A review: Huawei Honor 6 Plus

Huawei is among the very few smartphone manufacturers that create their own chip.

Huawei has been releasing pretty competitive handsets in the upper mid-range segment, which is normally under P20,000 but above P15,000.

The Honor series is Huawei’s more recognizable smartphone in this category with the Honor 6 Plus being the latest model to be released in the local market.

Launched in the Philippines just the other week, the Honor 6 Plus has the look and feel of a high-end flagship device but a price tag of a mid-range handset.

The Honor 6 Plus came off from the successful performance of the Honor 6 from last year, most notably because it was the first handset to sport 3GB of RAM that’s priced below the P20,000 mark.

The Honor 6 Plus is practically a supersized version of the Honor 6 but with the performance and features of Huawei’s flagship device, the Ascend Mate 7.

Huawei employed a glass-on-glass design on the Honor 6 Plus with a solid metal frame to give that elegant and premium effect. It’s pretty much the same execution we’ve seen way back in the days of the iPhone 4S as well as Sony’s Xperia Z series.

At 5.5 inches, the handset is still manageable with one hand, has a solid firm grip but with that delicate appearance of a full glass-covered body. The back panel has that subtle pattern beneath the outer glass layer that can only be noticed when you view it at an angle against the light.

Huawei is among the very few smartphone manufacturers that create their own chip. Their HiSilicon Kirin 925 features an 8-core processor which is basically a pair of quad core chips running at a different clock speed. The quad- core ARM Cortex A7 runs at a lower speed of 1.3GHz for optimal power consumption while another set of quad-core ARM Cortex A15 running at 1.8GHz per core kicks in when higher performance is needed.

Add to that a generous serving of 3GB of RAM and we get a smooth and snappy performance especially with multi- tasking and running multiple resource-heavy apps.

Among the more notable features of the Honor 6 Plus is the dual- SIM, dual- LTE functionality which we first experienced with the Ascend Mate 7. This allows you to use two different SIM cards and enable LTE connectivity between them. Take note, though, that Huawei’s dual- SIM implementation requires that you either use the second cradle for a nano SIM or a micro SD card. Hence, the configuration will either be two SIM cards or one SIM card and one microSD card.

The second interesting feature is the dualcamera setup at the back. The Honor 6 Plus uses two 8-megapixel sensor at the rear and paired it with a dual-LED flash. Huawei calls this “symmetrical dual camera technology” a huge improvement over a lot of other camera setup.

First, it allows for much faster focusing time. If Huawei’s claim of 0.1s AF holds true, it certainly is way ahead of the Galaxy S6’s 0.7s and the LG G4 at 0.6s.

Second, the two sensors can take in more light which means low- light or dark scenes will still produce good photos. Another feature is the ability to produce 13-megapixel photos by combining data taken by both the sensors.

Lastly, the depth-of-field effect allows you to take a photo and then change the focus and DOF later on.

The dual- camera system isn’t actually unique as we’ve seen it first in the HTC One M8 from a year ago.

The complete package includes a highcapacity battery rated at 3,600mAh and based on experience as well as previous battery performance of its next-of-kin (the Mate 7), this should result in pretty good battery life.

One thing that Huawei could have put a lot more effort on was the OS version. While Android 4.4 Kitkat is already pretty optimized, it would have been better if they had Android 5.0 Lollipop installed right out of the box. Let’s just hope that they roll out the update very soon.

With a suggested retail price of P17,990, the Honor 6 Plus is a great handset in its category. It’s packed with impressive hardware, great design and performance at a competitive price point.

Huawei Honor 6 Plus specs

5.5-inch IPS LCD display @ 1920×1080 pixels, 401ppi HiSilicon Kirin 925 1.8GHz octa- core processor Mali-T628 MP4 GPU 3GB RAM 32GB internal storage Up to 128GB via microSD card 4G LTE Cat.6 300Mbps/50Mbps Dual-SIM, Dual-LTE WiFi 802.11 b/g/n Bluetooth 4.0 LE, A2DP, EDR NFC GPS with aGPS, GLONASS FM Radio Tuner Dual-8MP rear camera with LED flash 8- megapixel front- facing camera Li-Ion 3,600mAh battery Android 4.4.4 Kitkat with Emotion UI 3.0 150.5 x 75.7 x 7.5 mm (dimensions) 165 grams ( weight)