Gadgetory

Huawei has made a splash recently with their very well-regarded ascend mate 7 which is currently one of the best selling phones out in the East but their smartphone pedigree also includes a line with an interesting and intriguing name what does why we have to offer in a larger version of the alternative flagship smartphone well let's find out because it's Joshua gar from Android authority what's going on everybody and this is my full review of the Huawei honor 6 plus in a stark departure from the metal construction of the ascend made 7 the honor 6 plus takes inspiration from a couple of different places in order to make a simplistic but very attractive device the metal frame going around the phone is reminiscent of the iPhone or even the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 altogether making up flat sides everywhere but the bottom moving downward from the metal frame reveals a curved separation that makes way for a plastic bottom this is a design element that reminded me very much of the Sony Xperia line from which the honor seems to get its dual glass panel choice as well while the headphone jack in the microUSB port are up top and on the bottom respectively the button layout is on the right side above to pop out trays for the sim and microSD cards or if you so choose a dual SIM setup and on the back the honor logo is simplistically shown in the middle underneath the dual camera optics setup in the corner there's something really nice about having the word honor on the back they makes me feel optimistic about this phone almost who's simplistically elegant design gives some idea of what the experiences can be had underneath I already had a good response to the handling of the honor as the 5.5 inch screen is helped by the flat sides and thin profile making for a phone just outside the comfort of one-handed usage at least for me it's almost as if while we looked at some of the best features found on other greatly designed phones and put a few of them on their particular handsets and in the honor 6 plus I did see a black version of it back at that media tour that I did with Huawei and it looked incredibly sleek as well but on the white version for lack of a better term it just looks simply clean the 5.5 inch display provides 1080p resolution with 401 pixels per inch but what makes this screen stand out is it's screen to body ratio which comes in at around 73% this ratio is one of the reasons why this larger form factor is still pretty accessible in the honor 6 plus and we're always fans of Bezos on our screens the IPS construction brings a high level of brightness to the phone even in broad daylight and the viewing angles are all great as well making the screen almost look like a sticker on the phone because the color fidelity doesn't suffer at acute angles but it's in the colors that I found a very enjoyable experience the colorful emotion UI really comes out of the screen very well with good if not slightly high saturation levels and the standard level of sharpness in text contrast is where it should be - especially shown when playing various video games even with the occasional hand gymnastics the honor 6 plus manages a very enjoyable display experience for both work and play as has become customary for huawei phones the honor 6 plus does not use a conventional chipset that you would find in many of its competitors instead Huawei constructs their own processing packages and since the main 7 we've been pretty impressed with what they put out and as such the high silicon 925 makes a return here for some high-end performance mainly providing a very smooth and speedy experience through the emotion UI indeed scrolling through all the various elements yielded no problems and the three gigabytes of RAM allowed for good multitasking I had very few problems with hiccups or even stutters on the honour and experience continued even when gaming the recently released WWE immortals moved along smoothly and without incident giving the molle t-62 8mp for a few points in Huawei's architecture in the graphics department we learned from our media tour with Huawei that because of their experience in wireless communications and thus the processors needed in order to make those happen it only made sense for them to do the same with their particular smartphone handsets and if the ascend made seven and now the honor 6 plus or any indication high silicon is definitely fulfilling that promise now on a simplistically designed phone like the honor you won't find much more than the conventional additions but the essentials are definitely there you won't be finding extra features on the honor like the fingerprint scanner from the mate7 but then again Huawei does like to distinguish among their various flagship sets a microSD card slot is located right under the SIM tray and it can actually work like a SIM tray if you want to rock a dual sim setup call quality was where it should be though I will admit that the call volume was a little low for my tastes and in connecting to the general networks here in the West I wasn't surprised that this Chinese version of the phone would have some trouble connecting to my LTE networks here in California but that being said on the ATT network the HSPA+ connection was very reliable and I was able to rely on it throughout most of my daily usage the rear-facing speaker was a bit of a letdown as its loudness was stifled by a pretty narrow soundstage now one thing that I did notice was a lack of NFC which seemed a little peculiar to me I realized it after I tried to pair my phone to my car stereo system and no matter how much I tapped the back of the phone to it I got nothing and battery life was a pretty big deal for the ascend mate line but with a larger form factor the honor 6 plus it did hope to be on par with its bigger sibling and for the most part it provided enough power to get through a full day with some leftover with a little bit of frugal usage the 3600 milliamp hour battery got a day and a half with few problems but even on the HSPA+ connection it struggled to get anything more the honor 6 plus has one main claim to fame and it is the dual camera setup made in a similar fashion to the dual camera from the HTC one as such the optics are supposed to retrieve depth information in the scene and provide the ability to set a focal point the