.5 thousand rubles. This tablet is currently the model with the most big screen from Huawei, as well as the most popular model Huawei in China in 2017 (data from antutu.com). The model has scored 72% of the top fives in Yandex-Market reviews. Specifications: 6-inch screen with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels, Android 6.0 operating system, 32 GB of permanent and 3 GB of RAM, support for two SIM cards, support for memory cards up to 128 GB. Battery capacity - 4000 mAh (this is the most powerful battery in our rating). The main camera is 16 megapixels, the front camera is 8 megapixels. 8-core HiSilicon Kirin 950 processor. There is a fingerprint scanner.

Mate 8 is Huawei's best different parameters, including the price: it is the most expensive, which prevents it from claiming the first place in terms of price-quality ratio.

4 Honor 6X 32Gb

The average price in Russia is 14,900 rubles. You can buy Honor 6X 32Gb on AliExpress for 10.4 thousand rubles (shipping to Russia is free). The novelty of the most popular Honor family appeared in Russia in January 2019 and today has gained 59% of the top fives in reviews in Yandex-Market. Specifications: 5.5-inch screen with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels, Android 6.0 operating system, 32 GB of constant (23.40 GB available to the user) and 3 GB of RAM, support for two SIM cards, the slot for the second SIM card is combined with the slot for a memory card ... The battery capacity is 3340 mAh. The phone is powered by the latest HiSilicon Kirin 655 octa-core processor, so the Honor 6X can last longer on a single charge than many competitors with comparable battery capacity. The manufacturer promised up to 11.5 hours of battery life when watching videos, up to 70 hours of listening to music, up to 8 hours of games. There is a fingerprint scanner. New fingerprint features let you browse photos (just swipe left or right), turn off alarms (press and hold the scanner), take selfies or call with one touch.

Metal body with glass curved to the edges. Eye protection mode reduces harmful UV radiation from the screen, preventing eye fatigue.

The main thing that attracts attention in the Honor 6X is the dual main camera. Huawei was the first to start equipping its flagships with a dual camera, last year the 7th iPhone took over the baton, but from the models of the middle price segment, only a dual camera can boast Xiaomi Redmi Pro. Going back to the Honor 6X, we see that the top sensor is a 12MP Sony IMX386 sensor with phase detection autofocus and LED flash, focusing speed is just 0.3 seconds. This sensor also features an increased photosensitive pixel size of up to 1.25 nm with the Prim ISP pixel isolation technology. This results in surprisingly little color noise and very natural color reproduction. The bottom monochrome sensor has 2 megapixels. At first glance, this is very little. Even Xiaomi Redmi Pro has a 5 megapixel auxiliary module, not to mention the flagship Honor 8, where the second module has the same resolution as the first - 12 megapixels. However, Huawei explains that 2 megapixels of the lower sensor is quite enough. its task is to capture as much light as possible, since monochrome matrices are much more sensitive than color ones. The camera combines the light from the lower sensor with the color of the upper one and produces very high quality photos even in low light conditions. Moreover, thanks to dual camera Honor 6X can do the same thing that the creators of the 7th iPhone boasted - bokeh (i.e. the ability to beautifully blur the background in the photo). There is one more interesting function- Selective color fill allows you to add color accents to black and white photos.

The 8MP front camera is equipped with a 77 ° wide-angle lens and a Prim image processor. There is a function of identifying faces. Without autofocus, at the same time, according to reviews, she takes a selfie of very high quality.

3 Honor 8 Pro 6GB / 64GB

The average price in Russia is 34,000 rubles. You can buy Huawei Honor 8 Pro 64Gb on AliExpress for 27.2 thousand rubles (shipping to Russia is free). When buying in China, you should pay attention to the different model names in different markets: in China it is the Honor V9, and in Russia and Europe, the same model is sold as the Honor 8 Pro.

The new flagship of the Huawei sub-brand went on sale in April 2019. To date, the model has scored 57% of the top fives in reviews in Yandex-Market.

Specifications of the model: 5.7-inch screen with a resolution of 2560x1440 pixels, Android 7.0 operating system, 64 GB of permanent and 6 GB of RAM, support for two SIM cards, a slot for a second SIM card is combined with a slot for a memory card up to 128 GB. Battery capacity 4000 mAh. Battery life in talk mode 16 hours, in game mode 3 hours 15 minutes, in video mode 6 hours 45 minutes, in standby mode 453 hours. As we can see, despite the impressive battery capacity, the huge screen plays a role, discharging much faster than with standard screen sizes. So this smartphone cannot be called a long-playing one. Kirin 960 octa-core processor own development with graphics accelerator Mali-G71 MP8. Fingerprint scanner on the back.

