Shoot to thrill

The Honor 8 Pro is a mid-ranger with high-end elements, writes Balqis Lim

AS a sub-brand to Huawei, Honor has definitely set itself apart through the Honor 8 Pro smartphone, which showcases the latest technologies and innovations for its customers. In fact, it has the power and capabilities to go head-to-head with premium phones in the market.

DESIGN

Flip the Honor 8 Pro over and you’ll see a gorgeous matte finish. The review unit that I get is Navy Blue. Needless to say, I fall in love with it immediately.

The phone is extremely slim and weighs just 184g. Its sleek, rounded edges and full-metal unibody design give the phone a premium feel.

On the back resides the fingerprint sensor which can also be used to take photos when the camera function is open.

Looking good is one thing - the phone also feels good in my hand although it can be a bit slippery without a casing.

The dual 12MP lens at the back is accompanied by an LED flash. The front shooter boasts a decent 8MP lens.

A 3.5mm headphone jack is located at the bottom, alongside a speaker and its fast-charging USB Type-C connector.

The phone’s power button and volume rocker are found on the right while a dual nano-SIM compartment is on the left. You can choose to insert a microSD card to occupy the secondary SIM slot.

DISPLAY AND PERFORMANCE

The 5.7-inch display sports quad HD resolution and is vibrant enough although it struggles under direct sunlight with its reflective screen.

With an impressive 1,440 x 2,560 resolution, the Honor 8 Pro kicks out a pixel density of 515ppi which results in sharp images and text.

The phone runs on a HiSilicon Kirin 960 processor coupled with a whopping 6GB RAM and 64GB internal storage.

It therefore runs all kinds of applications with ease, be it multi-tasking or gaming.

The large 4,000mAh battery is also commendable. It utilises fast charging technology.

Out-of-the-box, the Honor 8 Pro is equipped with Android 7.0 Nougat and runs the EMUI 5.1 user interface.

Gaming experience is pleasant. The phone handles casual games like Subway Surfers and Temple Run 2 quite effectively, running smoothly without any noticeable lags or frame drops.

However, one persistent issue in this device is over-heating. This is particularly noticeable when you play high-graphics games or use the camera app.

I like to take a lot of pictures and the device tends to heat up fast even when it is just on standby mode.

Another let-down with the Honor 8 Pro is its speaker performance. It sports a single mono speaker at the bottom and audio output is just average.

Call quality, however, is good and clear. While not particularly impressive, it’s decent and delivers sound depth.

CAMERA

The camera comes with dual 12MP f/2.2 sensors — one is used to capture RGB data while the other captures details in monochrome. It also has laser autofocus dualtone LED flash.

The video-recording supports 4K recording at 30 frames per second and there are also slow-motion modes.

On the front, there is an 8MP camera

Images taken with the Honor 8 Pro with an aperture of f/2.0 for selfies and video calling.

The phone captures well-detailed shots, especially when the lighting is perfect. It also delivers wonderful contrast and colour turn out vivid, accurate and true to life.

It is so good that this phone has become the camera of choice among my friends when we are out taking photos.

The camera comes with a wide aperture mode, which lets you capture an image with different aperture settings. This mode is useful for creating a bokeh effect (blurred background) to the photo.

While the effect is sometimes not accurate, where the subject is blurred instead of the background, the photo can be edited afterwards.

The camera also comes with various modes that you can choose from - Pro, video, Pro video, Monochrome, HDR, 3D Creator, Night shot, Panorama, Time lapse and so on.

While not impressive, the front camera does a decent job in most lighting situations. During low light, images get

very noisy though.

VR EXPERIENCE

The Honor 8 Pro comes in a box that can be converted to a VR (Virtual Reality) headset. There is also a preinstalled Jaunt VR app, through which users can enjoy virtual reality content.

The whole set is quite easy to assemble but after trying it out for a while, the VR can be rather uncomfortable to use as you would have to hold the box at all times.

The Jaunt VR app is where you can spend quite a few hours (like I did). It offers exclusive access to the Invisible VR series, adventure videos, selected music, horror and even travel episodes. There are some short VR movies available, news and animated film for children.

A few themed VR rooms with some behind-the-scenes content are available in the app — for instance.

Exploring all the VR movies in the app will take up a lot of time, so you definitely have enough content to get started.

CONCLUSION

I love almost everything about the Honor 8 Pro, especially it’s photo-taking capabilities.

There’s room for improvement though, like waterproofing, which is something you get on various high-end phones.

But all in all, the Honor 8 Pro is a reliable alternative if you are on a budget. It gives you flagship-level capabilities at a medium-range price (RM1,999).

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