result is a photo with DSLR like depth of field but before we get to that let's take a look at the app much like other camera applications from Huawei going between main modes involves swipes on the viewfinder but other modes are accessed via a button on the side these modes include HDR best photo panorama and a super night mode that does enhance very dark scenes despite the loss of quality and the grain that you would probably expect and because this is basically a slow shutter speed mode you do have to keep the phone steady or use a tripod HDR did a pretty good job enhancing a scene as well owing to the benefit of different exposures being captured simultaneously but its effect is not quite as strong as from other competitors video modes include Full HD quality recording which did look pretty good but does suffer from the lack of optical image stabilization so you need to have steady hands pictures in general look quite good I liked the color saturation and the details were captured well in the main auto mode the speed of capture on this camera was also a plus making this a pretty good everyday camera companion but my problem happens to be with the supposed effects and benefits of the dual camera setup one in the so called wide aperture mode you can tap on a focal point and adjust the aperture which is the term that you're using for what is otherwise a D focusing mode by the way you can fine-tune the focus in the gallery as well after the fact so you're never really tied to the level that you're chosen obviously this means that the depth of field work is done on the software side when used on that point you can essentially blur out the rest of the photo other than that particular area but while these effects do mimic the same procedure on DSLRs the main big reason for choosing low aperture in the first place isn't even found here improving that low-light performance more than anything else my issue is just with the usage of the term aperture this dual camera setup is nothing new and in the honor 6 plus it's actually a pretty good iteration but using the word aperture just bothers me a little bit because it really is only half of the truth when it comes to their usage of it here in the honor 6 plus the emotion UI is the OS of choice for Huawei and as far as Asian operating systems go it's a sleek and good-looking one in comparison a highly colorful and clean aesthetic makes home screens nice to navigate through the folders and some organization will be needed due to the lack of an Abbe drawer the soft keys on the bottom are customizable and can be swiped away if you want to open up some real estate and speaking of customization you can theme the entire interface using the built-in engine even input customizations are available like gestures on the locked screen in order to easily get into various functions of the phone the main highlights for me in the emotion UI included the notification drop-down which nicely shows your notifications in a reverse chronological timeline and the nice transitions in and out of applications that the hisilicon processor helps present with few hiccups now since I'm using the Chinese version of the phone the main gripe would be a lack of Google Play services now it's easy enough to search by du for applications or as I eventually did install the Play Store to get all of your applications easily but without services syncing contacts it meant extracting them from another one of my phones via bluetooth all in all the combination of nice performance and a lovely screen helped elevate what is already a nice looking interface in the emotion UI but without Google Play services it is a little bit tough for a westerner like me to convert to it fully officially the honor 6 plus is available in China and parts of Europe for a price that basically converts to around $400 that's a pretty great price for a high-end device though plenty of other Chinese based manufacturers have been able to meet or even surpass this price point there are also some competitors that offer extra features like the rotating camera of the oppo n3 or the fast charging capabilities found on plenty of its other rivals and not to mention the ascend mate 7 itself that does come a little bit higher in price what also comes with a very great fingerprint scanner maybe it's just me but fixating on the word honor seems to imply simplicity and if nothing else the honor 6 plus succeeds at bringing the essentials in the simplistically elegant design on its aesthetic and performance you can mostly justify the price points but claims about the camera where the focus no pun intended and on that front the dual camera setup proves to be more of a gimmick than a game-changer a dual camera setup is nothing new at this point and while the so called wide aperture mode is functional and arguably useful the camera does nothing else to really differentiate itself and in the end that is really what the honor 6 plus does it lays in the cut providing the Huawei flavor of what we may otherwise expect already from high-end devices if there are more compelling features like say a fingerprint scanner or the battery life of the ascend main 7 the sum of its parts might make this a standout winner but instead what we have is another admittedly great entry point into the high-end market where there happens to be quite a few filling that space already as always thank you guys very much for watching and I hope you enjoyed this review of the Huawei honor 6 plus as an alternative to the ascend mate line and also the P series from Huawei it is definitely a very nice entry point into the high-end market it just doesn't really differentiate itself that much from other competitors that are similarly priced as always keep it tuned to Android Authority for all of the best coverage check out my media tour with Huawei here on the channel in the vlog series that I did and also the two interviews that I made available to you guys to watch and over on the side right over there you can see two videos from my colleagues don't forget to check out all the content from on like colleagues in Android and remember to drop us some likes in our videos and to subscribe to our channel if you haven't already and once you're done with all of that head on over to Android Authority comm for even more because we are your source for all things Android