The new Huawei Honor 5x is a versatile smartphone to offer for those on a budget. Announced at CES 2016 earlier this year, the new Honor 5x goes on sale on January 31 for an incredibly low $199. Now, after spending just 24 hours on the phone, we want to share some first impressions of this premium budget smartphone and five things we learned a day later.
A full review will be coming soon, but as the release date approaches, users are likely considering all their options in the budget market. From the Moto G to the ASUS ZenFone to countless others under $200. It’s hard to find a quality cheap phone, but Huawei (mostly) delivers with the Honor 5x.
Priced at $199, the Huawei Honor 5x does a lot for it. From an all-metal design, a large 5.5-inch 1080p HD display to a micro SD slot and a fingerprint scanner. The latter is typically reserved for $500 flagship smartphones. That low price comes with a few compromises, however, so read on for our first thoughts after using the Honor 5x for 24 hours.
Huawei may not be the name everyone knows when it comes to smartphones, but we’ll be hearing a lot from them in 2016. The company teamed up with Google in late 2015 on possibly the best smartphone of the year, the Google Nexus 6P, and they’ve been making great budget phones for a long time. Huawei is finally bringing everything it has to offer to the United States.
To summarize briefly before we start talking about the phone, that’s the whole point. The Honor 5x has a 5.5-inch 1920 x 1080p Full HD display of similar size to the LG G4. One wrapped in an all-aluminum design. It is powered by a Snapdragon 615 processor with 8 cores and 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage and a micro SD slot for users to add extra storage.
Other features include a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner for enhanced security and mobile payments, a 13-megapixel rear and 5-megapixel front camera setup, Android 5.1 Lollipop (more on that below), and it’s all powered by a sizable 3,000mAh battery. All this for just $199 and available from Huawei Best Buy. Amazon, new egg and others on 31 January. Interested yet?
Compare that to the previous budget kingpin, the Moto G, and it sounds like an absolute win. And mostly so, but not without a few concessions.
Honor 5x Design
For $199, the Huawei Honor 5x should win some design awards. It comes in a stylish all-metal frame that is well-made, durable, yet lightweight. It doesn’t feel cheap, but it doesn’t feel like a $600 iPhone either. The top and bottom rear have plastic inserts so it still gets good signal or service as all metal can hurt performance.
Huawei Honor 5x
The rear camera has quite the bulge we’re used to seeing these days, but below that is a fingerprint scanner. Finding one of these on a sub-$200 phone has yet to happen, so that’s impressive. Adding that level of security and options at this price point is great.
It features the same lightweight aluminum design on the sides and two removable trays on the left. One for the SIM slot and the other for a micro SD slot to expand storage, something most buyers want. On the right are the nice, tactile aluminum volume up/down keys and below that is the power button. It’s easy to find and touch, but for most activities most use the rear-mounted fingerprint scanner.
Then at the bottom we have a micro USB port for charging and syncing. No USB Type-C or anything and it looks like dual speakers. However, it only outputs one output sound. It gets pretty loud, but it also sounds pretty bad. To be honest, the audio output and software are the only weak links in an otherwise excellent phone. At the same time, this phone is only $199. You cannot have everything. It is easy to turn off the speaker with your finger and mute the sound. Much more than other bottom-mounted speakers like Galaxy S6, Note 5, iPhone and more.
The front is a typical Android phone with a white plastic sheet, but it also comes in Silver and Gold colors. Personally, the all silver model looks the best.
Bright and Clear HD Display
One of the things that surprised the villagers was how great the 5.5 inch 1080p HD display on this phone was. Many devices under $200 need to cut somewhere, and it’s usually the screen. Screens are expensive, but they’ve put a pretty excellent 1080p panel here.
Colors are bright and vibrant. The text is clear and the blacks are ink black. This will by no means be on top of the Galaxy Note 5 and its Quad-HD AMOLED display, but given the competition in this price range, most will be satisfactory. Viewing angles are also pretty good. Colors do not fade or fade completely when viewed from an unexpected angle.