Unlike the Huawei P9 or Huawei P10, the flagship of the Honor family does not have the Leica logo, but also uses a combination of two sensors: monochrome, which captures light information, and color RGB... Color resolution is 12 megapixels, monochrome is also 12 megapixels. Dual LED flash, laser focusing and phase comparison focusing. Aperture f / 2.2. The front camera has an 8 megapixel sensor.

In June 2019, the hi-tech.mail.ru portal conducted a comparative test of cameras of 7 flagship smartphones of 2019, as well as a professional Canon 5D Mark II SLR. According to the results of blind tests (when people do not know what device the picture was taken and vote for the photo they like), Honor 8 Pro won, it outstripped the runner-up Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus. Next up is the LG G6, Sony Xperia XZ Premium, ASUS ZenFone 3 Zoom, Canon 5D Mark II DSLR, HTC U11, and Xiaomi Mi 6 came in last. LG G6), giving the first to Samsung's flagship. Such an impressive result of the Honor 8 Pro suggests that amateurs mobile photography you can take this model without hesitation. And not only to them, tk. as much as 6 GB of RAM and a new processor guarantee excellent performance that will come in handy for fans of heavy mobile games.

2 Huawei P10 64Gb - Huawei smartphone with the best reviews

The average price in Russia is 34,000 rubles. You can buy Huawei P10 64Gb on AliExpress for 30.3 thousand rubles (delivery to Russia is free). The P10 is Huawei's new flagship, unveiled at the Mobile World Congress at the end of February 2019. To date, the model has scored 80% of the fives in reviews in the Yandex-Market (see reviews on Huawei P10), this is the best indicator in the Huawei smartphone catalog.

Technical characteristics of the model: 5.1-inch screen with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels, Android 7.0 operating system, 64 GB of permanent and 4 GB of RAM, support for two SIM cards, the slot for the second SIM card is combined with the slot for a memory card. Battery 3200 mAh. Self-developed eight-core Kirin 960 processor with Mali-G71 MP8 graphics accelerator. The fingerprint scanner is built into the slightly recessed body touch button on the front panel. The Huawei P10 is made from a single piece of aluminum.

Cameras on smartphones of the leading Chinese manufacturer Huawei are developing by leaps and bounds: in 2016, the company introduced the world's first smartphone with two main cameras (now this technique is used by Apple and other manufacturers), in 2017, Huawei began cooperation with the famous German camera company Leica ( A Leica camera worth 5 million rubles is used, for example, by the Prime Minister of Russia Dmitry Medvedev), and in 2019 Huawei did everything to make the cameras on their smartphones the best in the world, namely, it connected Leica not only to work on the dual module of the main cameras, but also to work on the front camera. But that's not all: starting with the P10, Huawei has partnered with the iconic American manufacturer of GoPro video cameras. As part of the collaboration, GoPro will release an exclusive Quik mobile app for Huawei P10 for fast video processing. The video editor will be embedded in the standard gallery of the EMUI shell. The essence of the Quik app is to combine photos and videos with music in the background to create a beautiful memorable video. It is worth noting that GoPro has not previously released applications for either Android or iOS.

What happened in the end? The Huawei P10 uses a combination of two f / 2.2 aperture sensors: monochrome, which captures light information, and color RGB. Color resolution is 12 megapixels, and monochrome - 20 megapixels. This combination provides following advantages: camera huawei The P10 has a 2x lossless zoom, and it also allows you to take pictures with a blurred background - the so-called bokeh effect. There is a special mode, developed by Leica specialists, in which you can take high-quality portrait photos using the monochrome sensor. Leica and Huawei have collaborated on the P10's front-facing camera with an 8MP sensor that produces selfies that are twice as bright and with a wider dynamic range, even in low light conditions.

