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Honor 8X First Impressions: Mid-ranger with big impressive display and AI cameras

Honor launched Honor 8X in India today. The highlights of the mid-range phone are a big FHD+ notch display with a small chin, a new octa-core Kirin 710 chipset, and dual rear AI cameras. The Honor 8X price in India starts at Rs. 14,999.

The Honor 8X which is the successor to Honor 7X was launched last month in China. Now, it makes its debut in India, we spend some time with the device and here are our first impressions about it.

Build and Design

In terms of build quality, the Honor 8X looks quite impressive in comparison to other mid-range devices. The device has a very premium glass sandwich back design with a metal frame in between.

Up front, there is a big FHD+ IPS LCD display with a small notch up top and minimal bezels on each side. It has a rather small bottom chin that gives the device a 91% screen-to-body ratio. In order to get such small chin on the bottom, Honor has used a new technology.

We have the blue variant of the device and has a new pattern on the back which looks really good. The dual camera module is at the top left corner of the back and a fingerprint scanner is placed in the center of the back.

The power button and volume rockers are located on the right side while the SIM card tray is located on the left. The bottom has the single speaker, a micro USB port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The inclusion of micro USB port is disappointing.

Overall the design and build quality of the new Honor 8X is impressive.

Display

The 6.5-inch FHD+ IPS LCD display on the Honor 8X is definitely one of its highlights. It makes the device look more premium with the minimal bezels on all sides and a small notch ot offer an immersive experience.

The colors in the display are accurate and it is bright enough for sunlight visibility. Honor 8X’s display also has an Eye Comfort mode which automatically changes the color temperature of the display in the night to decrease the blue light emissions. Overall, display is the USP of the device.

Cameras

The Honor 8X sports a 20MP+2MP dual AI rear camera setup and a 16MP front camera for selfies and video calling. The highlight of the Honor cameras like always is its AI features.

The Honor 8X back camera features portrait mode and several other modes. In our initial testing, we found the portrait mode images and images with AI features are pretty good.

It has a Night mode which allows adjusting the shutter speed and ISO to capture better low-light pictures. Other camera modes include Pro Mode, Slow-mo Mode, and Light Painting mode. The Honor 8X is capable of recording only 1080p video and there’s no OIS or EIS to stabilize the video, however, they claim it have AIS.

Up front, it sports a 16MP camera with AI portrait mode and all the other modes that are available on the main camera. It also has a night mode for better low light selfies.

Performance

As mentioned, the Honor 8X get an octa-core Kirin 710 chipset clocked at 2.2GHz under the hood. This is a new chipset form Huawei that is based on the 12nm process. Further, it is coupled with up to 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage.  In terms of performance, it is fluid and we played PUBG on it without any lag.

Complementing the hardware is Huawei’s own EMUI 8.2 skin which is based on Android 8.1 Oreo. The new EMUI has a bunch of customizations over stock Android and provides many new features. The bloatware is minimum and it even allows users to uninstall the preinstalled apps that are of use.

Battery and Connectivity

The Honor 8X has a triple slot tray with a dedicated microSD card slot that supports cards up to 400GB and two Nano SIM cards. The device also has all the usual connectivity options like 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, AGPS, Glonass, and BeiDou.

The device packs a respectable 3,750mAh battery which easily lasts for a day with heavy usage. It also charges a bit fast.

The Honor 8X is a mid-range phone with some premium features and it’s price in China starts at Rs. 14,999. So, it will compete against the likes of Redmi Note 5 Pro, Mi A2, and Realme 2 Pro in India. With its stunning display, glass back and AI-powered cameras, it can be a good option in the mid-range segment.

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Satyendra Pal Singh

Satyendra explores the latest happenings in the tech world and writes stories about those. He likes to play around with the latest gadgets and shares his views through articles. In his free time, you can find him watching movies/TV shows and/or reading books.