We unbox the Honor 8X!
A few weeks after being unveiled in China, Honor has officially taken their newest phone, the 8X, to the Philippines.
The newest offering of the Huawei sub-brand brings a big display plus powerful internals to the upper mid-range market, which has seen a lot of strong contenders lately.
Packaging and contents:
Since this is an Honor phone, you’re still getting a pale blue box with the phone’s name on the front and sides. There’s not a lot to see on the outside, which is pretty much par for the course for the offerings of the sub-brand.
Inside, you’ll see the phone itself, along with a USB cable and a fast charger. Our review unit did not come with a pair of headphones or a silicone case but engineering samples (which is what our phone was) typically don’t come with these retail-only freebies.
What is it?
The Honor 8X is a significantly upsized, upper mid-range smartphone from Huawei’s sub-brand, Honor. It’s quite different from the company’s recent offerings like the Honor Play and Honor 10 thanks to its mid-range guts and super-sized screen.
How does it feel?
Substantial. The Honor 8X has a large body to accommodate the larger than average 6.5-inch, full HD+ display. While the bezels on the side and bottom are pretty thin, the phone still has a relatively wide (76.6mm) and tall (160.4) body.
Just like most mid-range phones nowadays the Honor 8X uses a glass body and a solid metal frame. While our review unit came in relatively sedate black, the Honor 8X comes in several color options, including blue, red and pink.
The vertically-stacked dual 20-megapixel f/1.8 and 2-megapixel main cameras are located on rear, snuggled at the top left corner with a LED flash situated right below them. The fingerprint scanner is on the rear as well.
The volume rocker is on the left alongside the power button. The microSD/SIM slot can fit in two SIMs and a microSD card and is located on the left side of the phone. The Honor 8X still has a 3.5mm jack thankfully, though annoyingly enough it still uses a micro USB port for charging.
You’ve got a larger than average 6.5-inch Full HD+ IPS LCD display. The panel is pretty much has everything you would expect of a screen of this caliber but it’s size definitely brings a lot of enjoyment for those of us who like to treat our devices like a cinema on-the-go.
Like most phones nowadays, there’s a notch at the top. It contains the 16-megapixel front camera, along with the earpiece and requisite sensors.
The phone is powered by a Kirin 710 chipset, the same chipset that beats in the heart of its cousin, the Nova 3i. That’s paired with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of expandable storage but there is a variant with 128GB so you can match its big screen with big storage too. The mid-range guts are able to run most games without any issues, and the phone may be eligible for Huawei’s GPU Turbo enhancement that’ll further give it a bit of a boost when it’s used for gaming.
Just like any other Honor or Huawei phone, the Honor 8X runs Android Oreo 8.1 that’s layered with EMUI 8.2. Since we’re talking about software, the phone also has AI baked into the cameras that basically amounts to scene detection, bumping up the contrast and other parameters depending on what you’re shooting at for a more vivid photo.
Because of the phone’s size, it has a large 3750mAh battery, along with fast charging to top up juice quickly.
The phone feels fast for what it is, though right now we don’t have a firm grasp on how much the phone will be when it hits the market. It would probably fall under the Php 15K price point considering where Honor’s newest device, the Play is situated price-wise, and we’re sure that they’re not keen on placing two affordable mid-range phones that close price-wise.
We’ll just have to see in the next few days what Honor’s decision is on the 8X when it comes to pricing.
Honor 8X specs
- Kirin 710 octa-core processor
- Mali G51 MP4 GPU
- 4GB of RAM
- 64GB of internal storage, expandable via microSD up to 256GB
- 20-megapixel rear camera with f/1.8 aperture lens, PDAF, LED flash, 2-megapixel depth
- sensor
- 16-megapixel front camera with f/2.0 aperture lens
- Dual SIM
- 3G, LTE
- WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, A-GPS, fingerprint scanner
- 3750mAh battery
- Android 8.1, EMUI 8.2
