Specifications
- Screen: 5'', IPS, 294 ppi, 1280×720;
- Operating system: Android 5.1 (EMUI 3.1 Lite);
- Processor: MediaTek MT6735C, Cortex-A53, 4 x 1.3 GHz;
- GPU: ARM Mali-T720, frequency 600 MHz;
- RAM: 2 GB, LPDDR3;
- Built-in memory: 16 GB, microSDHC slot;
- Cameras: 13 MP (dual-tone flash, autofocus), 5 MP (flash);
- Battery: 2200 mAh, removable;
- Dimensions: 141x71x7.9 mm;
- Weight: 139 g;
- SIM slots: 2, nano-SIM (Dual SIM Dual Standby);
- Communication: GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz, DC-HSPA+ 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100 MHz, FDD LTE: 1, 3, 7, 38, 39, 40, 41, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n (2.4 GHz), Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, (A-GPS), GLONASS, BDS;
- Sensors: light, proximity, accelerometer/gyroscope, magnetometer.
Review of Huawei Honor 5A
At the very beginning of August 2021, Huawei announced the Honor 5A smartphone for the domestic market. This is a budget solution for young people, as well as the youngest model in the family. The device costs just over $100, but for the money it offers very good hardware and an interesting design.
Appearance and ergonomics
Huawei Honor 5A cannot charm at first sight, but showing this gadget to your friends is not at all a shame. Thanks to its compact size, the device fits comfortably into any pocket or women's clutch. The smartphone is extremely easy to operate even with one hand, since the thumb can freely reach any point on the screen. The body of the smartphone is made of plastic, which is quite expected for a truly budget device. Navigation buttons are present in the interface, but there are no mechanical keys under the display.
With its 8.9 mm thickness, Honor 5A does not look plump at all. The appearance of the device is very elegant. The back panel, which is textured, especially stands out. This allows the smartphone not to slip in your hands, and also gets rid of fingerprints. The cover can be easily removed since the battery is removable. The assembly is completed normally, but the body lacks rigidity, namely the side edges. Honor 5A is available in the following colors: white, gold and black.
Display
Huawei Honor 5A has a 5-inch screen with a completely classic HD resolution of 1280 by 720 pixels. Good detail is somewhat spoiled by blurry small font. An IPS matrix is installed here, which means you can count on large viewing angles. At the same time, the contrast drops seriously when the gaze is greatly averted. The sensor turned out to be very responsive. You will also be pleased with the excellent brightness of the flagship-level display. But the screen contrast is only satisfactory, because there is clearly not enough color saturation.
Hardware and performance
The device from Huawei is based on a MediaTek MT6735C chip with four cores (Cortex-A53) and a clock frequency of 1300 MHz. Honor 5A has 16 GB of internal storage, as well as 2 GB of RAM. The device is ready to expand its memory without any problems if you insert a MicroSD card with a capacity of up to 128 GB. The graphics accelerator is a Mali-T720 chip with a frequency of 600 MHz.
The performance level of Honor 5A in modern realities leaves much to be desired. Of course, for simple tasks the available speed is sufficient, and the interface works smoothly. But in 3D games and heavy programs the smartphone behaves unconvincingly. This is confirmed by tests: AnTuTu - 33000 points, Ice Storm Unlimited - 4900 points, GFXBench 3 - 471 (T-Rex Offscreen).
Communication and sound
The smartphone supports two nano-SIMs, one of which works on 4G or 3G networks, and the second on 2G. There is support for LTE with a maximum speed of up to 150 Mbit/s. There is Bluetooth 4.0, as well as Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n. The communication quality is standard for this class of devices. The sound is quite loud, but without any miracles in terms of purity.
Camera
The Honor 5A is not focused on taking great photos, but the 13-megapixel camera with dual flash performs well in its segment. During the daytime, the module is especially bright. But when the lighting level drops, various artifacts come out, and the contrast decreases sharply. The user can adjust sharpness, brightness, ISO and other parameters. The camera has a nice and modern interface. On the left side of the case there is a “smart” key for “hidden” shooting.
