Honor X6
Specs:
NETWORK
|
||
LAUNCH
|
2016, October
|
|
Available. Released 2016, October
|
BODY
|
150.9 x 76.2 x 8.2 mm (5.94 x 3.00 x 0.32 in)
|
|
162 g (5.71 oz)
|
||
Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by)
|
DISPLAY
|
LTPS IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
|
|
5.5 inches (~71.8% screen-to-body ratio)
|
||
1080 x 1920 pixels (~403 ppi pixel density)
|
||
Yes
|
||
- Emotion UI 4.1
|
PLATFORM
|
Android OS, v6.0 (Marshmallow), planned upgrade to v7.0 (Nougat)
|
|
HiSilicon Kirin 655
|
||
Octa-core (4x2.1 GHz Cortex-A53 & 4x1.7 GHz Cortex-A53)
|
||
Mali-T830MP2
|
MEMORY
|
microSD, up to 256 GB (uses SIM 2 slot)
|
|
32 GB, 3 GB RAM or 64 GB, 4 GB RAM
|
CAMERA
|
Dual 12 MP + 2 MP, phase detection autofocus, LED flash
|
|
1/2.9" sensor size, 1.25 µm pixel size, geo-tagging, touch focus,
face detection, HDR, panorama
|
||
1080p@30fps
|
||
8 MP, 1080p
|
SOUND
|
Vibration; MP3, WAV ringtones
|
|
Yes
|
||
Yes
|
||
- DTS audio
- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic |
COMMS
|
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, hotspot
|
|
v4.1, A2DP, EDR, LE
|
||
Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS
|
||
FM radio
|
||
microUSB v2.0
|
FEATURES
|
Fingerprint (rear-mounted), accelerometer, proximity, compass
|
|
SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Mail, IM
|
||
HTML5
|
||
No
|
||
- MP3/WAV/eAAC+/Flac player
- MP4/H.265 player - Photo/video editor - Document viewer |
BATTERY
|
Non-removable 3340 mAh battery
|
|
Up to 650 h (3G)
|
||
Up to 23 h (3G)
|
MISC
|
Gray, Gold, Silver
|
TESTS
|
||
Review:
Huawei’s Honor line has been making a name for itself by
selling good yet reasonably priced smartphones. The Honor 6X is no exception,
even if it isn’t perfect.
Last year’s Honor 5X offered a lot of smartphone for the
money at a time when the stalwart of the good-but-cheap smartphone market, the
Moto G series, was faltering. Now the Honor 6X has a lot to live up to. Smoother
design, Rounded sides and a curved back make the 6X nice to hold
The Honor 6X looks like a slightly smaller version of the
Huawei Mate 9. It’s got a metal back, plastic top and bottom edges, a dual
camera in vertical orientation and a fingerprint sensor on the back. The front
is plain and all glass. It’s a simple, attractive design that’s more rounded
and smoother than its predecessor, the 5X.
It’s well made, with very little flex in the body. At 8.2mm
thick the 6X is the same thickness as the 5X, but thinner by 1.6mm than the
Moto G4 Plus. The 6X is also shorter by 4mm than the 5X, but whether you could
tell that by looking at them is debatable.
It weighs 162g, which is actually heavier than the 158g 5X
and the 155g Moto G4 Plus, but the curved back and rounded edges make it feel a
lot nicer in the hand. It feels reassuringly heavy with good balance rather
than being a lump.
The 5.5in 1080p LCD screen is very good and is improved over
the 5X, although it doesn’t quite match up to the likes of Apple’s iPhone or
Samsung’s AMOLED displays in its S range. It looks relatively crisp, clear and
colourful, with wide viewing angles. The included screen protector is useful,
but sort of ruins the smooth glass curve down to the smartphone’s edge
The Honor 6X has Huawei’s own processor, the Kirin 655,
which handled games and apps with aplomb. The in graphically-rich Real Racing
3, for instance, gameplay was buttery smooth and the 6X only got slightly warm
while playing. It was responsive and snappy throughout normal Android
operations and in no way felt like anything other than a premium device in
operation.
Battery life was also very good. Using it as my primary
device, even with the Facebook app installed, and receiving hundreds of push
notifications, emails and messages, as well as browsing the web and using apps
for around three hours, I would finish the day with about half the battery
left. The next morning it would only have dropped about 3% battery overnight
and would last until evening.
Most users will get somewhere between 1.5 days and well over
two days of use between charges, more if you leave it alone for long periods as
Huawei’s app control prolongs standby time immeasurably compared to most other
Android Marshmallow devices.
It also charges a lot faster than the 5X, which means when
it does run out it takes just over an hour rather than a good two to reach
100%.
The 6X also has dual-Sim support, for using two numbers or
plans at the same time with the same phone, but the second Sim slot also
doubles as a microSD card slot for adding more storage, which means it’s either
or but not both.
Emotion UI is Huawei’s modified version of Android, and
while other Huawei devices such as the Mate 9 have EMUI5, the Honor 6X has the
older 4.1. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian
If there’s one weakness to the Honor 6X, it’s the software.
It has an old version of Android 6 Marshmallow, not the current Android 7
Nougat, which for a new smartphone going on sale over four months after Nougat
was released is pretty poor.
At the same time Huawei makes modifications to the basic
Android experience which are a mixed bag. Some tweaks such as aggressive control
of background applications and notifications when they’re draining your battery
are good.
The removal of the app drawer in favour of every app
installed having to be on the home screen is not. Some people like Huawei’s
so-called Emotion UI - EMUI 4.1 in this case - but many do not.
EMUI 5, which the Honor 6X is due to get relatively soon, is
a big step up, but for now it’s stuck with the same version of EMUI as the
Honor 8 and Huawei
The camera on the Honor 6X works well even in low light.
Photograph. The dual camera on the back produces really quite good images, with
accurate colour and a solid amount of detail in all conditions short of really
poor light. The 12-megapixel sensor captures the images and the auxiliary
2-megapixel sensor below it captures depth information. Using the two, with a
special wide-aperture mode, you can take a variable aperture photo for various
blurring effects, but also refocus the picture after the fact.
The HDR mode is not built into the main shooting mode, and
while it is easily one of the best cameras for the price, it won’t trouble the
best there is available on a smartphone for sheer image quality.
The 8-megapixel front-facing selfie camera is fixed focus,
which eliminates out-of-focus shots, but also means you’re unlikely to get
anything with a pleasing out-of-focus background. Nevertheless, it captures a
really good amount of detail in photos, even in poor artificial lighting
conditions, and has enough beauty modes to satisfy all but the most
self-obsessed.
Observations By our Bigfix Tech team:
The fingerprint
scanner on the back of the Honor 6X is very good
The fingerprint sensor is very fast and very accurate
The fingerprint scanner can be used to swipe through photos
or pull down the notification shade
Call quality was good, and reception and data speeds were
excellent
Some versions of the Honor 6X, including the US variant, do
not have NFC and therefore no access to Android Pay and on-touch pairing
The Honor 6X is another excellent reasonably-priced
smartphone from Huawei and is yet again a lot of smartphone for the money.
It has a great camera, good build, dual-Sim and microSD card
support, a snappy processor, a decent screen and good battery life. But it has
an old version of Android without the latest security updates, an inferior
version of Huawei’s EMUI and microUSB not USB-C.
Comments
Post a Comment