High on features, not as much on price

The market is flooded with mobile phones offering different features, in varied price ranges. But if you’re looking for a decent smartphone experience, without emptying your wallet, your search may end here. We tested Huawei’s Honor, and here’s what we have to say about the phone.

The market is flooded with mobile phones offering different features, in varied price ranges. But if you're looking for a decent smartphone experience, without emptying your wallet, your search may end here. We tested Huawei's Honor, and here's what we have to say about the phone.

Looks fine
Honor may not score very high on looks, but it isn't disappointing either. It has a 4-inch screen with a resolution of 480x854 pixels, four front touch buttons for Options, Home, Back and Search, and a textured finish back cover enabling a firm grip. Remove it to access SIM slot and battery. The phone is neither light nor too heavy.

Features galore
This touchscreen phone is simple to use. Like many other android phones, there's a swipe system for receiving or rejecting a call, and also a reject by text message option. The display is good, but glossy, and therefore not so comfortable in sunlight. The lock screen is quite different and lets you access camera, messages and call log quickly, just by dragging them to the respective icons. The home screen has fixed icons at the bottom for menu, dialer, messaging, and web browser. While there's a default weather widget at the top, you can add more by pressing and holding on the home screen. Also, there are some really cool themes and animations. You'd get clear pictures too on this phone, but be patient for the camera to focus, else the picture may end up blurry. Honor has a good speed, which means applications don't hang; the transition is smooth, and gaming is enjoyable. Social networking apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Google and its other apps, work well. What's cool is a data traffic manager to calculate and limit your 2G/3G usage. Honor's virtual keyboard doesn't make many typos, and has a swipe option. Also, viewing Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files is easy.

The battery life is decent and a full charge can sail you through a day. Come to its Cloud+, and you can store up to 16GB of data.

Specifications
It has a single-core 1.4Ghz processor, 512MB RAM and 4GB storage, with an option to add a micro SD card (up to 32GB). The phone boasts of an 8MP camera with a LED flash, and also a 2MP front camera. Videos can be recorded in up to 720P resolution.

Verdict
At a price of ₹ 19,990, and features alike some top smartphones in the market, Honor doesn't fail to impress.