Despite a design that’s similar to so many other smartphones in the market, there’s one thing that immediately stands out on the back panel of the Honor 6x — dual camera lenses looking for all the world like an extra round 8. And indeed, it’s the camera that is the marquee feature of this otherwise ordinary budget phone.
Looks done right; just aboutBudget phones are not built like they once were — plasticky and cheap looking. No, they’re full of metal and glass and are pretty solid. The Honor 6x, a phone from Huawei’s sub-brand, is tough looking as well. It’s not all unibody and seamless but is nevertheless good looking enough though boring by today’s standards. Well, if you want fabulous design, look no further than Huawei's own P9 with which the company will show you what they know about making a phone look pretty.
But back to the Honor 6x. It uses Huawei’s own processor, Kirin 655, which is respected enough and it has 4GB RAM with 64GB of storage. You can expand memory if you don’t use two SIMs. Currently on Android 6.0, it isn’t believed to be in a hurry to move up to Android Nougat though Huawei could yet prove us wrong.
The Honor 6x performs fine for a mid-range phone. No hiccups as such and it does pretty well on benchmark tests too. There’s a fast and accurate fingerprint sensor and the 3,340mAh battery performance is good, taking you through a day and a half or two days. The device could have done with a better speaker and, I felt, a bit more touch sensitivity on the screen, which somehow doesn’t feel as fast and responsive as it should to me. But touch sensitivity tests didn’t throw up a problem.
The dual camera set-up has shown up on many of Huawei’s recent phones. A 12MP primary camera works with a 2MP sub camera that has a wide aperture. This is meant to get some of that blurred effect and it does a good job of it for a phone.
One can’t expect too much of a blur in the background or an even one at that, but it’s on par with some of the better phone cameras though not matching up to the iPhone 7 Plus’ blurring capability. The 6x’s camera is not bad in low light, for the most part although you will notice pixellation and noise in darker parts of an image when the light is less than the minimum it can handle. There’s no optical image stabilisation, but let’s remember that this is a budget phone. The 5MP selfie camera has lots of selfie enhancing tricks. The camera app is simple and has plenty of options for control including for video.
Price: ₹12,999
Love: Interesting camera, stable performer, strong build, decent battery life
Hate: No fast charging, no NFC, no word on update to Android 7.0, interface needs finesse