The camera Huawei P10 received 87 points on the Dxomark resource, which is 3 points less than the leader HTC U11 and took 7th place. At the same time, in the blind test of hi-tech.mail.ru in April 2019, the Huawei P10 camera took first place, beating the models that scored more points in Dxomark, for example, the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Google pixel... The editorial staff of hi-tech.mail.ru commented on the readers' choice as follows: "The majority appreciated the bright and contrasting images, not paying attention to the details" and put Huawei P10 in 4th place after Google Pixel, Samsung Galaxy S8 and LG G6 (however, the difference Huawei P10 and LG G6 only got one point).

1 Honor 8 32Gb

The average price in Russia is 20,600 rubles. You can buy Honor 8 64Gb on AliExpress for 13.8 thousand rubles (delivery to Russia is free). The flagship of the Honor family went on sale in China at the end of July, and in Russia at the end of August 2017, and today it has scored 78% of the top fives in reviews in Yandex-Market. In just over 2 months of the third quarter of 2017, Honor 8 entered the top eight popular smartphones in China and ranked second among the entire catalog of Huawei models (after Huawei P9).

Technical characteristics of the model: 5.2-inch screen with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels, Android 6.0 operating system, 32 GB of permanent and as much as 4 GB of RAM, support for two SIM cards, the slot for the second SIM card is combined with the slot for the memory card. 3000 mAh battery and energy saving technology Smart Power 4.0 provide up to 1.77 days of operation in normal use and up to 1.22 in intensive use. For example, on the Honor 8, you'll be able to watch online videos for 11 hours straight. 8-core HiSilicon Kirin 950 processor. There is a fingerprint scanner.

The model has a dual main camera with laser autofocus, which received two 12-megapixel Sony sensor IMX286 (like Huawei P9), color and monochrome. The camera allows you to change the focus point after shooting. Professional mode offers a range of DSLR-like shooting settings. The front camera received an 8 megapixel sensor.

The design of the smartphone should be noted separately. Without a doubt, this is the most beautiful Huawei smartphone: Front and back uses 2.5D mirrored glass, side edges are made of metal, and there are several bright colors.

Honor 8 is slightly inferior to the new flagships Honor 8 Pro and Huawei P10 in terms of technical characteristics, however, its cost is one and a half to two times (depending on whether you buy a model in Russia or China), therefore, in terms of price-quality ratio, Honor 8 remains the best in the Huawei phone directory. However, the upcoming launch of Honor 9 sales in July 2019 may make a difference.

Series Honor smartphones X is extremely popular with users of Honor products. It is, perhaps, more successful than other devices of this brand, combines worthy specifications and a truly affordable price. At one time, we witnessed the triumph of the 5X model, as well as a quite worthy continuation in the form of the Honor 6X. Today it's time to take a detailed look at everything. technical capabilities the next in turn representative of the legendary family - a smartphone called Honor 7X, presented at the end of the year in London.

Main characteristics of Honor 7X (model BND-L21)

• SoC HiSilicon Kirin 659, 8 cores Cortex-A53 ( [email protected], 4 GHz + [email protected], 7 GHz)
• GPU Mali-T830 (MP2)
• Operating system Android 7.0, EMUI 5.1
• 5.93 ″ IPS touchscreen display, 2160 × 1080, 407 ppi
• Random access memory (RAM) 4 GB, inner memory 32/64/128 GB
• Nano-SIM support (2 pcs.)
• MicroSD support up to 128GB
• GSM / GPRS / EDGE networks (850/900/1800/1900 MHz)
• WCDMA / HSPA + networks (850/900/1900/2100 MHz)
• LTE Cat.6 FDD (B1 / 3/7/8/20), TD (B40) networks
• Wi-Fi 802.11b / g / n (2.4 GHz)
• Bluetooth 4.1 BLE
• GPS, A-GPS, Glonass
• Micro-USB 2.0, USB OTG
• Main camera 16 + 2 MP, autofocus, f / 2.2, video 1080p
• Front camera 8 MP, f / 2.0, fixed. focus
• Proximity and lighting sensors, magnetometer, accelerometer, gyroscope, step counter
• The fingerprint scanner
• Battery 3340 mAh
• Dimensions 157 x 75 x 7.6 mm
• Weight 165 g

Contents of delivery

Honor 7X comes in a laconic box made of solid matte blue cardboard with a white logo.

Our test device came with a standard Charger no support for fast charging (5V 2A), USB cable and card ejection tool.

Appearance and usability

In design, the Honor 7X looks more like a new product from the Huawei Nova 2 series than the flagship of its Honor 9 line. Whereas the most prominent design feature of the case is the luxurious glass back panel with a mirrored backing, here the case is completely made of brushed metal.