All said and done the screen gets very bright, has decent colors and looks good enough for everything from web surfing to light gaming. Even the 2015 Moto G only had a decent 720p HD display. So the fact that this has a 1080p display, powerful internals, a metal design and a fingerprint scanner is really impressive.
Oh, and there’s a screen protector out of the box. It was good to see that.
fingerprint scanner
We have used many phones with fingerprint scanners. Some are incredibly fast like the Nexus 6p or Galaxy Note 5, while others can use some work like the LG V10. Huawei sits right in the middle, if not near the top.
The Huawei Honor 5x fingerprint scanner is conveniently located on the back right, where an index finger would go, right where Google put it on the Nexus 5X and Huawei Nexus 6P. We doubt it’s the same sensor, but it’s just as accurate and easy to use.
Unlike Samsung, which requires 10-15 or more taps to register a finger, the Honor 5x learned mine after just six taps and worked every time. I didn’t get a single error when trying to unlock the phone for more than 24 hours. I’ve used them all yesterday and today and was pleasantly surprised at how good the fingerprint scanner is.
The setup was a bit confusing at first though. Because it required a pattern, then a pin, then a pattern or pin again after you put in your fingerprint. Sure, it’s a fail-safe in case someone’s finger is wet or other occasions, but it didn’t seem as runny as it could be. This will improve when the phone is updated to Android 6.0 Marshmallow which brings us to our next point.
Mediocre Software
If there’s one downside to this excellent all-round budget smartphone with all the features, it’s the software. We saw this from other reviews on the web and it was somewhat disappointing.
Huawei Honor 5x runs Android 5.1 Lollipop, not Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Google released its latest software update in October. After four months phones should not be released with Android 5.1 Lollipop. Even HTC was able to deliver the HTC One A9 with Android 6.0 in November, so that’s inexcusable.
Worse still, this isn’t stock Android. It’s covered in a custom interface called EMUI version 3.1, similar to Samsung’s TouchWiz or HTC Sense UI. However, it seems to be a mix of iOS and Android with a few weird things here and there.
The bubbly and cartoonish interface isn’t our favorite, but it’s not too bad. It doesn’t seem to slow down the phone too much and at least offers all the basic essentials for any smartphone buyer. From Google apps, a good camera app (obviously looks like an iPhone), Facebook, Twitter, and more.
A plus, there are useful tools like FM radio, mirror app, magnifying glass, flashlight app, automatic backup to save important texts, files, photos and more pre-installed. So while the software is definitely one of our least favorite aspects, it’s more than enough for buyers. Again, especially at $199.
Oh, and the screen lock and unlock sounds should be turned off right away. They’re loud and obnoxious.
Battery Life and Camera
We can’t comment too much on battery life or performance after just a day’s use, but it looks somewhat promising so far. The phone is very fast, everything else was pretty good, although I did notice some lag in screen rotation. After using the phone moderately from 8am to 8pm, I had the remaining 46%. Which is better than most and more than we can get from the Galaxy S6.
The rear camera is 13 megapixel camera with LED flash. It’s not groundbreaking, but it’s not terrible either. Compared to most in this price range, it again exceeded expectations, but not by much. Colors are good, autofocus and actual shutter speed were slower than we’d like, but it gets the job done.
Huawei’s Honor 5x front and rear cameras are more than capable for most photos, but don’t expect results like the iPhone or Samsung Galaxy.
final thoughts
At the end of the day, we have a lot to go through to fully understand Huawei’s new Honor 5x smartphone. It works pretty fast, smooth and stable overall, but there was a hiccup here and there. It’s not a flagship phone by any means, but for $199, buyers will have a hard time finding anything remotely close to what this offers.
We’ll have to spend more time with the Honor 5x before posting a full review, but so far I’m pretty impressed. What Huawei can offer for $199 is outstanding. It takes the budget crown from the Moto G and does so while offering more in almost every aspect, then complementing it with a larger full HD display and a fingerprint scanner for security.
The Huawei Honor 5x goes on sale and unlocked for $199 in the United States on January 31st, so it should work with most GSM carriers. Like T-Mobile, AT&T, Cricket, Metro and more. Also supports most 4G LTE bands, so get one now if you’re on a budget. Stay tuned for more details.