The front 5-megapixel camera can boast of absolutely nothing. True, the presence of a face flash, which can be useful when taking an evening selfie, is surprising. Fans of self-portraits will also appreciate the “Beauty” mode to enhance the photo as much as possible.
conclusions
In its price segment, Huawei Honor 5A has a great chance of success. This budget-class smartphone has a nice appearance, a decent camera, a front flash, support for LTE and dual SIM cards. In terms of price-quality ratio, Honor 5A is an excellent choice.
Appearance
At first glance, the new product strongly resembles the Honor 4C Pro. Continuity is noticeable in the contours of the case, the design of the main camera, the perforation of the speakers located on the bottom side next to Micro-USB, the nice texture of the back - familiar elements are everywhere. The body assembly remains of high quality. And yet, we are not dealing with a complete copy.
The arrangement of the front panel elements has changed; a front flash has appeared instead of an event indicator. A programmable Easy Key has been added to the left side of the device. Due to the disappearance of individual design elements (the silver speaker grille, the pattern on the front panel), the design has become simpler and less memorable, but this is a budget model. All these changes did not negatively affect the ergonomics of the case; moreover, the presence of a fourth mechanical key and the reduced thickness of the case make Honor 5A even more convenient to use than Honor 4C Pro.
Display
The Honor 5A displays information on a 5-inch screen made using IPS technology and with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels. For such a diagonal, this is enough - individual pixels are “not striking”; moreover, a higher resolution would significantly increase the load on the hardware platform.
The touch layer recognizes up to 5 simultaneous clicks. Thanks to it, the smartphone responds to gestures when the screen is off (more on this below). The light/proximity sensor unit performs its functions without noticeable problems. There is no oleophobic coating.
For its price, the matrix demonstrates excellent brightness and uniformity of the white field. It is also characterized by slightly distorted color reproduction and low contrast, which drops even more when looking at the screen at sharp angles.
How to connect the Huawei Honor Band 5 fitness bracelet to your phone
Install the Huawei Health app on your smartphone. During the application installation process, confirm permission to use bluetooth. Launch the application and go to the “Devices” menu on the main screen. Then, in the top right corner, click the “+” button and select “Smart Bracelet.”
Select your Honor Band 4 & 5 bracelet model
Select a connected bracelet
And confirm the connection on the fitness bracelet itself by clicking on the green icon.
Next, on your smartphone, confirm all the necessary permissions.
Iron
For the second time, testing Honor smartphones, we are faced with oddities associated with the declared modification of the system on the chip. (Perhaps, in this way, the company is testing the professionalism of the testers themselves?) In this case, the press release refers to a certain modification of the MediaTek MT6735C. At the same time, neither using specialized software nor based on the results of synthetic tests, it is not possible to identify any differences between this processor and the standard MT6735. The user will not even notice the difference.
Four Cortex-A53 cores with a frequency of 1.3 GHz, Mali-T720 GPU, 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal memory (about 10 free) - sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Almost every week a smartphone with a similar filling is tested. The configuration is quite good for comfortable everyday use. Android does not lag on it, casual games run well, and the frame rate in projects offering beautiful 3D graphics is kept at 25-30 frames per second at low and medium settings.
How to reset settings on the Huawei Honor Band 5 fitness bracelet
Activate the menu on the fitness bracelet and select the “More” section, then click “System”, then “Reset” and click the checkmark to confirm.
You can also reset the fitness bracelet using the Huawei Health mobile application. In this case, the fitness bracelet must be connected to the phone. To reset the settings, launch the application, press the “Me” button, select HONOR Band 5, scroll down, select “Restore Confirm”.
Selection upon request - Where to buy “Huawei Honor Band 5”
…
Software
Like the 4C Pro, the main character of this review runs the Lite version of EMUI 3.1, which has lost a number of animations and some other beauties for the sake of performance. With the exception of design, this modification of the operating system is almost in no way inferior to the basic EMUI. Let's briefly list its features: support for themes, a simplified style of the home screen, black lists of subscribers and password protection of applications, advanced do not disturb options, control over application permissions and their operation in the background.
Even more interesting are the options presented in the “control” section. The “Easy Key” item allows you to assign the launch of any three applications to an additional key (short, long and double press).