At the same time, our hero looks almost like two drops of water on Huawei Nova 2, with the exception of small strokes, such as the shape of the grooves for the antennas and the location of the flash. There is also no bezel around the circular pad of the fingerprint scanner, which is more of a plus. But straight, without curly bends, grooves for antennas are more of a minus, since they visually make the design coarse and straightforward.

Miracles do not happen, a smartphone with a six-inch display cannot be sleek. Honor case The 7X is large, heavy, and the hard brushed metal surfaces glide very well in dry palms, just like usual. Fingerprints on these matte surfaces are surprisingly visible too.

The protective glass has sloping edges, and an LED event indicator is installed above the screen. Here, by the way, there are no corners of the screen itself, like many other "full-screen" devices with displays increased from 5.5 to 6 inches due to reduced frames.

The frame around the screen has not gone anywhere, this is not a "frameless" option, as such "full-screen" smartphones are now called. From the sides, it sometimes even turns out to be wider, but the segments at the top and bottom of the new products with 18: 9 screens have narrowed to about a centimeter or even more, this is a fact, and rather gratifying. But on the other hand, such smartphones have neither a fingerprint scanner nor hardware touch buttons under the screen.

The fingerprint scanner was moved to the back side, its round platform is located next to the eyes of the dual camera. These elements have the same diameter, are placed symmetrically, but due to the fact that both cameras stick out, it still looks worse than if the modules were combined behind a single glass, like on the iPhone. Plus series, For example. There is also a single LED flash on the back. It is curious that these three elements are located strictly along the groove with the antennas.

The lenses stick out beyond the surface, but the area of ​​the back wall is so large (and it has no bevels) that the smartphone lying on the table hardly sways when you touch the screen. It is quite possible to work in this way with a smartphone.

You can install two SIM cards in your smartphone (both of Nano-SIM format) or replace one of them with a microSD memory card. Hot swap of cards is supported.

The mechanical buttons on the right side are large, comfortable, no complaints about them.

At the top end, you can find only a small hole for the auxiliary microphone, while the 3.5 mm audio-out for headphones, a spoken microphone and the main loudspeaker are brought out at the bottom end.

The smartphone is available in three colors: black, blue and gold.

Screen

The Honor 7X is equipped with an IPS display covered by 2.5D glass with sloping edges. The physical dimensions of the screen are 68 × 136 mm with a diagonal of 5.93 inches, an aspect ratio of 18: 9. At the same time, the screen resolution is 2160 × 1080 with a dot density of about 407 ppi. The frame around the screen is about 4 mm thick on the sides, and one centimeter at the top and bottom.

It is possible to use automatic brightness adjustment based on the operation of the ambient light sensor. Multi-touch tests diagnose support for 10 simultaneous touches.

A detailed examination using measuring instruments was carried out by the editor of the "Monitors" and "Projectors and TV" sections Alexey Kudryavtsev... Here is his expert opinion on the screen of the test sample.

The front surface of the screen is made in the form of a glass plate with a mirror-smooth surface, resistant to scratches. Judging by the reflection of objects, the anti-glare properties of the screen are slightly worse than that of the Google Nexus 7 (2013) (hereinafter simply Nexus 7). For clarity, here is a photo in which a white surface is reflected in the turned off screens (on the left - Nexus 7, on the right - Honor 7X, then they can be distinguished by their size):

The screen on the Honor 7X is slightly lighter (the brightness in the photographs is 123 versus 116 for the Nexus 7). The doubling of reflected objects in the Honor 7X screen is very weak, which indicates that there is no air gap between the layers of the screen (more specifically, between the outer glass and the surface of the LCD matrix) (OGS type screen - One Glass Solution). Due to the smaller number of boundaries (such as glass / air) with very different refractive indices, such screens look better in conditions of intense ambient light, but their repair in the case of cracked outer glass is much more expensive, since the entire screen has to be changed. On the outer surface of the screen, there is a special oleophobic (grease-repellent) coating, which is better in efficiency than that of the Nexus 7. Therefore, fingerprints are much easier to remove, and appear at a slower rate than in the case of ordinary glass.

