Gadgetory

I'm still getting to know the huawei honor 5x is this is the first kwame phone I've spent any significant time with but I felt it was important to check in with some early impressions I'm Juan Carlos bag now for pocket now and here's my first 48 hours with the honor 5x we recently published a first impressions video and after two days most of that video has been confirmed or reinforced this is an attractive build for its $199 unlock price I can't unsee some of the little blemishes where seams don't quite line up and it's always been a pet peeve when the headphone jack isn't centered on the phone body but in daily operation these issues won't overly distract instead pulling the phone out in public I think most people would be hard pressed telling it apart from a far more expensive flagship I absolutely wouldn't blame anyone for confusing this with an HTC from behind or a note 5 from the front I spent Valentine's Day weekend using the honor as my main driver and it was a whiplash inducing collection of highs and lows it's still a bit early to get a handle on battery performance but the phone handled casual usage well a full day off the charger when you ended a very light day with about 70 percent battery left we'll see how that holds up to an actual workday though and standby times have been pretty good sipping about 2% of the battery overnight on Wi-Fi also too early to call is camera performance this price tear has been getting increasingly competitive with ASUS of Lumias and all kettles offering up some solid rear shooters I'm not particularly enamored with the camera app but performance has been snappy with quick load times directly from a DoubleTap on the volume rocker and reasonably quick recycle times compared to competing phones the optics seem solid but we'll still need to look at image processing and low-light performance now what isn't too early to call is this fingerprint scanner it was a shining moment during the initial setup and it continued to impress over the weekend it was consistently faster in operation than the button press plus scan action the v10 requires and the placement is near-perfect for folks of all hand sizes to easily unlock the device without moving it around in your hand I also enabled one of the gestures to pull down the notification shade and happily that replicates one of my favorite customizations on lg devices I might be at the end of my rope with this UI though I don't like it at all manual organization like this is terror you install a new app and it just gets plopped onto the next available open spot on one of your home screens if you want that app anywhere else you have to move torque cuts around or organize folders adding widgets to this interface just looks a mess everything is cluttered and there are precious few apps that will deliver badged updates when information is sent to your various accounts frustratingly difficult to get an at-a-glance look at what's happening in your digital life without a lot of swiping and organizing now I know it's often included as an accessibility feature or for older consumers who might not be as tech savvy but I'm liking the simple mode better easy to use shortcuts for the basics a layout which resembles a file Explorer or finder and we're back to having something closer to an app drawer plus the flat color style and rounded corners reminds me a little of a Star Trek style L cars UI even though I can't really stand Huawei software at least the actual phone performance kept me well powered through most of the apps I use flipping back and forth between system tools social networking and a little light gaming the honor 5x kept up very well only struggling occasionally with combinations of services like turn-by-turn navigation while tracking my vehicle and engine info and streaming some podcasts gaming also kept up well playing older titles like Riptide gp2 and Sky Force but it shouldn't come as a surprise that will often see framerate drops or the occasional lag and yet considering the issues I might have with the honor 5x I just can't get overly frustrated with it considering the price every time I pick it up I can't help but give it a bit of a grin the bang for buck here feels pretty good and it's another handset reinforcing how well Android can compete at the $200 threshold we still have a ways to go wrapping up the full review here so make sure you subscribe to this channel to catch the full scoop on the Huawei honor 5x as always thanks so much for watching for PocketNow i'm juan carlos back now you can chat me up on twitter and instagram as some gadget guy and i will catch you all on the next video you