Review of Huawei Honor 5A – another inexpensive smartphone with good content. Interestingly, there is a front-facing flash and a customizable smart button. In typical Huawei fashion, the device is sold under different names. For example, the Y6 II Compact is presented on the European market. There is a purely Asian version - Honor Play 5. The only difference is Play 5 in the location of the noise-canceling microphone and flashing LED lights.
At the time of writing the Huawei Honor 5A review, the official price of the smartphone is $143. In this price segment there has been serious competition between manufacturers from China for a long time. It remains to be seen what place Honor 5A will receive in this fight for customer attention.
Appearance and connectors
A classic-shaped smartphone housed in a plastic shell. Available in black, white and gold colors. There are no touch buttons below the screen, as the controls are built into the OS interface.
The back panel is removable and pleasant, thanks to the pattern of intersecting lines.
Under the cover there are separate slots for a SIM card and a USB flash drive. There is a removable battery. Buttons for controlling mode and volume are on the right edge.
On the left side is a smart button for Easy Key. Its purpose and capabilities will be discussed later.
The bottom grille houses the main speaker with a microphone and a MicroUSB connector.
At the top end there is a jack for connecting a 3.5 mm headset.
Huawei Honor 5A Smartphone: Review
Dimensions and design - 4.0
The design of the smartphone can be called rather inconspicuous, and the body is very tall, but collapsible, which today looks unusual.
Externally, it resembles Honor 4C Pro - a similar front panel and a diamond pattern on the back, shimmering in the sun. On the one hand, such repetitions are not surprising for a budget employee, on the other hand, it is not clear why there are such wide frames above and below the screen? After all, even the touch control keys are located on the screen, and not on the frame below it. Dimensions Honor 5A - 144x73x9 mm, weight - 139 grams. Thus, it is more compact and lighter than the Motorola Moto G (gen. 3), but inferior to the same Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016) and many other 5-inch smartphones, for example, ZTE Blade X5 or Huawei Honor 4C. One of the features of the model is an additional Easy Key control key on the left side. Interestingly, this was already the case with another smartphone from the company, Honor 7.
The main material of the case is plastic. Only the frame, stylized as metal, looks unusual, which is why from the end the smartphone can be confused with a more expensive model. Thanks to the textured back, it lies pleasantly and securely in the palm of your hand, and due to its compact diagonal, it can be operated with one hand. The device body is collapsible, and the cover and battery are removable. Having disassembled the smartphone, you can see separate slots for two SIMs and a MicroSD card. The build quality can be called high for a budget employee - there is no play or creaking anywhere, the body is quite durable, and the lid fits tightly, except that it is not so easy to remove.
Huawei Honor 5A can be bought in three colors - black, white and gold.
Screen - 3.9
The screen of Huawei Honor 5A cannot be called excellent, but it is quite clear and bright. Still, it would be naive to expect something more for such a price tag.
The smartphone is equipped with a clear 5-inch IPS screen with HD resolution (1280×720 pixels). The pixel density is 294 per inch - this is enough to not see individual pixels on the screen. There is no information about the use of protective glass. The screen gets dirty quite easily with fingerprints and is difficult to wipe off. The measured brightness range turned out to be quite wide, from 13 to 514 nits, which, on the one hand, is close to a comfortable level for the eyes in the dark, and on the other, provides good readability in the sun. Nevertheless, during the day the screen is still not perfectly readable, but this is due to the moderate contrast - 700:1, and there are also slight inaccuracies with color rendition (evenly across all colors). The phone has an auto-brightness feature, but it works slowly, sometimes ignoring changing lighting conditions. But the color gamut is not bad for the low price - 93% of standard sRGB. Also, the color temperature turned out to be too high - 8200 degrees, which makes the picture look a little bluish. However, this error can be corrected manually in the screen settings.
Cameras - 2.5
Despite the seemingly high resolution of 13 and 5 MP, the Huawei Honor 5A cameras did not impress us. They are unlikely to replace your budget camera, and high-quality pictures and selfies can only be taken in good lighting.
The main camera is inferior to that of both Honor 5C and Honor 4C. It takes a long time to focus and is quite slow when shooting in HDR mode and in low light conditions. Colors are rendered well, but a little pale. The detail of objects is low for their resolution, the sharpness is uneven across the frame, there is a lot of noise (or the consequences of their “blurring”), and light sources entering the frame can easily ruin it. That is, from all sides the camera is frankly weak. You can get a high-quality photo only during the day, but it copes poorly with shooting indoors. It is a little surprising that with a 13 MP sensor, the camera records video at a resolution of no higher than 1280x720 pixels, which is quite small.