With manual brightness control and with the display of the white field on the whole screen, the maximum brightness value was about 490 cd / m², the minimum - 2.5 cd / m². The maximum brightness is high, and given the good anti-glare properties, the readability of the screen even on a sunny day outdoors should be at an acceptable level. In complete darkness, the brightness can be lowered to a comfortable value. In the presence of automatic brightness control by the light sensor (it is located to the left of the front speaker slot). In automatic mode, when the ambient light conditions change, the screen brightness both increases and decreases. The operation of this function depends on the position of the brightness adjustment slider, with which the user can try to set the required brightness level in the current conditions. We slightly increased the brightness in complete darkness and got the following result: in complete darkness, the auto-brightness function reduces the brightness to 20 cd / m2, in an office lit with artificial light (about 550 lx) sets it to 190 cd / m2, in a very bright environment (corresponds to the lighting outdoors on a clear day, but without direct sunlight - 20,000 lux or slightly more) increases to 490 cd / m². The result was quite satisfactory for us. It turns out that the automatic brightness control function works adequately and allows the user to customize his work for individual requirements. At any brightness level, there is no significant backlight modulation, so there is no screen flickering either.

IN this smartphone matrix used IPS type... The micrographs show the typical IPS subpixel structure:

For comparison, you can see the gallery of photomicrographs of screens used in mobile technology.

The screen has good viewing angles without significant color shift, even with large gaze deviations from the perpendicular to the screen and without tint inversion. For comparison, here are photographs in which the same images are displayed on the screens of Honor 7X and Nexus 7, while the brightness of the screens was initially set to about 200 cd / m², and the color balance on the camera was forcibly switched to 6500 K.

White field perpendicular to screens:

Note the good uniformity of brightness and color tone of the white field.

And the test picture:

The colors on the Honor 7X display are natural saturation, with the Nexus 7 and the tested screen differing in color balance slightly.

Now at an angle of about 45 degrees to the plane and to the side of the screen:

It can be seen that the colors did not change much on both screens, but on the Honor 7X the contrast decreased to a greater extent due to the more black highlighting.

And white box:

The brightness at the angle of the screens decreased (at least 5 times, based on the difference in exposure), but in the case of the Honor 7X, the brightness drop is slightly larger. When deviated diagonally, the black field is lightened to a medium degree and takes on a purple tint. The photos below demonstrate this (the brightness of the white areas in the direction perpendicular to the plane of the screens is the same!):

And from a different angle:

When viewed from a perpendicular view, the uniformity of the black field is good:

The contrast (approximately in the center of the screen) is high - about 1600: 1. The response time for the transition black-white-black is 22 ms (10 ms on + 12 ms off). The transition between gray tones of 25% and 75% (based on the numerical value of the color) and back takes 37 ms in total. The gamma curve, plotted using 32 points with equal intervals in terms of the numerical value of the shade of gray, did not reveal a blockage in either the highlights or the shadows. Indicator approximating power function is 2.09, which is slightly below the standard value of 2.2. In this case, the real gamma curve almost does not deviate from the power dependence:

We did not reveal the presence of dynamic adjustment of the backlight brightness in accordance with the nature of the displayed image, which is very good.

The color gamut is close to sRGB:

The spectra show that the matrix filters moderately mix the components together:

As a result, the visual colors on this screen do not differ from the natural ones. The balance of shades on the gray scale is good, since the color temperature is not much higher than the standard 6500 K, and the deviation from the spectrum of the absolute black body (ΔE) is below 10, which is considered an acceptable indicator for a consumer device. At the same time, the color temperature and ΔE vary little from shade to shade - this has a positive effect on the visual assessment of the color balance. (The darkest areas of the gray scale can be ignored, since the color balance there is not very important, and the error in measuring color characteristics at low brightness is large.)

This device has the ability to correct the color balance by adjusting the hue on the color wheel.

In the graphs above, the curves Without corr. correspond to the results without any color balance correction, and the curves Corr.- data obtained after shifting the point to the position indicated in the picture above. It can be seen that the change in balance corresponds to the expected result, since the color temperature approached the standard value and ΔE decreased on average. However, it doesn't make much sense to perform the correction. Note that this function implemented in a variant rather for show, since there is no numerical reflection of the correction and there is no field for measuring the color balance.

To summarize: the screen has a high maximum brightness and has good anti-reflective properties, so the device can be used outdoors without any problems even on a sunny summer day. In complete darkness, the brightness can be lowered to a comfortable level. It is also acceptable to use the mode with automatic brightness adjustment, which works adequately. The advantages of the screen include the absence of an air gap in the layers of the screen and flicker, an effective oleophobic coating, good color balance and close to sRGB color gamut... In general, the quality of the screen can be considered high.

