Honor has not been one of the oldest smartphone brands in the industry, but its parent company Huawei has been known for its expertise in its area. Much like Huawei, Honor has also been quite efficient in putting an impression among the consumers around the world. Recently Honor launched their first smartphone with the homegrown 16nm chipset, called the Honor 5C.
Honot 5C has already left a great impression on its consumers but as we know, there are some exceptional devices in its price segment. So we decided to find out how does the Honor 5C perform in the real life usage.
Honor 5C Full Specs
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Honor 5C Coverage
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Honor 5C Quick Review, Camera Samples, Gaming and Benchmarks
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Honor 5C FAQ, Pros Cons, User Queries And Answers
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Honor 5C : Great Phone for Gaming at a Reasonable Price
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Honor 5C Gives This Much Battery Life in Day to Day Usage?
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Honor 5C Gaming Review, Heating and Performance Overview
Honor 5C India Review [Video]
What are Usage Reviews, Tests and Opinions?
This review is based on our quick tests and usage done with the phone, we try to push the device to its limits and find out the results which will matter if you plan to buy this phone. We hope this review helps you to get your queries answered about the device.
Performance
Honor 5C is powered by an octa-core Kirin 650 processor with Quad-core 2.0 GHz Cortex-A53 + quad-core 1.7 GHz Cortex-A53, coupled with 2GB of RAM and Mali-T880MP2 GPU. The storage on the device is a mere 16GB onboard, which can be expanded via a microSD card up to 256GB in size.
App Launch Speed
The app launch speed is very quick on this handset and it takes minimal time to open the heaviest of apps.
Multitasking and RAM Management
With the help of Kirin 650, multitasking on this phone can be done with an ease. Despite 2 GB RAM, it handles multiple tasks at once without giving you a chance to complain.
As far as the RAM goes, out of the 2GB, there was areound 600MB RAM available on boot.
Scrolling Speed
Scrolling speed was normal, it was not showing any slowness or lags while browsing through heavy web pages.
Heating
I don’t know I was lucky or folks at Honor have done some magical fine tuning with the chipset. I did not face a single case of heating issue on this phone even after prolonged gaming sessions and extensive usage. Mild heating was noticed while recording video but it was bearable.
Benchmark Scores
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Camera
Honor 5C has a 13 MP Primary Camera that comes with LED Flash, Auto Focus, f/2.0 Aperture and 78° wide-angle 5P macro lens. It features Geo-tagging, touch focus, face/smile detection, panorama and HDR for perfectly exposed pictures.
On the Front, Honor 5C is equipped with a 8 MP shooter that comes with F2.0 aperture and 77° wide-angle 4P lens. It features Prime image signal processor with automatic scene recognition, Rapid capture and preview speeds for quick selfies and Ten different beauty modes.
Camera Performance
The 13 MP Autofocus Camera on Honor 5C performed above our expectations from a 13 MP camera. It comes with LED Flash, f/2.0 Aperture and 78° wide-angle lens. It can record Full HD videos @ 30 fps. It captures decent photos in Artificial light, Natural light and Low light for a 13 MP camera. All the photos had good colors, brightness and details, moreover, the autofocus, processing speed and camera shutter were also fast. Overall, Honor 5C has a very good camera setup for its reasonable price.
Camera Samples
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Battery Performance
Honor 5C is backed by an average 3000 mAh battery which is enough for a phone with such specs. Moreover, the Kirin 650 is tuned to suck the most out of that battery. Specifically, Android Marshmallow’s Doze Mode plays a huge role in this. I kept the phone in my drawer with 38% battery left and left for home at 7 in the evening, and when I returned to the office after 15 hours, the battery level was at 36%.
Charging Time
It takes around 1 hours and 30 minutes to charge from 0-100%.
Looks and Design
Honor 5C comes packed in a metal shell, with curved edges in a unibody structure. Due to its 5.2 inch display size, holding on to the phone is quite comfortable and one handed usage is not an issue if you have big hands. It feels really solid and the finishing is top class. Front of the phone looks a lot like what we have seen before but it manages to balance this with the premium looking back.
The front looks a lot like we have seen on phones like Redmi Note 3 or previous Honor phones. It has thin bezels on sides, with almost no black border, which is a good thing. Bottom bezel looks thick at first but once you use it, you’ll realize that the absence of navigation keys make it look thicker.
Honor 5C Photo Gallery
Quality of Material
The Honor 5C sports an aluminum back which feels solid and premium at the same time. It has a brushed metal finish on the back which makes it look even more appealing.
Ergonomics
The phone, despite having a metallic body, weighs just 156 grams, which is considered decent. Its dimensions are 147.1 x 73.8 x 8.3 mm, this makes it easier to hold in one hand.
Display Clarity, Colors and Viewing Angles
5C features 5.2-inch Full HD display and a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels with 424 ppi density. A full HD display is always a treat at this price and Honor 5C packs a beautiful looking display with crisp details and bright colours.
Outdoor Visibility (Full Brightness)
Outdoor visibility is decent, but the colors look dull when the brightness is not full.
Custom User Interface
The Honor 5C is the first Honor smartphone to come with Android Marshmallow, straight out of the box. It also has a skin of Honor’s Emotion UI 4.1 layered on top. This time, the company has done slight changes in the look and feel and the UI feels smoother this time.
It offers you a bunch of features that are useful but it still continues to have some irrelevant and useless options that we have spoken about in previous Honor phones. Although this time the EmUI feels much smoother and easier to use.
Sound Quality
The loudspeaker on this phone is baked at the bottom and the sound quality is pretty good. It is a good speaker if you like playing music in parks or in silent outdoor surroundings.
Call Quality
Call quality is top notch. Network reception is great and the microphone and speakers work really well.
Gaming Performance
The Honor 5C comes with a 16nm octa-core Kirin 650 processor and 2 GB of RAM. To test the gaming performance, we installed and played Modern Combat 5 and Asphalt 8 on the phone. With graphics level set to medium, we experienced no issues in the gaming performance. Modern Combat 5 was a smooth experience but Asphalt was not as smooth as we have seen on high end flagship phones, but that doesn’t mean it is not playable. There were no major frame drops and the overall performance was very satisfactory considering the price and the RAM size of the phone.
After playing Modern Combat 5 and Asphalt 8 one after the other for 45 minutes, we experienced a 19% drop in the battery level. The phone did not heat up much – the temperature we recorded was 41.2 degree celsius, but this will vary depending on the type of game and the room temperatures on your side.
Game Lag & Heating
We did not face any major issue while playing any of these games. The worst I could notice were tiny frame-drops in rare cases. Heating was well under control, it did not heat up even after excessive gaming.
Verdict
Honor 5c is a great phone with all the features you need from a phone of this price range. The best part is that it provides quality hardware and software. Kirin 650 makes it great for multitasking and gaming, despite of 2 GB RAM. I really enjoyed gaming on this phone and it can literally give flagships a run for money when it comes to gaming. There are few compromises made by the company and one of them is the 2 GB of RAM, especially when smartphones have 3 GB RAM on average. But that does not set it back; it has a beautiful display, great cameras, good battery life and a premium look.
