The long awaited Huawei Honor 5X has finally arrived in Malaysia. Packed with premium feature and quality design, this phone certainly puts itself on top of the chart despite pricing itself towards the budget-phone segment. It turns out to be one of the best phones in CES 2016 and won multiple awards during the event. Lets see if it will live up to its hype when we test and do an in depth review on the phone after the break.
Packaging
Simple, clean and efficient. They are not wasting any space or even wasting fancy wrapping papers or selves which in my opinion can sometimes be slightly annoying and challenging to open without damaging them. It is a solid, bright colored box with no nonsense.
Inside you will immediately see the phone which was thrown into a plastic bag, tightly placed in the box.
Digging more towards the bottom we can find the warranty card, quick start guide and the sim-eject tool. Honestly I would perfer them not to waste paper by supplying a thick quick start guide with tons of different languages in them that most of us probably would not read anyway. Physical instruction manual nowdays are pretty non-essential unlike the days of proprietary OS or menu of different phones. It is going to be Android anyway. Also, even the stickers protecting the phone during shipment already has the details printed such as which is the power button and such. TL;DR, stick to online instruction manual guys; it saves paper, space and also reduces shipping cost. At least supply a graphics only quick start guide. That would save the trouble of including tons of languages in them.
In their defense though, the packaging does have a smiley face in it. That lifted my spirit for sure.
The cable and charger supplied looks decent. Cable feels nice and does have some quality to it.
Design
Screen
The screen is a 5.5-inch laminated IPS LCD display with 15.7 million colors.
Resolution is 1920 x 1080 Full HD which is super nice for a phone of this price. So far so good.
Right
All of the buttons on this phone is located at the right. The volume rocker is at the top and the sleep/power button at the bottom. Having the power button closer to the mid-point definitely feels more natural and ergonomic.
Top
On the top we have the 3.5mm headphones jack located towards the right side of the phone along with a secondary microphone.
Left
The first slot is for the nano-sim tray. Second slot is however a dual purpose tray where you could choose to have it hold a Micro SD card or a secondary nano SIM card. This is particularly nice as it caters to wider target consumers as some might want to have two sim cards and some would rather have more storage space. Unfortunately, this nice design came with the sacrifice of not having the choice to have all of them both sim cards and a Micro SD card at the same time.
Bottom
At the bottom we have the microphone on the left side, the micro USB port and the speaker on the right side. I have to say: unfortunately they are unbalanced, one-sided speaker. However, it is still better than those ridiculous back speaker design. I mean, why would you face the speaker towards the back when the user are at the front? Having the speaker at the bottom helps a bit in terms of volume and sound direction.
Rear
The very subtle curve definitely feels good when you hold the phone. The brushed metal back gives a premium feel to the overall experience. At the rear we have the usual camera and flash combo. What is exciting is the FPC rim-free touch metallic fingerprint sensor.
Overall design aspect, the metal chassis definitely brings that premium and better user experience. It just gives off that feel of quality and reliability all over it. However, the rear part of the phone is not 100% metal; the top and bottom section appears to be made out of plastic. To be fair, this might be just the formula to withstand against dents from daily bumps. I would still prefer if they made it fully metal all the way while they are at it. Thickness and weight ratio feels just about right measuring at 8.2mm thin and 158 grams.
Camera
The camera is good and fast. No trouble using it so far. Even the auto focus is fast. One of the most useful feature that was implemented for the camera was the very fast instant snap from sleep mode. It takes an average of 1.5 seconds from a blank screen to getting a single shot, just like its elder brother the Honor 7 which we reviewed here.
Overall, the camera quality is pretty nice. Coming from Asus Zenfone 5 and Asus PadFone myself, this camera is way faster, sharper and brighter. One nice thing they included is that you can force toggle the LED. Many phones I’ve used can’t do this. It really helps since sometimes you just have no idea at all on how the subject will look when the camera flashes. With this toggle, I can in real time look at the result and focus properly.
They have also included a feature of their own called Good Food which supposedly enhances picture of your food to look good, potentially more delicious too. Think of it like Beauty Mode for your food.
Performance
The performance was satisfactory. It never lags. Lets face it, this is not a Nexus or a benchmark device but for normal use, it is actually very smooth. The RAM was plenty and the processing power is generous to run 3D graphics quite well. Packed with Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 1.5GHz and 1.21GHz Octa-core, it packs a punch for its price range. The rendering chip is Adreno 405.
Benchmark runs at full HD resolution on ultra high performance settings
The result was around 30 FPS which is totally not bad at all considering that even the Nexus 6P runs at around 43.4 FPS(2392 x 1440 though). Considering that the tests are ran at maximum native resolution, it is actually very good performer!
Benchmark scores on the other aspect of the phones turns out to be quite good.
The temperature seems to be very acceptable. It was holding at around 50 degrees Celsius. With its stainless steel backing, it cools itself pretty well.
Speaker
Well, the speaker is mono and it is at the bottom on only one side. Sound quality is not very impressive on this one. It would be much better if they even put the effort to put it in the front. Seriously, the sound should travel towards the user, not the ground. An abomination is those kind of phones that have their speakers pointing to the back. At least for Honor 5X, the speakers are not at the back.
Battery
Battery life is amazing. So far, for one month, there was only two occurrence where the battery totally drained out to shutdown. I am a very heavy Facebook user. Everytime when I go out, I would scroll the timeline when I have nothing to do. Usually that would drain the battery very quickly on my previous phone. Not for Honor 5X. The battery lasted with 20% or more to spare when I get back home at night. Even when I used the GPS for one full hour to get to my destination, it only consumed around 15 to 20% of the battery so I was left with 80% for the day.
The charger however is where Honor cheaped out the most. Even for a sub-RM500 smartphone like the LEAGOO Alfa 2 that we reviewed has a 5V 1.5A charger, but Honor managed to only provide the simplest 5V 1A charger with the Honor 5X. Hey – at least the charger on the Honor 7 is rated at an output of 5V 2A, and yet they both look exactly the same – just produced by two different companies.
Fingerprint Scanner
The scanner is extremely fast. I like the fact that the screen does not have to be awaken first before it can register a fingerprint. The phone will automatically wake and unlock upon correct fingerprint match. The speed is incredible so far. I could even touch the scanner for just a few millisecond and lift it before it even unlocks!
One downside to the Honor 5X fingerprint scanner is that most of the time outdoors, it won’t work. This is probably due to sweat or moisture that was on my finger. I would say it is very nice but for me, it never works when I am trying to unlock it when I am driving or just having a walk. However, indoors when I am sitting my my desk or at a shopping mall, it would work as intended.
Wrap up
Overall, the phone is very nice. The design is premium and the screen is fantastic. The brushed aluminium is fantastic especially for those who does not like to use a phone case. It is hard to scratch and even if it scratched, it would not be very noticeable since it is already brushed aluminium. With 4G LTE and fingerprint scanner, it might just be the best in this model price range. The only thing I did not like was its mono side only speaker and the fingerprint scanner that does not practically work when I am in my car or just walking outdoors due to the natural moisture that was on my finger. Your finger would need to be very clean from grease or sweat for it to work properly.
Price: RM 899. Get it now at Vmall.my – comes with 3 different colours!
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