At the CES conference in Las Vegas today, Huawei is introducing the next phone in its Honor brand, the Honor 6X, for sale in the U.S. The phone is equipped with dual cameras and a large 3340 mAh battery — and comes with a $250 price tag.
I’ve been using the phone on and off for the past two weeks, and I’ve been impressed with the battery life, in particular. Huawei claims you can use it for 2.15 days after a full charge, with 23 hours of airtime and 600 (!) hours of standby time. I’m not sure about those figures, but I am sure the battery will last more than a day, which is refreshing.
Performance doesn’t seem to be the phone’s biggest strength, although it does come with 3GB of RAM, along with Huawei’s Kirin 655 octa-core chip and 32GB of storage that’s expandable to 128GB.
The 12MP and 2MP rear cameras, which have a rigid camera bump, not unlike the Huawei Mate 9, produce photos that I wouldn’t call my favorite. Photos appear duller and blurrier than similar ones shot with the Mate 9, which carries the Leica branding, just like the very good P9 from last year.
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The phone, which weighs 0.35lb, does not feel as flat and sleek as, say, the Honor 8. Instead, it has a rounded rear. And the fingerprint scanner inside a dimple below the camera bump no longer works as a physical button you can depress. (I personally prefer not having a button.)
The 5.5-inch 1920×1080 FHD display is rated at 450 nits, although the Mate 9 clearly gets brighter, with more than 600 nits. And the display on the Honor 6X is not as clear as that of the Mate 9. But then again, the Honor 6X is more affordable; the price of the Mate 9 in Europe is 699 euros, or around $728.
The Honor 6X runs version 4.1 of Huawei’s EMUI skin on top of Android 4.3 — updates are coming, the company says — and so may be confusing to some people who are used to stock Android, like you find on the Nexus and Pixel handsets. The phone, which is available in silver, gray, and gold, comes with Huawei’s clock, messaging, calendar, music, and phone apps, among other things. The port on the bottom? It’s microUSB, not USB-C.
Overall, the impressive battery life may be enough to get some people to consider the Honor 6X, given its price point.
In the U.S. people can preorder the phone starting tomorrow, and it will go on sale on January 15. It will be available from Huawei’s Honor site, as well as from Amazon, Best Buy, and Newegg’s sites.
