Huawei Honor 6x Revealed

A dual camera setup and two days of battery life — it’s two main calling cards; and not much more

Like every year, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), 2017 witnessed introductions of a variety of tablets, smartphones, OLED and QLED TVs.

One of the largest shows across the globe, the CES forms an excellent platform to showcase new devices and garner a lot of excitement and interest in upcoming releases.

One of the more prominent phones to be showcased in the 2017 version of the annual show at Las Vegas was Chinese electronics giant, Huawei’s Honor 6X — the successor to its Honor 5X.

The Honor 6X claims to be a perfect phone for the youth, boasting two primary USPs — a large battery and dual-camera technology.

Huawei did pretty well with Honor 5X as per George Zhao, Huawei’s Marketing Director, in fact the company hinted at having shipped about 11 million units of the device. This time around, the company has an ambitious target of selling twenty million Honor 6X devices!

Huawei aims for greater commercial success via that Honor 6X by equipping it with a better all-round arsenal — a larger display, larger battery, a faster processor and a dual-lens camera.

Honor 6X is yet again, an illustration of premium specs being offered by Huawei in a pocket-book-friendly price similar to Samsung’s Galaxy A series.

Back to exploring the goody bag: The new phablet seems like a more refined, mature, stylish version of Honor 5X, perhaps owing to the elimination of the brushed aluminum and glossy finish of its predecessor. Instead, an all-metal design made from high-strength aluminum alloy that has been anodized twice results in a scratch-resistant, yet attractive design.

The Honor 6X features a 5.5-inch Full HD display. Under the hood is Huawei’s inhouse Kirin processor, the Kirin 655 octa-core chip — which to put things in perspective, can be equated with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 600 series. The phablet comes with the par-for-the-course 3 GB of RAM coupled with 32 GB of internal storage. It is accompanied by another variant with higher configuration of 4 GB RAM and 64 GB of internal storage. Both phones are powered by a 3,340 mAh battery which should keep the phone running for about two days on a single charge (the Honor 5x had a 3,000 mAh battery, so the new brother is just marginally better endowed).

What has really improved on the Honor 6X, on paper (since we’ll need to test it firsthand to determine performance) is the rear camera.

The Honor 6x come with a dual-camera setup, which with its fast autofocus and improved low light capabilities, promises to mimic professionally shot images. The rear camera has a configuration of a 12-megapixel and a 2-megapixel camera, with the latter acting as a detector for depth-of-field.

An 8-megapixel camera is included in front, for your selfies and video calling needs. In addition to this, the device comes with a better camera app. Together with the new camera hardware and software, Honor claims that the Honor 6X is capable of achieving crisp, sharp photos in less than a second.

Additionally, there are different camera modes, some of which Huawei says are novel. Splash, for instance, is a mode whereby certain aspects of a photo can be gray scaled leaving other aspects in color.

Not just that, the fingerprint scanner is implanted into the rear casing, enabling the user to unlock the device in just 0.3 seconds. The same scanner also enables the user to take photos and later swipe through the image gallery without touching the screen.

Well, I’m paraphrasing Chip-Monks’ initial thoughts — Huawei seems to be tom-toming a potentially average device. There’s nothing really remarkable here, and Xiaomi for one, is miles ahead of Huawei in terms of hardware and innovation. The Honor 6x did really afford Huawei and opportunity of clawing back some of the gap created by Xiaomi’s constant push to surge forward.

One of the bigger setbacks on the Honor 6X is its software. The combination of EMUI 4.1 along with Android 6.0 Marshmallow seems to be a little dated, considering the fact that EMUI 5.0 has already been released on other Huawei devices. Additionally, Android 7.0 Nougat isn’t to be seen on this phone yet. However, there is hope — a Huawei spokesperson, said that Nougat is “coming soon”, hence Honor 6X owners will have to settle on the outdated software for some time till the update rolls out.

Perhaps, the Honor 8 which is to release in February might have Nougat out of the box.

The smartphone will be initially available in 13 new markets, starting this this month. The variant with 3 GB RAM and 32 GB of internal storage will be available for USD 250 starting Jan 4 for several European and Middle Eastern markets. The larger variant with 4 GB RAM and 64 GB internal storage will sell for USD 300 and will be available later, during the first quarter of 2017. Both phones will be available in Silver, Grey and Gold colours

Zhao, the Marketing Director of Huawei is (to our amusement) of the view that the specifications on the Honor 6X make it capable of being a worthy competitor to one of its largest rivals, Apple and Samsung. Pardon me as I chuckle my way through my coffee break.

That aside, I just hope Honor 6x turns out to be a successful device on it’s own merit, whenever it does land in the crowded, sweaty and over-heated Indian smartphone market.

Originally published at Chip-Monks.