Budiey
A nice phone with a premium design and feel that offers; nice interface, good specification, a huge battery without the bulky and huge size, large screen and a very excellent camera quality in normal shot, low lighting and DSLR like with very low aperture output.
With the a very tough competitive market alongside 1+1, Meizu MX Pro, Asus Zenphone 2 in Malaysia (and upcoming Xiaomi Note and Note Pro). Honor 6 Plus does give a very strong overall package in terms of design, quality, performance, and excellent warranty coverage.
After using it for just 2 days alongside my 1+1 64GB, I have chosen Honor 6 Plus as my main phone even though 1+1 is a very very very… (see how many times I said very?) good phone.
Some may argue that 1+1 has an excellent hardware, super fast CM12 software and current RRP at 1199 but for me it does not have the overall package that I am looking for. Camera, design and build as well user interface.
I was very skeptical when I receive this phone and my perception it can’t or won’t replace my 1+1 but Honor 6 Plus has definitely proven me wrong.
I am really looking forward to test and compare this phone with the Xiaomi Note and Note Pro phone and see how it fares out.
Overall Findings:
Rating: 9/10- Best Packaged Phone
It’s an excellent phone, it’s able to cater to my daily need and plus more. Its flagship phone in every way but does not cost a flagship price. It’s all about focusing the phone on what the user actually need and not to push for best specification, figures for the sake of the paper figures race.
Great features about this phone:
1. Dual SIM with 4G LTE capability.
2. Micro SD slot that can also be the secondary SIM slot.
3. A great front 8MP camera for excellent selfie.
4. Dual back 8MP camera that able to produce 13.1MP with 0.95 F16 aperture.
5. Best of phone design combination, iPhone 4s, Xperia Z, a bit of S6: Glass back and metal side bezel..
6. Huawei Kirin 925 Octacore processor is fast enough to handle current games and application.
7. Excellent premium quality design.
8. EMUI is an very good looking Android from Huawei.
9. Excellent warranty from Huawei. 1 to 1 swap for the first 6 months and standard warranty for another 6 months.
10. Impressive reception. My basement parking on my other Android phone unable to get any reception or Digi or Maxis. With this phone 2 bars with 3G.
What I want more from this phone?
1. Android 5.0 Lolipop. Even EMUI on Android 4.4.2 is good, but it should come with Android Lolipop. Maybe Huawei waiting for the Lolipop memory leak issue to be solved first. But it’s definitely coming according to them.
2. Separate Micro SD and secondary SIM as like other dual SIM phone in the market. 32GB build in is good but why not 64GB as for people like me can use the secondary slot for SIM and not Micro SD expansion.
3. Not a major matter but imagine 13.1MP dual camera setup with OIS? Heck we don’t even need 20MP like Meizu MX series. That would be mind blowing if Huawei is able to package such specs.
4. 64bit processor like Honor 4C? 64bit processor is emerging even in the low end phone market, so its kinda disappointing why the Honor 4C and 4X comes with 64bit and the Honor 6 Plus doesn’t.
5. Most what I need is a bigger and more powerful speaker, if possible front facing like HTC flagship or at least bottom dual speaker like 1+1 that is powerful enough to play music or ringtone in a very noisy environment.
The Design
Rating: 9/10
The first feeling when I hold me it reminds me of my old iPhone 4s, well this is not a bad thing as the design of iPhone 4s is for me one of the most classy Smartphone design in the market till now. Simple yet feels good in your hand. It does looks very good, slim, sturdy and has a very nice feeling when holding it.
Metal side bezel feels good and this is not those plastic metal wannabe that is a norm even in high end flagship from other manufacturer. Back panel Gorilla Glass 3 and the special 3D pattern is a nice features to this phone.
Minimal side bezel design also does attribute positively on how the phone looks.
Overall, Im happy with the phone design, the feel and looks. It merits all the best phone design from iPhone, Xperia Z and some may say from S6 and married it into a very nice overall package.
Summary: a nice phone to hold and to show your friends.
The Feel
Rating: 9/10
As I have emphasis before the quality is great here with flagship feel and look offering the good material and finishing but now I want to focus on the interfaces of Huawei own EMUI. When we comparing phone, we always like to compare to iPhone and IOS. Let’s face it they are the lead for Smartphone race before (Ehem… before ahh).
For the EMUI interface it also feel IOS 8 in nature which is good. The main home screen, dialer, keyboard and a lot others but for me it’s a good thing as it does bring simplicity and good looks for my Android yet it gave me the flexibility from Android which is the most important.
Its scrolling and user experience is smooth, nice feeling for me but not super fast like 1+1 but is definitely is a very smooth phone.
