Honor 8 XDA TV Video Review

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The Honor 8 is the high-end flagship phone offered for either $400 or $450 dollars, depending on which option you go with (available via Amazon, hihonor.com, and other retailers). This phone comes with a 5.2 1080p display, Kirin 950 CPU 4GB of RAM, 32/64GB ROM and 3000mAh Battery. You can explore more about the Honor 8 in XDA’s Honor Hub, and be sure to participate in the Honor forums on XDA to win prizes.

Build

The back of the phone is a glass slab with 15 different layers beneath it. The smaller size of this phone gives it a sturdy feeling. It feels very comfortable in the hand, especially when paired with a case. The metal edge wraps around the entire phone giving it a bit of an iPhone feel.

Fingerprint Sensor

This is definitely one of the most innovative fingerprint scanners so far. While it’s very fast, it’s not quite as fast as the OnePlus 3. It’s more accurate than other fingerprint scanners which means it’s more likely to read your fingerprint correctly the first time.

The scanner doubles as a button with several different functions that you can enable for it. Smart Key will bind an action to the button that will launch and app or toggle a custom setting. The scanner can also be used for gestures. Swipe up and down to access the notification menu or side to side to scroll through photos.

Camera

This dual-lens setup has and RGB camera used for capturing color data and a monochrome lens for the details. The camera is pretty good overall. The phone uses software to mimic a shallow depth of field in photos. The effect looks cool and is really fun to play around with. Because of the two different lenses, you can adjust your focus after a picture is taken.

There are a bunch of different modes to use on this camera like Time-lapse, Pro, HDR, Night Shot, Good Food, Time-lapse and more.

When it comes to video you can record up to 1080p at 60fps. It’s a bit odd to not see a 4K option in there which is standard on most other flagship phones. Video quality is just ok. The footage can be shaky and detail isn’t great.

There is an 8MP camera on the front of the phone which is pretty good for selfies. The most notable feature is the beauty mode which is the most exaggerated beauty mode you’ll see. Just look at this thing.

If this can’t get you more matches on Tinder then I don’t know what to tell you.

Honor has a custom skin on top of Android that has a few interesting features to offer. You’ll find most of the features in the smart assistance setting. There are features you’re familiar with like motion control, mini screen view, voice control and glove mode.

Battery

Battery life is just alright. Apps like hangouts tend to drain the battery a lot quicker than they do on other phones like the Nexus 6P or OnePlus 3. We could see this improve with future software updates.

Speakers

One of the biggest gripes with this phone is the speakers. There’s only one driver at the bottom of the phone and it sounds pretty bad. High volumes will result in heavily distorted audio. Overall it just doesn’t sound very good.

The phone is good for the price. It has a solid display, a feature-packed camera, a great fingerprint scanner and solid performance.

Watch out for our full, insanely in-depth XDA Review coming your way soon courtesy of XDA’s Mario Serrafero.