The 5 MP front camera is not far from the quality of the 2 MP front cameras from two years ago. It makes a lot of noise (especially indoors), and the detail of the frames is so low that even proprietary skin smoothing filters are no longer needed. In addition, we can say that, despite 5 MP, the video recording resolution is limited to HD resolution.
Photos from the Huawei Honor 5A camera - 2.5
Photos from the front camera of Huawei Honor 5A - 2.5
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Working with text - 5.0
You can easily and conveniently work with texts on your smartphone. The device interface offers two keyboards to choose from: the standard one from Google and Huawei’s own Swype.
You have most likely already seen the first one on any other Android phone. It features fast switching between languages and support for continuous word input (Swype). The Huawei Swype keyboard has the same name continuous input function, marking of additional characters and gesture control. As a minus, we note the inconvenient switching between languages - by holding down the space bar and swiping up. If you are not satisfied with these keyboards, you can easily install any other one from the Play Market.
Internet - 5.0
Initially, Huawei Honor 5A comes pre-installed with Chrome and Opera browsers. Although the second one is initially hidden for some reason, it can be found in the settings among applications or simply by searching on the desktop. Chrome can be said to be the standard option that comes pre-installed on most Android devices. It works quickly and can sync with the desktop version to display bookmarks and history. But Opera has such features as reading mode and automatic adjustment of text to the width of the screen. At the same time, it’s a pity that the company apparently got rid of its own proprietary browser - we personally liked it no less. However, you can install any browser you like yourself.
Communications - 2.6
The set of communications of Huawei Honor 5A can be called typical for today:
- simple Wi-Fi b/g/n with the ability to distribute the Internet via Wi-Fi
- Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP profile
- pretty fast LTE Cat. 4, up to 150 Mbit/s
- A-GPS with GLONASS support
- FM radio (only works with headphones).
The only unusual thing here is the presence of relatively fast LTE and FM radio, which is ignored by many flagships, for example, the Samsung Galaxy S7. A standard Micro-USB 2.0 connector is used for charging and connecting to a PC. The phone works with two micro SIM cards, each of which has a separate slot, as well as a memory card.
Multimedia - 4.2
Huawei Honor 5A cannot boast of high sound quality, but it supports a fairly wide range of audio and video formats.
So, the phone plays tracks in FLAC (the audio player does not see them, but they are launched directly from the file manager), but is not compatible with music in AC-3. Everything is fine with video formats; during tests, difficulties arose only with RMVB and some WMV and MPG videos.
The phone comes pre-installed with a simple but nicely designed audio player. It offers an equalizer with a set of presets and several effects. The pre-installed video player has the ability to rewind, change sound volume and brightness using “swipe” on different areas of the screen. In addition, you can block the image (so that it does not close from an accidental touch) or run the video in a small window on top of the desktop or applications.
Battery - 2.5
The operating time of the Huawei Honor 5A, as expected, turned out to be low; with fairly intensive use of the smartphone, it is hardly enough for a day of work. This is quite typical for a budget employee, but you always want more, especially in the presence of long-running competitors.
The smartphone received a battery with a capacity of only 2200 mAh. This is a low figure for a 5-inch HD screen; it is compensated only by the not very “gluttonous” chipset. Perhaps such a battery was installed deliberately in order to reduce the price and differentiate the smartphone from another new product for 2021 - the long-running budget Honor 4C Pro with almost the same characteristics.
Thus, Honor 5A worked for 6 hours when watching HD movies at maximum brightness, this is an average result comparable to the ZTE Blade X5 and more than an hour ahead of the Lenovo A6010. But at the same time, there are budget phones that have been doing this longer, for example, Samsung Galaxy J1 (2016) or Lenovo A5000. At the same time, the results in the audio test turned out to be weak - only 32 hours, worse were only the quickly discharging Asus Zenfone 2 ZE550ML or the ultra-thin and ultra-light Fly IQ4516 Tornado. But the phone performed well in mid-level games - up to 4 hours in not the most demanding games. Recording HD video already takes 21% of the charge in half an hour - this is a lot, especially considering that we usually record Full HD videos for this test; such a resolution is simply not available here.
Performance - 2.2
The performance of Huawei Honor 5A can be called quite good for a budget phone with an entry-level chipset. It handles everyday tasks quite well and handles most games.