Camera

The front camera has a sensor with a resolution of 8 megapixels. The lens has an f / 2.0 aperture and a fixed focus. The quality of shooting here is average, there is not much to praise the Honor 7X's selfie camera for. The pictures taken in good lighting on the screen of the smartphone itself still look quite good, but when you start looking at the detail of the pictures taken indoors, you can see that it is low, the matrix is ​​noisy and the sensitivity is still not enough for it.

The rear camera is dual, but simpler than that of the Nova 2. The main module has a 16-megapixel sensor, and the auxiliary one is only 2 megapixels. The camera is equipped with an f / 2.2 aperture lens, there is no stabilization.

There is no intelligent scene recognition technology, as in the older models, but everything else is present, including the "wide aperture" mode for blurring the background. Naturally, there is also a mode manual settings Pro. In manual mode, white balance, focus, light sensitivity, exposure compensation can be adjusted.

The camera can shoot video in a maximum resolution of 1080p at 30 fps. There are no higher modes, no stabilization. The quality of shooting is acceptable, for this level of a smartphone it is not bad, but there is not much to praise it for. Sound with the help of sensitive microphones is recorded with high quality, the noise reduction system does not introduce noticeable distortions.

• Movie # 1 (44 MB, 1920 × [email protected] fps, H.265, AAC)
• Movie # 2 (32 MB, 1920 × [email protected] fps, H.265, AAC)

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The camera is good. There are sometimes areas of confusion near the edges, but in general, the detail even on distant plans very decent. In low light, the camera generally does well. She is also good at shooting text and macro. You can find traces of noise reduction and sharping in the pictures, but all this is not striking. As a result, the camera can be recommended for documentary and artistic photography.

Telephone part and communications

The communications capabilities of the Honor 7X include support for data transfer rates up to 300 Mbps on LTE Cat.6 networks. In the city limits of the Moscow region, the device behaves confidently, does not lose connection in places of poor reception, and quickly re-establishes the connection. Bluetooth has version 4.2, one Wi-Fi band (2.4 GHz) is supported, there is no NFC module.

The navigation module works with GPS (with A-GPS), with the domestic Glonass and with the Chinese Beidou. The first satellites during a cold start are detected within tens of seconds, the positioning accuracy is high. There is a built-in magnetic field sensor for compass operation.

The phone application supports Smart Dial, that is, while dialing phone number the search is immediately carried out by the first letters in the contacts. Methods of customizing the sorting and display of contacts are standard for the Android interface, there is a blacklist for unwanted contacts. There is a function of automatic recording of telephone conversations from the line. Vibrating alert of medium power.

The smartphone cannot support both SIM-cards in 4G simultaneously in active standby mode. Here, one SIM card (not the one chosen for data transfer in 4G) will always work in anticipation only in 2G. The interface does not allow you to select a specific SIM card for sending SMS in advance - only for voice calls and data transfer (this is a standard situation for all Huawei smartphones). The cards work in Dual SIM Dual Standby mode, there is only one radio modem here.

Software and multimedia

As a software platform, the Android OS is not the most recent version 7.0 and Huawei's own shell of the latest version EMUI 5.1 - everything is the same as in other modern devices of the manufacturer. Naturally, there is the possibility of over-the-air update (OTA).

The interface is designed in a familiar corporate style. There is a virtual button multi-window mode, the ability to reduce keyboards and the working area of ​​the screen in size. As usual, there are a lot of pre-installed applications, some of them are useful, others are clearly superfluous. There are several Huawei proprietary utilities, including a useful phone manager responsible for monitoring the system, cleaning memory, scanning and protecting against viruses, blocking spam, and more.

As for the so-called " full screen mode", Which appeared due to the changed aspect ratio and, accordingly, additional space on the screen, then it is not occupied by default, gapes with black stripes. It is possible to enter the settings and select the option of using "full screen mode" for each of the applications, and after rebooting the application will be displayed in full screen.

To listen to music, as usual, you use your own audio player with a familiar interface. Previously, it did not have any manual settings at all, and in the new versions, the Huawei Histen audio effects section appeared, in which you can enable the 3D sound effect and choose from the equalizer presets - but all this becomes available only with the headphones connected. In any case, both in the headphones and through the speaker, the smartphone sounds quite satisfactory, the Honor 7X does not offer anything special in terms of sound, but you cannot call the sound quality either.

