Gadgetory

one of the first phones I reviewed for Pocket now was the Huawei honor 5x and we received a killer little update this year with the honor 6x so it only seemed right I should tackle this review to where 2016 will be remembered as an amazing year for mid Rangers it looks like 2017 is already off to a strong start pushing a higher quality experience to even lower price points this honor was my backup phone for CES and it performed admirably where my v20 was something of a production phone back up camera and interview recorder I ultimately relied on the honor 10 actually keep me in touch with the rest of the PocketNow team on the ground fulfilling fairly different roles it really shouldn't come as a surprise that the 6x outperformed the LG for battery life not once did I have to top it off during a busy and long day to stay in touch we're hitting the lg cameras often meant needing at least one recharge wall on the show floor all around the 6x is built nicer than its predecessor seems can still be felt when running a thumb over the phone but it's better pieced together and less jarring than the 5x though I wish the top and bottom rear panels could match the metallic rear a little closer in color personally I prefer the look of the darker grey 6 X with the black front bezels and some of those material pieces look more consistent on the darker phone rounding the rear helps the phone feel a bit thinner in the hand and the placement of the fingerprint sensor is near perfect for that on-the-go one-handed unlock not only a quick performer for a budget phone we still get all the bun tricks like dropping the notification tray as a gesture a 5.5 inch 1080p LCD is respectively bright almost matching the output of Huawei flagship like the mate 9 it was best in Nice AMOLED high contrast mode but it's plenty readable in all the direct sunlight for a 20-17 gadget we would have liked a USBC connector instead of microUSB but as this phone will battle current Moto G's it's not too extreme a compromise to make to save a few bucks and what might be a challenge for some though is the software skin pre-installed my prediction from our first look video we have been spoiled by the mate 9 and the newest flavor of emui the honor 6x takes us back to emu I which also returns us to an odd mashup of iOS style home screens no app drawer with widgets cluttering up the organization and a vertically split notification shade you can install another launcher like Google now or Nova Launcher and there's some customizing you can achieve with themes but we do hope that we'll get emui 5 at some point to return us to a more traditional Android layout easily also expect some value added bloat on this phone booking.com CNN lyft TripAdvisor already for you to uninstall if they aren't apps you're apt to use and while the software might turn a few folks off we can't fault the performance the 6x moves on or over to a cure in chipset away from the qualcomm six one five found in last year's phones now depending on the benchmark you might use the keren 650 delivers around a sixty percent performance boost over its predecessor this is within spitting distance of the Newark welcome 625 mid-range chipset and is nicely competitive at this sub $300 tier the phone could still benefit from a little polish in optimization however a handful of my favorite apps do not play well with this Kirin 650 like onedrive or 8s 64 and while fine for casual games more graphics intensive fare will put a strain on this Hardware so I was happy to see Marvel future fight played respectively well when turning down the graphics quality settings garnering the most attention of course is this dual camera setup partnering a 12 megapixel main sensor with a 2 megapixel companion Huawei's dual sensor tech is formidable for maximizing light and filling in details the 6x is no exception photo output punches way above this price tag and we're really happy to see nearly the same expansive list of modes we would find on the more expensive honor 8 including full-featured manual controls and support for raw capture through third-party camera apps providing dual sensors means we also get to play with Huawei's wide aperture mode a smart software blur which delivers a pretty bouquet to the backgrounds of your photos output here feels a little more artificial than on more expensive always but you judiciously you can get some great results out of it another feature which punches well above this phone price tag unlike the like of branded hallways the chicks act seems to deliver more aggressive JPEG saturation but overall we think this is a fun system to shoot with once the user takes a minute to acquaint themselves with where all the settings live the weak link here is video the honor captures a decent if unremarkable 1080p without any hardware or software image stabilization it's fine with somewhat compressed output but every video will be on the shaky side it's one area where welcome 6:25 chipset is outperforming this Kiran in providing 4k video capture audio playback on this phone is also a bit weak speaker playback is improved over the 5x our 6x sounds less hissy but overall the speaker's still on the tinny side headphone output is somewhat poor though below even the LG g5 a slightly higher noise floor paired with a rather weak amp means this won't be a budget audiophile solution but at least Huawei is consistent with their products amp and DAC quality scale with price from the cheaper honor through the Nova and up to the mate 9 in this day and age we'll still be happy to see a dedicated 3.5 millimeter headphone jack and it will get the job done for most a leestown tracking needs on inexpensive headphones but the 6x struggled to drive my $75.99 at maximum volume that brings us to the battery where we've already mentioned this phone is a strong performer on our media test streaming 30 minutes of HD video over Wi-Fi at 190 Lux the 6x drained about 6 percent of its battery right in line with most Android flagship phones even though the 6x is still on Android marshmallow we got very good standby time accidentally leaving it on in my travel bag pack for about four days after CES to find very minimal battery drain recharge times are somewhat slow however using the included charger for 30 minutes only resulted in a 22% top off no super charging here so let's wrap this up where does that leave us would be honored 6x well what a great little step up over last year improved aesthetics and build quality more based storage and a killer little camera at $250 it's not quite burner territory but it makes a compelling argument for folks who want to save some cash and own a new phone outright it competes very well against established players in this year like the 16 gigabyte Moto G 4 plus and the axon 7 minutes which is exactly the kind of company we want to see on or keep for their entry-level handset launching so early in 2017 we hope to see this trend continue to evolve bringing better experiences to the sub $300 phone market as always thanks so much for watching be sure to subscribe to this channel for more reviews like these and help us out with some sharing on your favorite social networks for pocket now I'm Juan Carlos bag now some gadget guy on Twitter and Instagram and I will catch you all on the next review