You’ve probably heard of the Honor 5x or at least seen the numerous advertisements placed in metro stations and scattered around Dubai. It was Huawei’s latest implementation of a mid-range phone and as a result held a variety of features to set it apart. After using it for two weeks, here’s my review.
Design
The Honor 5x measures 151.3 x 76.3 x 8.15 mm across and weighs in at 158 g. It’s slightly larger than the Honor 7 but not grossly so and as a result is quite comfortable to handle. The body is a metallic, diamond-polished aluminum alloy with beveled edges and a brushed back cover that I’ve come to love in Honor phones. It’s an elegant design that I came to love over the two weeks I tested the Honor 5x.
The rear facing camera is situated near the top and in the middle of the phone, with a ridge of metal connecting it to the top part of the smartphone. To the left of it is the LED Flash with the fingerprint sensor slightly below it. The 3.5 mm audio port is located on the top and towards the right of the smartphone with the forward facing camera to the left of the ear piece. The volume rocker and power/lock button is on the right side of the smartphone with the microSD (upto 128 GB) and SIM card slots (nano and micro) located on the left plane of the device. The micro-USB port and speaker ports are at the bottom of the Honor 5x, though don’t let the dual ports fool you: there’s only one speaker.
Display
The Honor 5x has a 5.5-inch 1920×1080 p, 16.7 million colour, full HD IPS display. The large screen and 1080p resolution results in a 401 ppi pixel density. The display has 10 point multi-touch and also features TP & LCD full lamination as well as GFF lamination that renders vivid and crisp images. Clarity is great as well as viewing angles though so are reflections. One of the best things about the Honor 5x’s display is the brightness. This is a phone you will not have a difficulty using in broad daylight, in fact if anything I found the minimum brightness to still be quite potent in the dim of night. Colours are vibrant thanks to the IPS display and so is the contrast.
Camera
The camera on the Honor 5x has 13 megapixels to its name and thanks to Sony & Samsung, it also features Smartimage 3.0 image processor. The lens itself has a f2.0 aperture and measures 28mm wide. Pictures taken with the Honor 5x come out quite crisp but unfortunately there isn’t a manual mode so you’re often stuck with the default settings when taking pictures. However to compensate for that, Huawei have added a bunch of different modes such as Beauty, Good Food, Panorama, HDR, All Focus, Slow-mo and so forth. There’s also a time lapse option but you’ll need a tripod or a case of incredibly steady hands to make use of that.
By default video is captured at 1080p 16:9 with photos being saved at 13M 4160×3120 (4:3).
The front facing camera isn’t a stunner but its 5 megapixels, F2.4 aperture, 22 mm wide-angle lens can do the job of capturing those picturesque moments with your loved ones quite well.
Performance
The performance of the Honor 5x isn’t as abysmal as the Obi SF1, but neither is it great. While it is initially quite fast, installing a few memory taxing apps such as Facebook and Facebook Messenger soon slow down the phone. There is noticeable stuttering when you try to switch between apps but it’s not grossly hindering. In fact as far as this self titled “budget beast” goes, it’s acceptable for its price if not exceeding that. And that’s because powering the Honor 5x is a Qualcomm MSM8939v2 Snapdragon 616, Quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A53 & Quad-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A53. It does a great job of running intensive apps and games but unfortunately for the Honor 5x it’s the RAM that falls short, being only 2 GB. You do get 16GB of internal storage space but due to quite a lot of bloatware and system storage, you actually only get 10 GB of useable space with only 7 GB being free. Thankfully the external Micro-SD slot helps alleviate this problem.
Running AnTuTu on the Honor 5x gave it a respectable score of 33,574 which is quite good for a budget phone; the Honor 7 weighs in at around 46,000.
Soundwise the 5x delivers quite well thanks to a unified speaker chamber that along with a smart amplifier can really set the tone for the evening. Increasing the volume to full doesn’t result in as much distortion as you’d expect; in fact playing “I believe in a thing called love” by The Darkness at full volume doesn’t result in a loss of clarity.
I found the fingerprint sensor on the Honor 5x to be a quick way to unlock the phone, something I was already accustomed to with the Honor 7. Due to advancements in technology, the Honor 5x unlocks in half a second when using your fingerprint, which is easy to record and setup in a simple 2 minute process.
Software
The Honor 5x runs Android Lollipop with Huawei’s EMUI 3.0 skin on top of it. It’s a simple UI that comes with a host of features that make the phone easy to use and access, going as far as to include custom fingerprint gestures that each do a specific action such as linking a fingerprint input to an app, letting you use the app with the rest of the phone still locked. As I said earlier, there is some bloatware in the form of a host of Google Apps that double down on existing EMUI apps such as Google Music and the default music app.
Battery
The Honor 5x has a whopping 3000mAh battery that let me use it for for an entire day with it reaching 15% battery when I woke up in the morning. This is a smartphone whose battery you don’t have to worry about. Furthermore if you ever find yourself without a charger or handy wall socket nearby you can switch to ultra-power saving mode which can extend the life of the Honor 5x a couple of hours.
Final Verdict
The Honor 5x does a great job on delivering in nearly every area of importance and while it may not stun when it comes to performance and software it isn’t something grossly underwhelming considering the superb price of AED 900. It’s design and battery life are particularly amazing, and are more alike to flagship phones and phablets respectively. However its performance does remind us that this is, in the end, a budget phone.
