Fresh from the launch in Beijing last week, we managed to get our hands on Huawei’s latest midrange smartphone, the Honor 6. The Huawei Honor 6 is the latest in the line of low-cost, high-performance devices to come out of the middle kingdom and with a name as large as Huawei behind it as well as the crazy specs it is packing, the Honor 6 looks like a great alternative in the industry today.
The Huawei Honor 6 represents a change as opposed to the usual Honor range, bumping it up to the blurred line between flagship and mid range. The build quality while not strictly premium, is pretty decent for the price. The Honor 6 is the first device to use the Kirin 920 chipset. Huawei is confident that it is as good, if not better than the Snapdragon 805 – currently the most powerful mobile processor in Qualcomm’s stable. Keep in mind, the Honor is NOT a high end device! In fact there have been reports that the Honor 6 is cannibalising sales of the Ascend P7, Huawei’s main flagship, in the phone’s native homeland.
The Honor 6 has a very decent build with a glossy glass rear as well as a silver matte brushed metal like rim. The one strange thing is that it doesn’t wrap completely around the phone on the bottom instead opting for the same finish as the body.
The rear of the Honor 6 is not removable and hence the battery is fixed as well. Access to the SIM and MicroSD card slot is from a flap on the side below the power button and the volume rocker.
Compared to the Xiaomi Mi 3, the Honor 6 does have a smaller, more curved footprint and in all honesty doesn’t share the build quality of the Mi 3, despite being on a similarly affordable range. The curves on the Mi 3 are more purposeful and integrated compared to the Honor 6. This is subjective however as some people will most definitely prefer the shape of the Honor 6 and how it fits in the hand.
Emotion UI
Huawei’s skin of Android is called Emotion UI and has some rather interesting features. One of the cool ones is that it allows you to adjust the white balance of your device to match your preferences! You can adjust how cool or how warm your colour is and in all honesty this is the first time I’ve seen it in a phone.
The settings menu is rife with interesting features with uses like hiding the software home, back and multitask window to be brought back up with a swipe, ROG Technology which seems to be a not-too-well-worded power savings mode, Gloves Mode which enables touch through layers of clothes and Performance Mode which is pretty self explanatory.
At the end of the day, Huawei have done a good job blurring the line between flagship and mid range with the Honor 6. The specs of the device are top notch and while the build quality is decent, it’s nothing to shout home about. It may be a little more expensive than the Mi 3 but at just over RM1,000 and with the specs that are said to be better than the snapdragon 805, this is definitely a device to look forward to.
The Honor 6 may not be available for purchase in Malaysia (yet), but its little brother, the Honor 3C is available here! Pre-order it via Storekini at RM499, while CIMB Bank customers get RM100 off the RM799 RRP. Head on to www.storekini.com for more!
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