The Samsung Galaxy S6 and iPhone 6 are impressive devices, but they’re also expensive. Enter Huawei’s Honor; a sub-brand of functional and feature-packed devices that won’t put as much strain on your wallet.
The Honor 6+ is Huawei’s latest flagship device under the Honor name and it’s obviously taken some inspiration from Apple in terms of its design and name.
This isn’t a cheap rip off, however.The Honor 6+ has its own tricks to rival products from the most popular phone giants. You’ll even be surprised by some its features, some of which are rare to find on a £300 smartphone.
Devices like the Honor 6+ have already made Huawei extremely popular in the East. Can it help Huawei achieve the same popularity in the West?
[alert type=alert-blue]Design[/alert]
The main difference between the Honor 6 and Honor 6+ is the 5.5-inch full HD screen. This puts it on par with the LG G4, iPhone 6+ and OnePlus One for screen size.
The design obviously takes inspiration from the iPhone 6, whilst the metal frame is a nod to the iPhone 4. Available in black, white or gold; the Honor 6+ sports a fibreglass jacket that gives it a more upmarket feel.
Our main complaint with the design is that it very easily picks up fingerprint marks
and scratches.
The volume and side buttons have been placed on the phone’s right hand side. Placement of these buttons could be improved as we sometimes accidentally locked the phone when we merely wanted to adjust the volume and vice versa.
[alert type=alert-blue]Camera[/alert]
The Honor 6+ packs a dual-8MP rear camera, which Huawei claims is the first for any smartphone. What use is this? Both cameras use different focus settings when taking pictures and this allows you to adjust a photograph’s focus after you’ve taken it. This can only be done in wide aperture mode, but it works incredibly well.
Honor 6+ camera
Stick the camera in the regular photo mode and it does a decent job of taking bright and vibrant pictures. It is a bit sluggish, however, so you’ll have to be a little patient with it. Combine all of this with an excellent 8MP front-facing camera and the Honor 6+ gets high marks in the photography department.
[alert type=alert-blue]Screen[/alert]
That massive 5.5-inch full-HD screen makes videos, texts and images pop out with plenty of colour and vibrancy. Even on a very bright day, we had no trouble with glare. Tilt the phone at various angles and you can still see everything on the screen clearly.
The screen is made by JDI – a venture between Sony, Toshiba and Hitachi – so the screen is very high quality indeed. It’s also made of Corning Gorilla Glass 3, so it should do a decent job of withstanding any bumps or drops.
[alert type=alert-blue]Performance and software[/alert]
Beneath the Honor 6+’s fibreglass shell is a Kirin octo-core 925 processor. This ensures apps and games are responsive and run smoothly for the most part. The only app that crashed regularly on us was the hit-date site Tinder and we could only open the app on the second attempt. Perhaps someone is trying to tell us something. There was no problem with overheating.
A microSD slot expands the internal 32GB memory up to 128GB with the appropriate card.
The Honor 6+ runs Android 4.4 KitKat with Huawei’s own style of user interface. It’s slick and very easy to use. If you dislike the stock theme that comes straight out of the box, there are plenty of custom themes on offer.
There’s no app drawer, which is a shame. The app drawer is where you store any apps you don’t want clogging up your homescreen. Without this, the homescreen was cluttered up with folders or unwanted apps.
The Honor 6+’s 3,600mAh battery is 600mAh bigger than the iPhone 6+’s. A day of intensive use with satellite navigation, Bluetooth, RunKeeper and Spotify, only drained the battery by 30 per cent. We made the 6+ last all day without any problem, which can’t be said about other top-of-the-range smartphones.
[alert type=alert-blue]Conclusion[/alert]
If you’re after an affordable device that packs plenty of top-notch features, you can’t really go wrong with the Huawei Honor 6+. The camera is unique, the performance is fantastic and the battery life beats those of more expensive phones. It loses points for its sluggish camera and inability to handle certain apps. Don’t let that put you off. The Honor 6+ is well worth the money.
The Honor 6+ is available to buy exclusively from Three.
