Honor 8 Lite – unfortunate appearance with excellent content

Review of the Honor 8 Lite smartphone and its characteristics

The Honor brand, owned by the eminent company Huawei, is gaining momentum every year. The products of this manufacturer have become popular due to the combination of good performance, reliability and attractive appearance, while the price often remains affordable. More recently, the Chinese showed the world an interesting device, Honor 8 Lite, which occupies a place in the niche of middle-class devices. Although this is a simplified modification of the Honor 8 model presented much earlier, it has something to offer the buyer. Therefore, let's review Huawei Honor 8 lite and look at this new product in more detail to understand what it is.

Technical characteristics of Honor 8 Lite:

• 5.2-inch IPS display with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels;
• eight-core Kirin 655 processor;
• Mali-T830 MP2 graphics accelerator;
• 3 GB RAM;
• 16 GB of internal memory;
• support for microSD memory cards;
• 12-megapixel main camera with f/2.0 aperture;
• 8 megapixel front camera;
• two slots for SIM cards with support for 4G LTE;
• Fingerprint's scanner;
• battery with a capacity of 3,000 mAh;
• OS: Android 7.0 Nougat;

Packaging and equipment

By tradition, we begin our review of the Huawei Honor 8 lite smartphone with the configuration. A fresh middling is for sale in a neat white box, the inside of which slides out. The internal contents are standard. The manufacturer has equipped its product with all the necessary things, and that’s great. We get the following set:

• plastic cover on the body;
• SIM card extractor;
• modest charging at 5V/1A;
• microUSB cable;
• waste paper.

Equipment

Huawei and some other Chinese manufacturers are known for providing a large number of accessories and add-ons. This is also true for this model. Included with the phone, the user receives:

• charger (5 V, 1 A), which unfortunately does not support fast charging;
• headset with built-in call button;
• standard USB-A/microUSB cable;
• plastic back cover;
• screen protective coating;
• SIM card ejector;
• warranty and user manuals.

Appearance, materials and display Honor 8 Lite

Huawei Honor 8 lite 32 GB review showed that it is very similar to other smartphones from the manufacturer. Even with a stretch, the appearance of the hero of our review cannot be called unique; everything is quite trivial. But this does not make Honor 8 Lite any less pleasant in appearance. For an inexpensive device, everything is very nice. The back here is not metal, but glass.

Thanks to this design decision, associations arise with the model one step higher in the line. Huawei Honor 8 lite 32 GB review made it clear that the back panel is equipped with curved edges, as 2.5D technology is used. The same form of glass is used on the front plane, but with a less pronounced effect. There is a plastic frame running along the ends of the case, which at first can be mistaken for metal, but this is not so.

The device fits perfectly in the palm of your hand and is comfortable to use. Compact dimensions and low weight contribute to this. However, it is better to use it in a case. This way, firstly, you will save yourself from constantly cleaning the back side, since it is very soiled, and, secondly, you will make the gadget not so slippery in your hand.

The model is offered in four color options - gold, white, black and gorgeous blue. We reviewed the Huawei Honor 8 lite 32gb on the white version.

On the front panel at the bottom there is a brand logo, and above the screen the space is occupied by a speaker hole for conversations, a front-facing peephole, a notification indicator and sensors.

The back cover is topped with the main photo module lens and a single LED flash. Just below you can see the circle of the fingerprint reader, which practically does not make mistakes and works very quickly. You can assign various useful functions to it. The review of the Huawei Honor 8 lite 32 smartphone revealed that a microUSB connector, a loudspeaker speaker and a microphone are inserted into the bottom end.

On the top there is a 3.5 mm output and a noise canceling hole.

The right side contains a classic pair of buttons for volume control and power, and the left side has a tray with a double nanoSIM slot.

It is also possible to install a microSD card up to 128 GB, but you have to sacrifice one of the SIM cards for this. The weight of Honor 8 Lite does not exceed 147 g, the proportions of the smartphone are 147.2 x 72.9 x 7.6 mm.

