Honor 6+ Review

The Honor 6+ is the latest mid-range Android smartphone from Huawei. At a £300 RRP, it isn’t cheap, though it isn’t the world’s most expensive smartphone either, and it works hard to convince you it costs more than it does.

Aesthetically, the Honor 6+ gets off to a flying start. A 5.5” screen dominates the front of the unit, roughly 73% of the surface area, while a metal trim encases the top and sides of the phone, mimicking the iPhone 4. The latter is a gorgeous looking phone, and despite being considerably bigger at 150mm x 75mm x 7.5mm – more in line with the iPhone 6 Plus – Huawei’s attempt manages to carry off the look wonderfully, with only the rounded and trimless bottom edge detracting from it.

Along the right hand trim are the volume and power controls, thin metal buttons that make it clear when they are pressed, and they’re the only physical inputs on the unit, with Back, Home and Recently-used Apps located at the bottom of the screen rather than the frame, unlike the cheaper Honor 4X. Below the volume and power buttons are two SIM trays, one for Micro-SIMs and the other for a Nano-SIM, although the latter can be repurposed as a microSD slot. An audio jack on the top and a micro USB port on the bottom are the only other input sockets, while there is a dual 8.0MP rear camera, with a single one of the same spec at the front.

In your hand the first thing you’ll notice is just how well made it is. There’s a nice heft to the unit at 165g, with the weight evenly spread across the device, and across the board it just feels like a quality piece of kit. It can feel a little large – there’s no doubt Huawei are going for the phone/tablet crossover market – meaning that you’d struggle to use it one-handed, but the flipside is that the 1080 x 1920 HD display can be used for more than a quick browse of Twitter. And what a display. The picture is crisp and sharp, but it’s also bright, with the colours carrying a certain richness. Videos look fantastic on it as well, and given the screen size you can comfortably watch programmes on it through Netflix or the like, although the speaker doesn’t live up to the display, with audio coming out a little hollow.

Running Android v4.4.4 KitKat (with a planned upgrade to 5.0 Lollipop in the future) the Honor actually has Huawei’s Emotion interface running over the top. In years gone by Android was certainly behind iOS in the software stakes, but now they’re almost indistinguishable, with apps accessed from different homescreens. Being an Android device, it’s easy to set up as well; all you need to do is log in with a Google account and you’re away, with anything stored there transferable. The 6+ also comes with apps like Twitter already built in, which is a nice touch, although why Chrome, Google Search and a default browser are included is a little confusing. Given that this is an Android device, all the third-party apps you would expect to see can be found on the app store, and they all worked without a hitch.

The Honor 6+ has the grunt to match its high quality design as well, with two quad-cores running the show, one at 1.3GHz, the other at 1.8GHz, offering considerably more power than the iPhone 6 at around half the price, although with a slightly older GPU. A 3GB RAM backs this up, and there’s a built in 32GB of storage, which should be ample, although it can be expanded by the previously mentioned microSD slot. In practise this power means that the phone runs incredibly smoothly on the back end, with the UI sharp and responsive. In games it’s similarly impressive, with more performance demanding ones running well.

One of the selling points on the box is the 8MP dual-camera, which means an incredibly quick focus of 0.1 seconds, as well as the ability to capture images at 13MPs in the right conditions. In practise, I couldn’t see exactly what the advantage was, although low light images came out better than I’ve seen on any other phone. Combined with the rich display, captured images looked great on the device itself. Video again was okay, nothing world beating for sure, but given the price tag quite impressive.

Similar to the Honor 4X that we reviewed last month, the 6+ has great battery life, easily over a day when in normal use, and even an hour or so of processor-intensive gaming only reduced this to needing charged overnight. Given the hardware, this battery life is quite surprising and is certainly to the 6+’s credit.

For £299.99, what the Honor 6+ delivers is excellent, comparable to phones in higher price brackets. The power in the chipset means that it runs smoothly and cleanly at all times, and the display is delightfully crisp. Perhaps a little large for frequent calls, as a social media and internet-on-the-go device it’s hard not to recommend, especially with the generous built-in storage. Don’t get me wrong: higher-end phones are better, but the 6+ does just enough to convince you that it deserves a place among them at a fraction of the price.