The Honor 5X is one of the latest mid-range smartphone released by ICT company Huawei, we took it for a spin and here’s what we think…
Honor 5X flaunts a brushed metal back, textured plastic ends and a simple, yet sophisticated design. The front of the phone is plain while the back has the camera and fingerprint sensor. At 8.2mm thick and 158g in weight, the device is slim and feels very light in the hand. But, as the back has a polished metal finish it is also quite slippery to hold.
As for the display, it has a 5.5-inch screen with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection, and with a 1080p resolution the device shows sharp and crisp colours. Being an IPS display, text and images can be viewed from different angles and still maintain the same picture quality. However, the screen could be very reflective and the display colours tend to look a bit washed out when used under direct sunlight. As with most phone screens it is also quite prone to smudges and fingerprints.
The Honor 5X is equipped with a modified version of Android dubbed EMUI (ver. 3.1) that is based off of Android 5.1.1. EMUI gives the device an interesting – more toned-down iOS-like user interface. It also shares many of the features from some of its predecessors, like a one-handed UI and gesture controls, but it doesn’t have the side-by-side multi-tasking and knuckle gesture features like the Honor 7.
Under the hood, Honor 5X is powered by a 1.5GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 processor with Adreno 405 GPU and 2GB RAM. The smartphone’s performance is generally smooth and speedy with only a small amount of lag when switching between apps.
The power button and volume rocker on the right hand side are still easy to access with your thumb. Another notable feature of the Honor device is its triple slot design, as on the left hand side sits the microSD, microSIM and nanoSIM drawers. This means users can increase the storage, which is likely needed as it only comes with 16GB of internal memory, with the microSD the smartphone is expandable by up to 128GB.
The 5X packs a 5MP front camera and 13MP rear shooter that is accompanied by an LED flash, it takes generally good images during the day, but it definitely lacks the ability to capture scenes perfectly in low light or when performing night time shots.
The fingerprint reader is located on the back of the device. The scanner is no longer just for unlocking the phone, it can be used for other tasks such as taking photographs and answering calls. Honor also loaded a few extra functions onto the scanner, which made it more useful. For example, once unlocked, a swipe down on the rear scanner pulls down Android’s notification bar and swiping left and right in the photo gallery lets users scroll through images.
The phone is equipped with a 3000 mAh battery, which disappointingly doesn’t last a full day of usage and takes more than one hour to re-charge.
In conclusion, at AED 1,399, the Honor 5X is well spec’d and priced. The refined design and interesting fingerprint features really adds value to it and makes it a decent buy for a mid-range smartphone.