Design

The difference in appearance between the basic and simplified device is quite small. On the contrary, if you do not delve into the details and subtleties, then distinguishing the two smartphones is not so easy. To tell the truth, when introducing new and new brand names for gadgets, not only Huawei, but also its competitors do not particularly care about developing a unique design for each of them.

Just like the original, Honor 8 Lite is offered in a glass and metal body. The back side is especially attractive, giving the smartphone a more expensive appearance. The impression only intensifies when you take the phone in your hand - it is very ergonomic and fits comfortably in the palm of your hand. In a word, this is a real flagship with all that it implies.

But there are minimal differences from the main eighth Honor. Instead of shimmer on the back cover, we see a deep shine and the effects of brushed steel on the ends. Again, considering that Light is cheaper, it’s nice to see that the manufacturer decided to reduce the cost not at the expense of materials. As you know, some companies put plastic cases in simplified versions of their smartphones, and this causes gaps and creaks, and, of course, negatively affects the visual perception of the phone. And you shouldn’t forget about practicality - metal is always more reliable than plastic.

I'm very pleased with the presence of a fingerprint scanner. For both devices it is located on the back side, in the same place. But the same cannot be said about the USB port. For the main model this is a Type-C connection, and for the simplified model it is micro-USB.

Honor 8 Lite display

Huawei Honor 8 lite black review moves on to its display. The screen here is equipped with an LTPS matrix with Full HD resolution. Of course, there is no air gap. The display size is 5.2 inches. It’s good that recently more and more smartphones are equipped with such a diagonal, since it is very convenient, and at the same time it cannot be called small. Huawei Honor 8 lite 32gb gold review confirmed that it supports 10 touch points simultaneously.

The brightness is sufficient for sunny weather, the minimal backlight is also comfortable. The contrast of the picture is pleasing to the eye, the color temperature can be adjusted. But the oleophobic coating of the front glass leaves much to be desired; it simply isn’t there. Our Huawei Honor 8 lite 32gb black review did not reveal any other display deficiencies.

Technical features, sound and autonomy of Honor 8 Lite

Huawei Honor 8 lite smartphone black review moves on to the most interesting part - performance. The basis for the hardware component of the device was the Kirin 655 chipset, built on eight cores up to 2.1 GHz. Honor 8 lite characteristics provide good opportunities for games, and even more so there will be no problems with everyday use. Graphics processing work is assigned to the Mali-T830 MP2 accelerator. This processor is not a top processor, but it is not a weakling either. In AnTuTu, the Honor 8 Lite model was able to score a solid 62 thousand points.

The user has access to 4 GB of RAM and flash storage with a capacity of 32 GB, of which about 11 GB is occupied. You won't be able to fully enjoy gaming on the Honor 8 Lite. In heavy games you will need medium graphics settings; the existing accelerator can handle maximum settings with great difficulty or not at all. The device heats up under intense loads, but is quite tolerable. This is not surprising, because the Huawei Honor 8 lite specifications are quite powerful.

Before buying a smartphone, it is worth considering that the version for the Middle Kingdom AL00 differs from the modification TL10, officially sold in Russia, in the almost complete absence of our 4G frequencies. The new product is equipped with connectivity tools such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.1. Connection to GPS and GLONASS satellites occurs in a matter of seconds. Those who like to listen to FM radio will be pleased with the availability of this option. The OTG function has not gone away either, which allows you to connect an external flash drive.

There are no questions about the quality of voice transmission, everything is at the proper level. The external speaker sounds quite pleasant and does not cause irritation. But it is not designed for listening to music, since the low frequencies are not enough. The sound in the headphones doesn't really stand out, but most people will probably like it, the maximum volume threshold is enough. In general, the characteristics of the Huawei Honor 8 lite smartphone are good, considering its price.

Huawei P8 Lite Smartphone: Review

Dimensions - 4.2

Huawei P8 Lite can be called compact - in terms of dimensions it almost repeats last year's Huawei Honor 6: 143x70.6x8 mm. The smartphone fits comfortably in one hand, and in order not to resort to the help of the second, in the settings you can select a special control mode, in which the image is reduced by about an inch. Huawei P8 Lite is thicker than most designer or high-end models, but weighs a little - 133 grams.

