Huawei launched its Honor Brand here in India in 2014, and since then this brand has seen a massive increase in its sales levels. Seeing the hype and craze about this brand the company has once again come up with another phone in this series – Huawei Honor 5X. The smartphone which is considered as the successor to the 4X model launched last year has pretty much everything you look for in a mid-budget smartphone.
With the technology such as fingerprint sensor, new Snapdragon processor, Huawei Honor 5X is hitting the market with a low price of 12,999 INR. Also, apart from the low price the reputation that the phone has gained over the years has proved to be a massive force behind such craze for this device.
Let’s see what this new phone has to offer and whether it will be able to satisfy the needs of its customers.
Design and Look One thing that impressed us the most in Huawei Honor 5X is the phone’s body, which is entirely carved out of metal. You wouldn’t expect a phone with a metallic body in this price range. However, the company has failed in giving the metallic finish to the device, and the device looks more plastic than metal. The phone also gives a plastic feel, which is because of its light weight.
The back of the device is almost full with a camera, an LED flash followed by a fingerprint sensor. Whatever space is left is covered by the logo of the company and regulatory text. The phone has a plastic top and bottom edge, which stand out predominantly and tend to spoil that finesse finish. The edges are nicely shaped to fit in the hand, the power button and the volume button located on the right are easy to reach and operate. On the left is the SIM tray and on the bottom is the USB port and the speaker. On the top, the device has a 3.5 mm audio jack.
Software Huawei Honor 5X runs on Android 5.1 with an EM UI on the top. The EM UI is the Huawei’s own interface layered over Android. This interface is pretty much similar to that of iOS and has no app drawer. As soon as you unlock the device, you can see all your applications listed in front of you. Although you can organize these icons in the folders and make some space.
While enabling the fingerprint security, all your lock screen notifications are turned off. Therefore, you would require re-enabling them. There is a quick toggle menu provided at the bottom which can help you directly access music control, settings, etc. Numerous themes and wallpapers are also provided for the users to control and customize their device.
Touch and Display Huawei Honor 5X comes in with a 5.5 inches IPS LCD screen which tends to provide user excellent viewing angles. Due to some space on the top, the body to screen ratio comes out to be approximately 70 percent which means that you won’t be able to comfortably use the device with one hand.
The device’s display is sharp, but there is a bluish tint visible on the screen. There is no pixelation of either the text or icons and the colors appear to be natural. The display with a smudge and fingerprint magnet tends to control the reflection quite impressively. The auto brightness mode is acceptable, however, not up to the mark.
Camera Huawei Honor 5X has a 13 MP back camera with LED flash and variable focus, and a front camera of 5MP with a fixed level of focus. There are numerous options available for shooting and recording the images and videos, and there are a bunch of manual controls provided too. As soon as you fire up the camera application, the usual interface is seen. There are plenty of options and beauty models available. You have options to include filters, make slow motion videos, etc.
The primary camera is good for capturing decent images; however, high-quality images are difficult to be attained. In bright daylight, high levels of details and sharpness can be seen; however some noise is visible if the image is shot in low light conditions. In low light situations, the images do not tend to blur, just the levels of color and saturation suffers. One problem in the primary camera is its slow focus and failure to record quick moving objects.
Moving on to the front camera, this camera is only good enough for images that are for casual sharing and video calls. You cannot expect much out of this device’s front camera.
Battery Life Huawei Honor 5X is loaded with a non-removable 3000mAh battery, which is a bit weak in its performance. The UI is designed to notify users about massive battery consumptions. Also, Smartpower 3.0 is provided to elongate battery life. The device upon testing was found to deliver 9 hours of video playing, 10 hours of web browsing and 29 hours of audio calls under normal situations.
Technical Specifications Huawei Honor 5X is powered by an octa-core Snapdragon processor of 1.5Ghz. The phone which sports a GB of RAM lags a bit while loading a bulky game or application, but is mostly smooth. There are some heating issues but nothing much serious.
Phone Accessories When you unbox the device, you will find a SIM ejector along with user manual and warranty card. Apart from this, a two pin charger offering average charge speed is packed. After setting this aside you can see a USB cable packed for usage. Music lovers would be disappointed as no earphones have been provided.
Variants Huawei Honor 5X is available in three colors- black, gold and white, each of them priced at Rs.12999. Each of these variants looks good due to the metallic body, but gold tends to add a different level of sleekness to the device.
Verdict Getting a metallic body in this price range is almost impossible. Huawei Honor 5X checks all the criteria that you can find in the mid-budget smartphone. The design of the phone is exquisite and so is the camera. But what tends to bring this smartphone on the back foot as compared to its competitor is its easily draining battery as well as a non-pleasing UI. Also, the device heats up in situations of heavy usage.
While most of the functionalities incorporated are good, there isn’t anything special that this device has done to stand apart from its competitors. The phone such as Moto G 3rd Gen, Moto G turbo, is offering far greater features and levels of performance and therefore, this phone may be lost among them.
