Huawei Honor 8 Pro

Sensible phone lacks an edge

Samsung’s Galaxy S8 (see our review, Issue 502) was meant to be the all-singing top-end phone of this season, and to be fair it did live up to the hype. Sadly, it also cost an arm and a leg. Huawei’s Honor 8 Pro is big, slim, fully equipped, and less stupidly expensive (although still not cheap). It’s available in black, gold or navy blue metal, although at the time of writing only the last of these had actually arrived in the UK.

The Honor 8 Pro is a whole millimetre thinner than the S8, with no bump required for its dual rear camera. This shoots colour and black-and-white at different focal lengths, optionally combining the two for a shallow depth-of-field effect. It also manages good shots in dim conditions, which is just as well, because the LED flash sheds about as much light as the last episode of police drama Line of Duty.

Also on the back is a fingerprint sensor,nsor, with an NFC chip for contactless payments. On the Honor 8 this doubledd as a multi-purpose button, but that’s no longer the case, although you can still set it to trigger the camera, for example. Inside, a very fast Kirin 960 processor blazes through all Android 7 (Nougat) tasks, including games.

The very sharp screen covers only 94 per cent of the SRGB colour range, but looks great, with excellent brightness levels and contrast. At 11 hours 17 minutes of video playback, battery life is a tad disappointing, but in ordinary use it should get you through the day. VERDICT: It may lack the wow factor of Samsung’s edge-to-edge screen, but this is a highly capable phone at a more sensible price

★★★★☆

ALTERNATIVE: Oneplus 3T £39999 It’s not as fast, the 64GB of storage isn’tsn’t expandable and the screen isn’t as sharp, but this is also a great phone for even less