As for the appearance, the smartphone received the design from its older brother, but it looks budget-friendly. To be honest, we expected it to look more premium in real life, at least in advertising catalogs it looked more attractive. Even the case material turned out to be budget-friendly - plastic instead of metal. The same frames at the ends are actually also made of plastic, although they look like roughly processed metal. A graphic design is applied to the back panel, which allows you to quickly identify the smartphone. As a plus, we note the rather thin side frames around the display (screen area - 68.3%). At the bottom end there is a Micro-USB connector and speaker holes (in fact, the sound comes from only one of them, and a microphone is most likely hidden in the second).

The build quality is, in our opinion, good. The case does not bend, and during two weeks of testing it did not wear out or get scratched. Although it is not metal, the chosen material turned out to be quite practical. The case is non-separable, the SIM and MicroSD card slots are located in trays, which have to be removed using a special key or paperclip. Huawei P8 Lite can be purchased in black (Black) and white (White) colors.

Screen - 4.4

The display of the smartphone is of average quality, but moderately clear, bright and with its own small “tricks”.

The screen received HD resolution (1280×720 pixels). This is a typical and fairly clear (pixel density - 294 per inch) option for a 5-inch diagonal. Viewing angles can be assessed as average, as well as maximum brightness - 379 cd/m2. As a result, reading the screen is a little difficult in sunny weather. The minimum luminosity was again average - about 11 cd/m2. It's quite comfortable for reading in the dark. We would also like to mention auto-brightness, which can be smoothly adjusted; it works adequately under lighting conditions. As “tricks” we will name the operating mode with gloves (even quite thick leather ones) and color temperature adjustment (with a scale from “hot” to “cold”).

Not the highest brightness, average contrast and lack of protective glass - all this makes the Huawei P8 Lite screen mediocre for its price.

Camera

The smartphone has two average quality cameras of 13 and 5 MP. They are about the same quality as in the budget Huawei Honor 4C.

Both Huawei P8 Lite cameras can shoot with a retouching effect (“Decoration”) and so-called time lapses. This is something like “live photos” on the new iPhone 6s or just a short video. The main camera is equipped with an HDR mode; it improves the detail of dark areas in the frame. In addition, there is a mode with focus on different zones - most likely, the smartphone takes several photos with different focusing in order to then select the most suitable option. The rest of the modes are quite typical: detecting smiles, taking panoramas, adjusting several settings. But who today doesn’t know how to do all this? Except that not everyone has the ability to shoot panoramas with a front camera yet.

The smartphone does not have an RGBW sensor or an optical stabilization system, like its older brother. Despite the use of back-illumination (BSI) technology, night photography on the Huawei P8 Lite was not impressive. It’s not that the camera takes bad pictures, but what’s more disappointing is that it’s not much different from the camera on the Honor 4C, which costs almost half the price. The quality of the photo turned out to be about the same - Huawei P8 Lite focuses well and works well with light, but the detail of small objects in the frame sometimes suffers, and noise also appears periodically in the photo.

Photos from the camera of the Huawei P8 Lite smartphone - 3.2

Photos from the front camera of Huawei P8 Lite - 3.2

View original photos

Working with text - 5.0

The smartphone comes pre-installed with two keyboards to choose from: the proprietary Huawei Swype and the standard one from Google.

The first allows for text input using strokes (Swype); there is also marking of additional characters. If you wish, you can select a standard Android keyboard in the input settings, although the proprietary one, in our opinion, is still more convenient. Unless switching between languages ​​occurs by pressing the space bar and swiping up, and not by a separate key.

Internet - 3.0

The Huawei P8 Lite smartphone tries to please with all the number of pre-installed browsers: there is Chrome, Opera, and even its own “Browser”. With the first two, everything is clear, they are widespread: Opera has its own traffic compression mode, express panel and auto-fit text to the width of the screen, and Chrome is able to synchronize with the desktop version of the program. Its own browser turned out to be no less interesting and functional: it is possible to save pages for offline reading, send links in various ways, and even an advertising filter.

