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hey what is up guys this is Bailey Stein with Android authority you're watching our video review of honors $400 affordable flagship beyond our eight so to kick things off the NRA features an absolutely gorgeous design one that easily rivals the galaxy s7 s level of premiumness and yeah it looks a little similar to the s7 and strikingly so to that shell meanie for us but it's dual glass panel design is still quite remarkable there's actually fifteen panels of light refracting glass here which are what creates such enthralling light patterns both the front and back glass panels also curved down to meet with a sham pert aluminum band so it feels like you're holding a single piece of hardware one really cool feature that a lot of manufacturers exclude especially at this price is an IR blaster for controlling TVs or other household appliances I was pleasantly surprised that the honor included one at this price Deana rates glass bag can be quite slippery mostly when sit down on something like a couch cushion it slowly slips and slides like an ice cube which resulted in a few accidental Falls the good news is that build quality seems quite strong a case still want to be a bad idea though is it would also help cover up any fingerprints on the back of the device while way plans to release a few cases of their own - so one of those will probably be your best bet although I would have preferred capacitive keys in place of the honor chin branding the on screen navigation keys are so pleasant to use they're also customizable so you don't have to settle on the back button being placed on what you perceive is the wrong side the nr8 has a 5.2 inch LTPS display with saturated and punchy colors it's not very color accurate however and you'll want to adjust the color temperature in the settings to something warmer so the lights don't look so blue sunlight readability is decent and the brightness maxes out at 455 nits viewing angles could be a bit better but overall this is still a fairly good display this is actually one of the few affordable flagships that has a display smaller than 5.5 inches so the an irate offers an expectedly better handling experience this could really be a major selling point on its own if you're looking for something more compact performance with the honor eight was absolutely excellent one of Huawei's own in-house processors the high silicon Kirin 950 it's pretty comparable to the Snapdragon 820 and with 4 gigabytes of RAM everything is buttery smooth and responsive now for the GPU we're looking at arms malli t8 80 MP 4 it's good enough for virtually every game out there but it may not be as future-proof at something like the Adreno 530 the an r8 is unlocked with dual sim support and works with AT&T t-mobile and the respective NVA knows there's also been 12 LTE on board for t-mobile's extended range LTE coverage instead of using a second SIM card you can insert a microSD card up to 128 gigabytes if you run out of the phone's 32 gigabytes of base storage this is really a great option to have and it's hard to imagine why some competing options exclude this feature on the bottom you'll find a USB type-c port accompanied by a headphone jack on the left and a single speaker on the right this speaker is decent it gets the job done for sure but the audio output is hollow and distorted while Way has done something a bit unique with the fingerprint reader on the back of the honor 8 it not only functions as a quick and easy way to authenticate but also as a tactile smart key you can set it to different shortcuts including flashlight screenshot or voice recording to tap double tap and hold you can also have it open in and up instead if you'd like it's overall very clever and nice once you get it set up how you like sadly battery life isn't as good as I would have liked as the 3000 milliamp hour battery was only capable of achieving about three and a half hours of screen on time that's not terrible but it's not quite up there with the xn sevens five and a half hours or even the one plus three is four hours it does support 9 volt 2 amp fast charging with the factory supplied charger for about a 42% charge in 30 minutes it doesn't work with other 2 amp third-party chargers though which really reduces its utility honor has informed us that they'll be selling compatible chargers online directly to consumers soon pretty much every affordable flagship fall short when it comes to the camera thankfully this isn't the case with the honor 8 as the 12 megapixel dual camera configuration with an F 2.2 aperture produces some great images and about that dual lens setup one of the lens captures color while the other is monochrome while we say it's that this setup helps the caPSURE crispier that are looking photos objectively speaking images taken with the honor a dark contrast a sharp and showcase exceptional dynamic range it's really impressive how well the phone can balance the highlights and the shadows low-light performance is strong as well offering shots that are good enough for most scenarios well this camera is now going to outperform the galaxy s7 it's amazing what Huawei was able to do once you consider the phone's price video recording is a weak point though as it maxes out at 1080p at 60 frames per second colors also aren't that great in video and the software stabilization is no match for proper optical image stabilization the camera app is decent and the manual mode is impressively comprehensive certain areas are a bit frustrating though and a perfect example of this is how the manual controls don't rotate when you switch to landscape orientation beyond rate is running Huawei's emotion UI 4.1 over Android 6.0 marshmallow but it's very different from stock Android there's no app drawer the UI is iowa's like and there are a number of additions many of which will polarize opinion some of these additions are nice and genuinely useful but they can certainly come across as gimmicky for instance while the knuckle gestures seem cool and theory they don't always work very well for what it's worth I do find that lock screen view refreshing the timeline notifications are kind of cool and the power management tools are quite useful what you don't usually get from smartphone manufacturers is a solid software commitment honor is different though and as promised updates for at least two years with new features every three months for the first year hopefully while we can improve the software experience further with these updates the recently announced partnership with xda-developers is also quite exciting is it aims to create developer interest in the Anor 8 well it's currently difficult to say whether we'll eventually see custom roms for this phone this is certainly a step in the right direction you can pre-order the honor 8 now and either blue black or white from various retailers starting at $400 for the 32 gigabyte model and $450 for the 64 gigabyte model there are a number of promotional offers available too including a $50 gift card which can certainly sweeten the deal honor is offering a free one-time glass replacement within the first three months if you register your honor 8 this is a great bonus to have even it is only for three months the nra includes features that many have wanted from an affordable flagship for a while now a gorgeous design a smaller size and a great camera it's excellent performance good display an IR blaster are also great attributes since this is a very competitive price segment you have a lot of options to choose from therefore it would be wise to consider what you value most net smartphone and base your decision off of that thank you so much for watching our video review of the on orate please be sure to give this video a thumbs up if you liked it and don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already finally be sure to visit the Android Authority website for additional coverage is we are your source for all things 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