The “motions” section allows you to turn off the sound by turning the smartphone over and assign the launch of four more applications to various gestures on the locked screen. In addition, the one-hand control mode, which temporarily reduces the image scale, and the floating control button have not gone away.
How to update the Huawei Honor Band 5 fitness bracelet
After the next firmware version is released, it will be automatically installed first on the phone and then on the bracelet when they are paired. You can also perform the update manually. To do this, go to the Huawei Health mobile application, open the “Me” tab, in the “My Devices” section, click on the line with the name of the fitness bracelet and then select “Software Update”.
Those who bought Huawei Honor Band 5 are also viewing
…
Connection
Honor 5A has two slots for nano-SIM cards and a separate slot for a memory card. In this case, there is only one radio module in the case, and at the same time it is connected to the Internet, for example via 4G; there can be only one of the cards. The second card remains in standby mode and is capable of receiving calls. There is no connection to the slot; the main card is selected through the menu. The design of the smartphone does not allow for hot-swapping of cards. USB OTG - does not work, but there is a separate microphone for noise reduction.
Single-band Wi-Fi (2.4 GHz), FM radio, Bluetooth 4.0, as well as all three global positioning systems are supported. Starting navigation takes time, but the location is determined with enviable accuracy.
⇡#Communication and wireless interfaces
An important advantage of Honor 5A is the ability to work with two SIM cards of the nano-SIM standard, and, we repeat, without having to choose between a second SIM card and a memory card. But it is important to remember that only one of them can work in 3G/4G networks, the second has to be content with second-generation networks. Working with cards is organized in a standard way: the user can determine which one to use to access the Internet, and which one to use by default to make calls and send messages. Of course, there is only one radio module in the device, so when talking using one of the cards, the second one becomes temporarily unavailable. The device supports LTE Cat. 4 with a maximum theoretical data reception speed of 150 Mbit/s, upload speed – 50 Mbit/s.
Honor 5A – SIM card settings
The set of wireless interfaces is typical for the low-end class: Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. There is no NFC in 5A, and even less so an infrared port.
| Honor 5A – AndroiTS GPS Test results outdoors | ||
The device does not navigate the terrain very quickly, but it is extremely accurate. A little over a minute after launching the profile test, the gadget detected a total of 19 satellites and was guided by 16 of them, while the navigation error radius was only two meters. You definitely won’t get lost with this one!
Battery
Under the plastic cover there is a removable 2200 mAh battery. EMUI 3.1 Lite, like the basic version of this operating system, has three operating modes. Energy saving mode disables most smartphone functions, leaving only the basic ones - calls and SMS messages. With it, Honor 5A can work for several days.
The performance and balanced modes function ineffectively in this case (let's hope that this omission will be corrected with OS updates). The difference in autonomy between them was about 10 minutes. In total, the smartphone lasted almost 7 hours in our proprietary test. It took just over two hours to fully charge the battery.
Connecting to a smartphone
To connect to a smartphone, the Huawei Health application is used, which, after installation, is signed as “Health” (as a rule, this application is already preinstalled in Huawei and Honor smartphones, but for maximum performance it should be updated before pairing with the bracelet).
Install QR code
Huawei Health
Developer: Huawei Internet Service
Cost: free
After launching the application, register a Huawei account and connect the smartphone to your mobile device.
Camera
The photographic capabilities of the Honor 5A are provided by 13 MP main and 5 MP front sensors. Both smartphone cameras are equipped with flashes: a bright double flash for the main one, and a single-color flash for the front one.
The power of the latter is enough to snatch from complete darkness the face of a person taking a selfie, but the sensor still cannot cope with the lack of light and the image is covered with numerous multi-colored dots of artifacts. Thus, the front camera is still not suitable for night photography, but it can somewhat compensate for the lack of light at dusk.
Does the main camera take good pictures? Rather yes than no. The results greatly depend on the shooting conditions, but if we evaluate the Honor 5A relative to its competitors, it is not inferior to them. The only thing that spoils the impression is the somewhat “scattered” autofocus. It doesn't always work correctly.