Communications - 3.8

Huawei P8 Lite received the usual set of wireless communications:

• Wi-Fi b/g/n
• Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP profile support and energy saving
• LTE Cat. 4 (up to 150 Mbit/s)
• A-GPS with GLONASS support
• NFC chip.

But the mere presence of LTE today will not surprise anyone (besides, not the fastest Cat. 4 category). The only thing that reminds us of its relationship with flagships is the NFC chip.

The smartphone also does not have such features as high-speed and dual-band Wi-Fi. Even the Micro-USB connector does not support USB-Host, OTG (for connecting peripherals), or even MHL or Display Port (for video transmission).

Multimedia - 4.2

Huawei P8 Lite supports many different audio and video codecs. Thus, the smartphone plays uncompressed audio in the FLAC format, but cannot cope with the less popular DTS. As for video, the device played some of the 4K videos in tests, only failing to support the AVC codec. We also note that some MP4 videos were not played smoothly enough.

As for the pre-installed video player, it is simple and has almost no settings - just blocking, viewing in a small window and... that's it.

The music player is also not rich in functionality - there are only display settings (with a filter by song duration), selection of folders for search and display of song tests. All this is interesting, but many will miss the equalizer.

Battery - 2.6

The battery life of the Huawei P8 Lite turned out to be short. The main reason is the battery capacity, it is only 2200 mAh. Even the Honor 4C (although it is noticeably heavier) uses a 2550 mAh battery, and it lasts, although not much, but longer.

Huawei P8 Lite lasted 5.5 hours in HD video playback mode at maximum brightness - at the level of Acer Liquid Jade or ultra-thin Fly Tornado Slim. The results when playing music also turned out to be low - 42 hours, they can be called ordinary. In an hour of running the GeekBench Battery Test, the device lost 21% of charge, again, this is an average result.

During our tests, the smartphone lasted us about a day of work (a few games, a movie, mail, a browser and calls), we can consider this as payback for a light and relatively thin body.

Performance - 2.4

Huawei P8 Lite is equipped with a self-produced chipset with an average level of performance - it will be enough for daily tasks, but it may not be enough for demanding games.

At the same time, exactly the same HiSilicon Kirin 620 processor (8 cores at a frequency of up to 1.2 GHz) was used in Huawei Honor 4C, which is positioned as a budget model. Even the amount of RAM on both devices is the same - 2 GB. The smartphone works quite smoothly during daily use - calls, videos, applications, everything goes smoothly. Even most games run quite well: Minion Rush runs smoothly, and NOVA 3 loads quickly (in 12-15 seconds) and runs with almost no lag.

In benchmarks, Huawei P8 Lite received typically average scores:

• in GeekBench 3 - 2,775 points (the program claims that the Galaxy S5 received 2,836 points in it)
• in AnTuTu 5.7 - 35,952 (less than LG Nexus 5 2013)
• in 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited - up to 5,556 (more than the Samsung Galaxy A3 with its 4,558 points).

As a result, we get a device with a mid-level “stuffing”, which, nevertheless, is sufficient for most modern smartphone tasks.

Memory - 4.0

The volume of permanent memory of Huawei P8 Lite is 16 GB, of which only 10.3 GB is available to the user. The volume is small, but the smartphone has a slot for a memory card. However, it is located in the same tray as the second SIM card, so you have to choose between additional communication and increased memory. Some applications can be transferred to a memory card.

Peculiarities

Huawei P8 Lite runs Android 5.0 Lollipop OS. Features include the proprietary Emotion 3.1 UI interface, NFC chip, non-separable body and support for two SIM cards. The smartphone has quite a wide range of options in terms of settings, a mode for working with gloves and various “tricks”, such as motion control (shaking, turning over and double taps). Like the Honor 4C, when the screen is turned off, you can draw one of four letters (c, e, w, m) to launch applications (you can assign them yourself).

Initially, Google services are pre-installed on the smartphone, a set of basic applications (Music, Gallery, and so on), as well as Phone Manager and Tools such as weather, radio, mirror and file manager.