Microphones have good sensitivity, the voice recorder is quite suitable for any task. The built-in FM radio is present, and this is good news.

Performance

The Honor 7X hardware platform is based on the HiSilicon Kirin 659 SoC. The chip configuration includes eight processor cores ARM Cortex-A53 in two clusters with a maximum frequency of 2.36 and 1.7 GHz. The SoC is made using a 16-nanometer process technology. Responsible for graphics processing is the ARM Mali-T830 (MP2) video accelerator with support for the OpenGL ES 3.2 graphics API. The amount of RAM is 4 GB, the built-in flash memory in the case of our sample is 64 GB. Of these, 2.48 GB of RAM is free and only 48.5 GB of storage space, usually more than 50 GB. There are modifications of Honor 7X with a different amount of internal memory.

There is also the possibility of expanding the memory by installing microSD cards, but applications are not installed on the memory card. You can connect external flash drives in USB mode OTG.

The HiSilicon Kirin 659 SoC is a relatively fresh solution for mid-range smartphones and tablets. The SoC is quite productive, the level of Qualcomm Snapdragon 625, in the AnTuTu test the hero of the review demonstrates quite worthy 60K-plus points, this is a confident average level.

Kirin 659 provides the system with sufficient performance and in real scenarios allows the smartphone to cope with any modern tasks. There are no problems with the games either, all the games we tested, including Injustice 2 and Mortal Kombat X, run without much slowdown, Lineage 2 can also be played quite comfortably without delays. However, the smartphone is designed rather for today, there is no noticeable power reserve for years to come.

Benchmarking AnTuTu and GeekBench:

All the results we got when testing a smartphone in the most fresh versions popular benchmarks, we have tabulated for convenience. Several other devices from different segments are usually added to the table, also tested on similar latest versions benchmarks (this is done only for a visual assessment of the resulting dry numbers). Unfortunately, within the framework of one comparison, it is impossible to present the results from different versions benchmarks, so many worthy and relevant models remain "behind the scenes" - due to the fact that they once passed the "obstacle course" on previous versions test programs.

Testing graphics subsystem in game tests 3DMark, GFXBenchmark and Bonsai Benchmark:

When testing in 3DMark for the highest performing smartphones, it is now possible to run the application in Unlimited mode, where the rendering resolution is fixed at 720p and VSync is disabled (which can cause the speed to rise above 60 fps).

	Honor 7X (HiSilicon Kirin 659)	Sony Xperia XA1 (MediaTek MT6757)	Htc one X10 (MediaTek MT6755)	Asus Zenfone 3 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 625)	Nokia 5 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 430)
3DMark Ice Storm Sling Shot ES 3.1 (more is better)	409	671	421	466	299
(Onscreen, fps)	5	15	5	6	10
GFXBenchmark Manhattan ES 3.1 (1080p Offscreen, fps)	5	6	5	6	4,6
GFXBenchmark T-Rex (Onscreen, fps)	18	32	17	22	20
GFXBenchmark T-Rex (1080p Offscreen, fps)	18	21	17	23	16

Browser cross-platform tests:

As for benchmarks for evaluating the speed of the javascript engine, you should always make allowances for the fact that the results in them significantly depend on the browser in which they are launched, so that the comparison can be truly correct only on the same OS and browsers, and this possibility is available when testing not always. In the case of Android OS, we always try to use Google Chrome.

	Honor 7X (HiSilicon Kirin 659)	Sony Xperia XA1 (MediaTek MT 6757)	HTC One X10 (MediaTek MT6755)	Asus Zenfone 3 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 625)	Nokia 5 (Qualcomm Snapdragon 430)
Mozilla kraken (ms, less is better)	10080	9284	9992	8179	12559
Google octane 2 (more is better)	3990	4489	3928	5036	2823
SunSpider (ms, less is better)	1353	946	1104	877	1970

AndroBench memory speed test results:

Thermal imagery

Below is a thermal image back surface obtained after 10 minutes of battery test in the GFXBenchmark program:

It can be seen that the heating is more localized in the upper part of the device, which, apparently, corresponds to the location of the SoC microcircuit. According to the heat chamber, the maximum heating was 39 degrees (at an ambient temperature of 24 degrees), which is not very much.

