Huawei Honor 8X: Why buy it?

The Huawei Honor 8X launched at an event held in China on September 5th and a few weeks later, the phone went global. Honor is already selling the 8X in several markets and is heading to even more markets sooner or later. Like its predecessor, the 8X is here to capture the attention of budget spenders who are after a great piece of hardware that is capable of delivering on all fronts.

So, the big question here is should you buy the Honor 8X? Well, this article has some answers for you, if you still haven’t found them yet.

The big screen

In a world where media consumption is skyrocketing thanks to the growing access to the internet, the Honor 8X will thrive. The device packs a massive 6.5-inch display screen with a 1080p display and a notch, promising a great viewing experience when watching videos on YouTube or even reliving your photo moments. This is more than 0.5 inches bigger than the Honor 7X, which is a big deal for fans of big screen devices, but it’s also about 5mm taller.

A bigger battery

To accompany the huge screen, the Honor 8X also ships with a bigger 3750mAh battery compared to the Honor 7X. This, alongside the flurry of AI optimizations on board, promises a longer battery life even with the bigger screen, unfortunately, you still get to use the aging microUSB port for charging.

Also, Huawei doesn’t mention a thing about the type of fast charging technology present, but there’s some kind of optimization to speed up the charging process so that you don’t have to wait for ages to fill up the battery.

The first Honor device with a Kirin 710 processor

Huawei Nova 3i became the company’s first device to rock the new Kirin 710 chipset, which is supposed to go head-to-head with the Snapdragon 636 (and not the more powerful Snapdragon 710). The Mate 20 Lite then followed suit and now the Honor 8X becomes the first from Huawei’s sub-brand to rock this powerful midrange chipset.

In addition to coming in with capabilities similar to the outgoing Kirin 970 flagship chipset, the Kirin 710 gets support from either 4GB RAM or 6GB RAM and runs Android 8.1 Oreo with EMUI 8.2 out of the box, promising an even smoother experience on your 8X.

Android 9 Pie and Android Q are guaranteed

Huawei rolled out two major Android OS upgrades to the Honor 6X. The device is currently sitting on Android 8.0 Oreo, which implies that the Honor 7X is in line to receive a second OS upgrade to Android 9 Pie. This same OS is also guaranteed for Honor 8X users and going by recent history, an update to Android Q should also be released at some point.

As for when the Honor 8X will receive Pie, it should be somewhere in Q1 2019, although Honor hasn’t made this info official.

Related: Honor 8X Pie update news

The cameras got better

For the price you pay, the Honor 7X has great cameras, but on the Honor 8X, photography just got better, both on the front and back cameras. Where the back camera still has a dual-lens setup with a secondary 2MP lens for depth sensing, the main shooter has been bumped up to 20MP, promising even better results in low-light conditions thanks to the wide f/1.8 aperture.

The megapixel count on the front shooter has been doubled to 16MP, meaning you get more details in photos you capture. The selfie shooter also supports HDR mode and 1080p video recording of up to 30fps. Huawei has also included plenty of AI tweaks to spice your photography.

Ready for gaming

Huawei recently introduced what it calls GPU Turbo technology that is meant to bring the best gaming experience out of its devices. While the Honor 7X has also received this feature via a software update, the Honor 8X comes with the feature out of the box, meaning it has been better optimized to offer optimum gaming performance, especially thanks to the more powerful Kirin 710 chipset. The big screen should also provide a great surface for playing your games and given the sheer size of the battery, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about draining too much juice when gaming.

Great value for money

Like the Honor 7X and the one before it, the Honor 8X is here to offer you the best value for money. As you can see, the phone packs plenty of premium specs and features, but at the price of a budget phone.

Related:

Where to buy Honor 8X