The phone is equipped with 2 GB of RAM and a popular quad-core MediaTek MT6735P processor (operating at a frequency of up to 1.3 GHz). A similar one was used in ZTE Blade X5, Oukitel K10000 and many others. The choice of processor looks strange after last year's Honor 4C, which, with a similar price tag, was equipped with a more powerful eight-core chipset. Nevertheless, the hardware of the Honor 5A smartphone ensures fairly smooth operation of the interface and most games. It is capable of handling even heavy and demanding games, but only at low graphics settings. Thus, the ported game Oddworld runs quite smoothly at low resolutions, while the mediocre Thumb Drift slows down at high settings, but only slightly. Interestingly, the phone body remains quite cool during games, almost without heating up in the hands.
In various benchmarks, the smartphone receives scores comparable to those of the Lenovo A6010 and Samsung Galaxy A3:
- in GeekBench 4 - 1592 points (more than a hundred lower than the three-year-old flagship LG Nexus 5)
- in AnTuTu 6 - 32659 (20 thousand lower than Honor 5C)
- in 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited - up to 4869 (about the same as Honor 4C Pro).
Memory - 3.5
The internal memory of the Huawei Honor 5A is 16 GB, of which about 10.15 GB is available to the user. If this is not enough, the smartphone has a slot for a MicroSD card, with which you can add up to 128 GB. It’s noteworthy that the card slot is not a combined one, but a separate one, but it’s a little disappointing that it’s covered by a battery, meaning you won’t be able to replace the card without rebooting. In addition, it turned out that only part of the pre-installed applications such as Sberbank, WPS Office or Odnoklassniki can be removed from the phone. They are not transferred to the memory card, but quite a few applications and games from the Play Market are willingly installed on it.
Peculiarities
Honor 5A runs Android 5.1 and the proprietary Emotion UI 3.1 interface. These are far from the latest versions, and there is no information about the update. Most likely, it won’t exist, although budget did not prevent the manufacturer from updating Honor 4C and Honor 4X from Android 4.4 to Android 6.
Despite the low price tag, the phone has several features. Thus, a removable battery and separate slots for a second SIM card and a memory card look unusual today. In addition, the new product received an additional Smart Key button, like the Honor 7. Using the latter, you can control the phone: it distinguishes between single and double presses, as well as presses and holds. Moreover, you yourself are free to choose which commands in your smartphone they will execute.
CPU
The “heart” of the hardware is the MediaTek MT6735C. Its 4 Cortex-A53 cores can operate at up to 1.3 GHz. There is a Mali-T720 graphics chip. A budget solution that does not interfere with the smartphone's vigorous navigation through the menu and demonstrates good performance for standard and daily loads. You can also play demanding 3D games. It’s just that the quality of graphics will lag behind the level of more productive hardware.
In the Antuco test, the device scores a little more than 33 thousand points. In case of intense and prolonged overheating, the operation of the phone is not affected.
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.
Camera
The main module produces a resolution of up to 13 MP. Equipped with automatic focus and dual flash. The application interface is convenient and functional, contains settings for ISO, sharpness, saturation, contrast, white balance. Exposure can be changed in real time.
Everyday shooting will be appreciated for its fast and accurate performance, focusing, and photos with good details. The panoramic shooting system is easy to handle: frames are superimposed well, and the finished images are of fairly high quality. The device is especially good at macro photography because the camera can easily focus on objects at close range. At the same time, it nicely blurs the background.
But there is something to complain about. For example, a drop in sharpness at the edges of the frame. Or the appearance of an overexposed area in a photo in bright sunlight. You shouldn't expect miracles from night shots either: loss of detail and noise are standard situations for a device of this level.
For some reason, the video says maximum HD resolution (1280 x 720) at 30 fps. The quality is more or less, but not clear enough. The front camera with a resolution of 5 MP has a wide viewing angle and is complemented by a single flash. You can count on decent results in good lighting. The low quality is partially saved by the flash.
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.
Display
The smartphone is equipped with a 5-inch IPS matrix with HD resolution (1280 x 720). Pixel density 293 PPI. The picture is clear and crisp, the colors are calm, not saturated. When tilted or viewed at an angle, the image is not inverted and magenta or yellow tones are not displayed. The maximum brightness is quite modest, so the image becomes faded in the sun.
But, due to the absence of an air gap, the amount of glare on the screen is reduced, and the picture becomes clearer. The display is covered with tempered glass, which is resistant to abrasion and scratches. The oleophobic coating on the glass is very weak, but it is there. The sensor is sensitive and can process 5 touches simultaneously.