Summary: Android power and flexibility with IOS design and looks. Awesome.
The Specification
Rating: 8/10
Specification on paper and how does it translate day to day.
Processor: Kirin 925 Octacore 32Bit Processor (1.8Ghz quad core + 1.3Ghz quad core).
RAM: 3GB RAM (1.34GB of 2.94GB RAM with multiple apps running).
Internal Memory: 32GB with MicroSD expansion slot.
Screen: 5.5 Inch Full HD display.
Battery: 3600Mah
Well what this all translate to day to day use?
It does the job for me. Its smooth for:
1. Your day to day apps: WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest etc etc.
2. The current popular games (Including the higher requirement ones):
Candy Crush, Clash Of Clan, Asphalt 8, Temple Run, Mortal Kombat.
3. Battery with heavy usage is around 1 days. Normal usage almost 2 days of use.
The movies and music, its ran well. Good and vivid screen, decent audio playback and others standard functionality of the phone.
Summary: Don’t worry about the specs. It will serve you well in everything your doing and plan to do with it.
Screen brightness, colors and resolution
Rating: 9/10
The screen is one of the best screen I see on IPS Panel. It does offer very good detail resolution and the color reproduction as well. Viewing angle is good even for lighting condition with extreme sunlight.
With comparison with Note 4 for me its good and pretty and have better screen quality than my 1+1. I still yet to see the benefit of Quad HD. Quad HD is not a feature that we are able to tell the difference (from our mortal eyes) but it does take a substantial amount of battery power and higher processing to run with it.
It also come with Gorilla Glass 3. It may not be the latest Gorilla Glass 4 but it’s a standard for most mid and high end range. It does offer decent protection but almost all of us are using screen protector and tempered glass is already a cheap and standard alternative for screen protection nowadays.
Summary: The screen is nice, bright and detail enough for any use.
Camera
Rating: 10/10
For this section, I can say I am very impressed with the camera. Very very very impressed. While reading some reviews saying it’s a gimmick and its not so great. I was not really looking forward to test the camera before receiving it.
After using it, learning all it features especially the wide aperture mode. It really wows me in every way.
Using wide aperture mode, I get a DLSR look alike quality for taking focused picture. The standard auto shot is great as well even in very low light condition. It has left the competition far and to make things better its fast and simple to use.
The front selfie is also top notch with 8MP with beauty mode. Its better in terms of color, focus, detail from all the front camera I have used before. This has make me a selfie ‘kaki’ after using this phone as it make me more good looking than before.
Summary: It is the best camera phone I have used so far. Those who emphasis on camera use on their phone as daily and travel use. Look no more. This is the one.
Battery Life
Rating: 8/10
For my day to day of heavy duty use, the phone able to survive until midnight. Day time, full 4G with Facebook, WhatsApp, COC, browsing from time to time and its connected to my watch, my notebook and at times my in car entertainment setup. After 8 it will run Wifi until 12 midnight with 15% left.
From a normal day to day use, it will be sufficient for 1 full day and will last the next day until 7 or 8PM.
Its very good from a Smartphone perspective but with 3600mah I would expect more especially with the Kirin 925 big little processor setup that should optimize the phone more especially during low processing time.
Summary: Battery is good and will last longer than most Smartphone out there.
Phone Accessories
Rating: 8/10
Accessories does play a major in our life when it comes to Smartphone as only a very low percentage would not use screen protector and case.
With having such squarish design and back glass panel, good thing is a bumper can easily be use and there are selling tempered glass for the back panel. Looking into lelong.com there are quite a number case and screen protection choices and I do believe this will grow as the phone was just recently launch.
I got the phone few days after the official launch date and I have purchase a Mocolo tempered glass front and back also Nillkin transparent slim TPU case to maintain the beauty of the phone unhidden. Now waiting for a side bumper worthy of my phone.
Huawei phone especially the Honor series is growing in numbers with Malaysia use. Two of my friends are using the Honor 6 and the Ascend Mate 7 Gold. My mom in law will be buying either the Honor 4x or 4c in the upcoming months with this, we are expecting the market of accessories will grow as like Samsung, Lenovo and now Xiaomi. At this moment multiple case and screen protectors are available online and some shop for this phone.
Huawei use standard USB port as the rest of the android phone with this phone charger is widely available.
It also comes with standard USB charger and earphones. The phone size is also quite standard, hence car holder is also easy to source out. I am using a Akron phone holder that has been used for my other 5.5+ inch phone until now.
Summary: Phone is new but accessories is available especially from online store for the case and screen protector. Phones come with screen protector for front and back.
Honest Review by Shah Mohd.