Video playback

To test the "omnivorous" video playback (including support for various codecs, containers and special features, such as subtitles), we used the most common formats that make up the bulk of the content available on the Web. Note that for mobile devices it is important to have support for hardware video decoding at the chip level, since it is often impossible to process modern options at the expense of processor cores alone. Also, do not expect a mobile device to decode everything, since the leadership in flexibility belongs to the PC, and no one is going to challenge it. All results are tabulated.

Further video playback testing was done by Alexey Kudryavtsev.

We did not find the MHL interface, like Mobility DisplayPort, in this smartphone, so we had to confine ourselves to testing the output of video files on the screen of the device itself. To do this, we used a set of test files with an arrow and a rectangle moving one division per frame (see "Testing technique for video playback and display devices. Version 1 (for mobile devices)"). Screenshots with a shutter speed of 1 s helped to determine the nature of the frame output of video files with various parameters: the resolution varied (1280 by 720 (720p), 1920 by 1080 (1080p) and 3840 by 2160 (4K) pixels) and the frame rate (24, 25, 30, 50 and 60 fps). In our tests we used the MX Player video player in the "Hardware" mode. The test results are summarized in the table:

4K / 30p

Good No

Note: If both columns Uniformity and Skips green ratings are set, this means that, most likely, when watching movies, artifacts caused by uneven alternation and skipping of frames will either not be visible at all, or their number and visibility will not affect the viewing comfort. Red marks indicate possible problems related to the playback of the respective files.

According to the criterion for outputting frames, the quality of video files playback on the screen of the smartphone itself is good, since in most cases frames (or groups of frames) can (but are not required) to be displayed with more or less uniform alternation of intervals and without frame drops. When playing video files with a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels (1080p) on a smartphone screen, the image of the video file itself is displayed exactly along the edge of the screen, one to one pixel by pixel, that is, in the original resolution. The brightness range displayed on the screen corresponds to the standard range of 16-235: except that in the shadows a couple of shades merge with black, but in the highlights all gradations are displayed.

Battery life

Non-removable accumulator battery installed in the Honor 7X has a capacity of 3340 mAh - not a bad volume even by today's standards. And with such a battery, the smartphone demonstrates results that are quite consistent with its level in autonomy tests. Considering big screen with high resolution, the results are quite decent.

In real life, the device behaves the same as most modern smartphones: confidently lives up to evening exercises, but you can't count on more.

Testing has traditionally been conducted at typical power consumption levels without using power saving features.

	Battery capacity	Reading mode	Video mode	3D Game Mode
Honor 7X	3340 mAh	12h 00m	10h 00m	5h 00m
Sony Xperia XA1	2300 mAh	13h 00m	8h 30m	4h 10m
HTC One X10	4000 mAh	17h 00m	12h 00m	5h 00m
Asus Zenfone 3	3000 mAh	12h 00m	9h 40m	6h 30m
Nokia 5	3000 mAh	15h 20m	10h 30m	7h 00m

Continuous reading in the Moon + Reader program (with a standard, light theme) at a minimum comfortable brightness level (the brightness was set to 100 cd / m2) with auto scrolling lasted 12 hours until the battery was fully discharged, high quality(720p) with the same brightness level through the home Wi-Fi network the device operates for about 10 hours. In 3D games mode, the smartphone can work no more than 5 hours.

Honor 7X does not support fast charging, from the bundled network adapter(2 A 5 V) the smartphone was charged for 2 hours 20 minutes with a current of 1.5 A at a voltage of 5 V. The smartphone also does not support wireless charging.

Outcome

Prices for the Huawei Honor 7X start at € 299 (or £ 269). In Russia, the device began to be sold in official retail on December 5, the recommended retail price for a modification with 64 GB of flash memory is currently 17 thousand rubles. For a nice smartphone of a popular brand with an attractive appearance, a practical all-metal body, a high-quality 6-inch screen with a high resolution and a narrow bezel, as well as quite decent hardware with good performance and support for LTE Cat.6 with high data transfer rates, this is quite an adequate price. The smartphone does not shine with the quality of shooting, but it would be foolish to expect this at such a price. We can also negatively highlight the lack of NFC (and hence Android Pay). Otherwise, Honor 7X came out quite worthy successor to the glorious family of Huawei Honor in general and the Honor X line in particular.