Autonomy Honor 8 Lite

A 3000 mAh battery provides good battery life on a single charge. Yes, there are phones with more capacious batteries, but it’s not just about the capacity. The energy efficiency of the processor has a big impact, and this is exactly what it is here. The only thing we can complain about is the lack of fast charging.

The process of replenishing energy takes a long time because the kit comes with only a 1A unit, but it can be replaced with an adapter with a current of 1.5A. Huawei Honor 8 lite technical characteristics and prices make it an interesting offer for those who want to get a suitable device at an affordable price. You can also read the Huawei honor 8 lite black smartphone reviews from owners, in which users express their experience of using the gadget.

Software part of Honor 8 Lite

Huawei Honor 8 lite 32gb specifications ensure smooth operation of the interface and no slowdowns. This phone is software based on Android 7.0 OS. Of course, the factory shell is preinstalled and firmware version 5.0 is available to the owner. The external interface is pleasing to the eye, everything can be easily understood, all points are thought out. A review of the Huawei Honor 8 lite phone showed that there are many settings available, thanks to which you can customize the design to suit yourself.

There are also features of the “seventh” Android. For example, you can divide the screen into two parts to use two applications at the same time. Virtual navigation buttons can be swapped if someone is not satisfied with their original position. System updates arrive periodically; to do this, you need to use the corresponding item in the settings.

How to disable NFC in Honor and Huawei

You can disable NFC on your phone in the same way as enable it:

• Through the phone settings.
• In the notification panel.

In the first case, you need to do: “Settings” → “Device connection” → “NFC” . The function is deactivated after moving the slider to the left.

In the second case, everything is much simpler. To disable this method, you will need to open the notification panel and click on the “NFC” icon.

When to do it

Despite the fact that NFC is a continuation of RFID technology, in terms of the security of contactless payments, it wins significantly.

The enabled function practically does not waste battery power, so only the owner of the smartphone should decide when to disable NFC and whether it is worth doing it.

Cameras

The Honor 8 lite camera review made it clear that it’s a sin to complain about the photo capabilities. For its money, the smartphone takes pictures, one might say, excellently. The main module uses a 12 megapixel sensor, with aperture equal to f/2.2. There is both manual and automatic mode. The camera interface is not overloaded with adjustments, but does not look poor either. The camera's arsenal includes tracking focus and fast shooting. During the day, photos are colorful and have good detail. Shades are reproduced reliably. Phase autofocus performs its functions well, pleasing with high speed.

The situation is no worse with macro photography, fortunately the optics support a focal length of 7-8 cm. In poor lighting, the result deteriorates, but not significantly. The flash, although single, shines brightly and illuminates the frame correctly. The main module records video in 1080p with stereo sound, the frequency is 30 fps. The videos come out of good quality, but the lack of stabilization still has a negative impact. The front camera has a resolution of 8 megapixels and a capture angle of 77 degrees.

Example photo:

Conclusion

The device looks decent for its price. The Chinese saved only on the plastic edging of the case, a weak charger and an oleophobic layer of the front glass. In all other respects, Honor 8 Lite evokes positive emotions. We get a nice design, a good camera, a good display and decent performance, which is enough to recommend this device for purchase. The asking price is about 16 thousand rubles. Reviews of the Huawei Honor 8 lite 32gb smartphone will help you finally decide on your choice.

Where can I buy?

You can purchase a smartphone at favorable prices using the following links:

Aliexpress

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Smartphone camera

The Honor 8 Lite, unlike the older version, has only one 12 megapixel camera. Despite this, the pictures come out very decent during the day and evening, and at night they are simply not bad. The same Chinese brand Xiaomi at a similar price will not be able to offer a phone that can take good pictures at night. There are no artifacts or unnecessary noise here, and the white balance is quite accurate.

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The front camera also deserves positive emotions. Selfies turn out very beautiful, and the module also has a wide-angle format. In this case, filming a large company with an auxiliary camera is quite possible even without a monopod.

Important! The disadvantage of the camera can be called video. The main one is capable of recording FHD, but the clarity is not the best, and the viewing angle is small. The front camera only does HD.