Honor, which is digital brand of Huawei, has of late got good traction in the Indian market with its budget phones such as Honor 5X and Holy Plus. To take their success story forward, Chinese company has launched recently Honor 5C with prominent features of its own chipset, good battey, features enriched camera and quick fingerprint sensor. The Honor 5C is priced Rs. 10,999 and will face competition from Xiaomi Redmi Note 3, Lenovo Zuk Z1 and Moto G4 Plus in this segment. Let us see if this phone is worth its price:
Design of this phone is impressive : Honor has carried forward the metal-clad design language in this phone also. The 5C has metal design and the aluminium used is of very high quality; infact the material is of aircraft grade as claimed by the company to give it sophisticated look. The build qulaity of Honor 5C looks solid and robust. Its back cover has brushed metal finish which keeps it apart from other metal devices and also gives good grip to the phone. The top and bottom ends of the phone on the front has platic casing but the overall design merges beautifully and gives a feeling of hig-end device. This device is also not bulky as it has weight of 155 grams and can be easily tucked in the pocket. It can be easily operated with single hand as it has display of 5.2 inches.
This phone has standard layout for operating it. The power and volume buttons are placed on the right hand side whereas SIM slot is on the left hand side. This phone is Dual SIM device but comes with hybrid SIM tray which means that either you can use two SIMs at a time or one SIM and microSD card. The Micro-USB port and speaker grilles have been provided at the bottom. Their are two speaker grilles but only one houses a speaker and two grilles have been provided to give symmetrical look. On the top of the phone, 3.5mm socket is placed for listening to music via head or earphones. The Android keys appear on the display and not behind the display which takes space on the screen.
Display is quite nice : This phone comes with reasonable sized 5.2 inch full HD display having a resolution of 1080 x1920 pixels with 423 PPI. The size of 5.2 inch is an ideal choice of majority of users for ease of operation. You can manipulate the display easily with single hand. The display of this phone reproduces good colors but overall it is not vibrant enough but is quite good for watching movies and other content, gaming and browsing. It reproduces crisp text and struggles in sunlight and also is reflective when using it in the open. If you compare the display with other devices in this price segment then it is fine and try to avoid using it in the direct sunlight.
Performs like a workhorse : The other highlight of this phone is that it is driven by Kirin 650 Octa-core processor by Hisilicon, which is Huawei’s own company. This processor uses 16 nm chipset which provides faster and better performance, battery optimisation compared to equivalent chipsets of Snapdragon and MediaTek. This processor performs very well in all the tasks. We have played videos on this phone continuously for one hour and also played heavy intensive games and fortunately did not experience any lag or overheating issues. This phone scored 53077 in AnTuTu Benchmark test, which is quite good score.
This phone comes with 2GB RAM and 16GB of internal storage which looks low on specifications nowadays as the trend is for minimum 3GB RAM and 32GB ROM. But the saving grace is that its internal memory can be extended upto 128GB via microSD card.
This phone has good call quality and it supports Indian 4G LTE bands. For music lovers, the audio quality of this phone will also keep you entertained whatever you are listening.
Camera performs well : The camera of this phone is packed with 13MP rear camera with f/2.0 aperture and single LED flash and also houses an 8-megapixel front camera with f/2.0 aperture. The striking features of the camera is that it comes with various features to play tricks with your images. For instance, the software of the camera has various modes to enhance the quality of your images and videos such as Pro photo; Beauty; good food, Light painting and for videos- Pro Video; Beauty video, slow-motion and time lapse etc.
Despite the fact that the camera has been embellished with above effects, even when you use the rear camera without any enhancements, its performance is still very good as it reproduces decent colors in daylight or in well-lit environment; the quality of images is good and in the fading light or in low-light, this camera also suffers but still it has less noise in images captured in dim lights. Infact, it has been the bane of cameras in high-end smartphones also that they are not upto the mark in low-light conditions and in that perspective the camera of Honor 5C is quite good. Its front camera of 8 mega-pixels is also of good and acceptable quality in this price range.
We are reproducing below some images clicked in good daylight:
Fingerprint Sensor is fast and accurate : The fingerprint sensor has been given on the back, behind rear camera which is easily accessible and provides ease of operation also. It can be easily set up and the fingerprint scanner unlock the phone even when it is in sleep mode in split seconds. This can also be used to access the locked apps. This sensor is at par with other fingerprint sensors provided for instance on Coolpad Note 3 devices, LeEco Le 2 to name a few. The fingerprint sensor of 5C is quite accurate and despite our repeated attempts of using it for testing purpose, it has never failed us.
Android Marshmallow Enriched Software : Probably, Honor 5C is the first device from China in this segment which runs on Android Marshmallow OS with the company’s own new Emotion UI on top of it. The user interface gives the feeling of a stock android and it provides all the features of Marshmallow which includes Doze mode for battery optimisation, Now On Tap etc which keeps this phone apart from other competitive Chinese phones. The UI of this phone also has some cool features which make this phone quite interesting and you do not get bored with it. For instance, it shows a different wallpaper whenever you open this phone. This phone also comes embedded with a SOS feature which eanble you to register three numbers to be notified in the event of any emergency.
Battery Lasts Full Day : This phone gets its juice from 3000mAh battery. Although their is no fast charge feature which is probably can’t be provided in this range yet it gets optmised with Doze feature to give prolonged life. We have used this phone for few days for gaming, browsing, emails, social media and running videos and all these tasks can be performed on single charge. You can start the day when it is fully charged and it will still be alive when you come back in the same evening if you have used this phone moderately.
Conclusion : The Honor 5C has good design, powerful processor, good battery, camera with various features and fast responding fingerprint scanner. If you are not out for a display of 5.5 inch and want a simple but good looking device which performs from average to good level then you can certainly have a serious look at this phone. If you are looking for bigger display then the other options could be Moto G4 Plus, LeEco Le2 which are also powerful phones in little bit higher price range with 5.5 inch display.
