Who is honor? Well honor is to all intents and purposes a subsidiary of Huawei but you will not find any link to Huawei on the phone apart from a mention on the protective strip on the back . And yes ‘honor’ is spelt with a small ‘h’. It will be coming in three colours, White, Black and Gold. The White is all white not just the back cover.
In The Box
honor 6+
In ear phones
honor MicroUSB Charger
USB cable
2 x protectors 1 x front screen, 1 x back panel
User Guide
So what have I found over the last couple of weeks:
Honor 6 Plus design and build quality
The Honor 6 Plus shows it’s serious about being treated as a high-end device, doing away with the plastic exterior of its predecessor. The Honor 6+ is instead made from zinc alloy, which Honor claims is tougher and more rigid than the fashionable aluminum chassis on many premium smartphones of today.
The Honor 6 Plus has a metallic rim, which enhances the premium feel, while not exactly screaming originality. Sexing up phone sides was a theme at MWC this year, with the HTC One M9 having super-reflective sides, and Samsung extending its screen to both sides of the Galaxy S6 Edge. The Honor 6+ looks a bit generic in comparison, but then not everyone wants a diva for a phone.
From the top we have volume rocker, power button, and the SIM slots where the Nano sim doubles up as a microSD slots. All live on the right side of the Honor 6+, making the buttons easily accessible, if a little prone to the wrong one being pressed. The top of the buttons have a ribbed feel, like they have been engine turned – nice touch.
All in all, the Honor 6+ feels much better in the hand than the Honor 6. The phone still feels like a bit of a smudge magnet, we put clear seal on and this reduced the smudging greatly.
Back
The Honor 6 Plus measures 150.46 x 75.68 x 7.5mm overall, meaning it’s not only a good size for one-handed operation, but is nice and slim too.
With the honor 6+ it’s difficult to say which is the star feature, because there is several features that stands out.
Key Features:
5.5-inch 1080×1920 IPS-Neo screen, 1.8GHz octo-core Huawei Kirin 925 processor,
3GB RAM, and 32GB of internal storage, SDcard upto 128GB
2 x 8MP dual-lens 13MP camera on the back with a built-in aperture lens.
8MP front-facing camera,
3600 mAh battery-non removable,
Dual-sim trays.
What is the honor 6+ ?
The phone itself features a 5.5-inch 1080p display and Huawei in-house Kirin 925 octa-core CPU with low-power co-processor and 3GB of RAM. There will be 32GB storage and a 3,600mAh battery plus Cat 6 LTE, dual-sim with, one sim being a nano and the other a micro. The beauty of this is the nano tray itself has dual function as you can either put a nano sim or, a microSD card upto 128GB. NFC, infrared are also included.
One small GUI that caught us was the second hand on the clock face where the segments became bigger as the hand, in this case a little yellow dot moved around the face.
Software
Android 4.4.2 is running on the device but Wilken Lee head of Sales & Marketing told us that Android Lollipop will be here in June/July and, hopefully the EMUI v 3.1. Huawei’s Emotion UI 3.0 comes preloaded on the handset and if you’ve used a Huawei device before, you’ll find the software very familiar. You’ll get the full Google suite of applications and services.
The performance of the Google Play suite on the handset worked flawlessly.
Emotion UI does not have a app drawer with Huawei instead preferring to emulate iOS with apps on multiple home screens and folders.
The other elements of Emotion UI haven’t changed an awful lot since the Ascend Mate 7 and the performance is as smooth as always. Emotion UI makes some large-scale radical changes to the Android OS and is very much love-it-or-hate-it. I personally find it very easy and have adjusted to it pretty quickly. I and many of my friends have loaded other launchers but after a couple of days I changed back to Emotion UI. I would recommend trying the software first – it’s on show at any Three UK store, for example – before taking the plunge.
There are several apps that come pre-loaded, among them are Phone Manager, Smart Controller, Bitcasa and Todoist.
On the shortcuts menu, tapping the edit button at the bottom allows you you move the shortcuts to your own liking.
Add to Folder
One nice touch that Honor does well is to make it very easy to add apps to a folder. All you have to do is open up a folder go to the ;last page and you will see the ‘+’ sign(Image 1). Tap the + and it will show you something like (Image 2), you will notice some apps have a blue tick in the top right corner, this donates the app already in the folder. Scroll down till you see the app’s you want (Image 3) tap it or them and hey presto they’re in the folder, (Image 4) pretty neat.
Image 1 Image 2
Image 3 Image 4
Camera’s
One of the key selling points of the Honor 6 Plus is the unique rear camera setup with two 8MP combining a 13MP camera to offer some interesting defocus effects. The two rear cameras allow you to place the handset on a steady surface, capture an entire scene and then change the focal point of the image in post-processing.
The result should be a photo with 1.98 micron pixels. This should mean higher sensitivity for clearer images. It also allows for refocusing of images after they’ve been captured, again not a new offering but this will be done natively rather than in after effects, meaning between f/0.95 to f/1.6 offerings.
Both images above were taken from the same shot, and the ability to change aperture means you can change the depth of field of the image and the focal point after you’ve taken in. In the first image, we’ve used the Xbox as the focal point, but in the second image, the bottle becomes the focal point with a shallower depth of field blurring out the rest of the scene.
The dual camera setup is a nice touch and definitely makes for interesting photos, and the wide aperture mode can also be useful when shooting in dark conditions. Of the two images below, the first was in normal mode and the second with wide aperture; although there’s a fair amount of noise in the wide aperture mode, it does help capture more light in the image.
One little known things on the 6+ there’s a preloaded QR code app in the camera app. When you focus on a qr code it read and opens up the URL
Honor’s gallery app has a nice little touch in that when open if you pull it down it automatically opens the camera app. you can either pull it halfway down all all the way.
Front Camera
Let’s take a look at the front (selfie) camera which is a 8mp.
Gavin Hoey has written a great article on the cameras of the honor 6 plus which you will find on the link below:
Performance
When buying a handset with a mid-range price, you’ll often find that the internals are an area where manufacturers make concessions. Mid-range versions of flagships have often had reduced processors, lower RAM and inferior graphics, which all result in a vastly different – and reduced – experience.
With the 6 Plus, honor have opted for the alternative; flagship specs with a mid-range price. Under the hood, the handset is powered by Huawei’s own octa-core HiSilicon Kirin 925 chipset – with four cores clocked at 1.8GHz and four clocked at 1.3GHz – along with 3GB RAM, 32GB internal storage and a microSD card to expand this further.
On paper, the specs are akin to a premium smartphone and in person, they don’t disappoint. There’s certainly not the bells and whistles found on the latest processors like the Snapdragon 810 but this is actually a good thing; rather than pick the latest processor, Huawei opted to use one that it already had available and the result is no surprising performance issues.
In practice, the Honor 6 Plus shows no signs of lags or stutter until you have twelve or more apps running. Even then, the noticeable issues are minimal and closing all running apps restores the fluid performance.
Battery Life
The key selling point for large screen phones is the inevitably large battery that accompanies the handset and the Honor 6 Plus is no different. Powered by a 3600mAh battery, which is large compared to most devices, the handset continues the trend of the Mate 7 by offering a battery that can span multiple days on a single charge.
During a couple of weeks’ worth of testing, the battery was nothing short of outstanding. On average, the Honor 6 Plus lasted four and a half days with low usage, two and a half days with medium usage and at least an entire day with heavy usage. By any standard, the battery life is simply superb and Huawei have clearly brought the two-day battery life from the Ascend Mate 7 to the mid-range market with the Honor 6 Plus.
Overall thoughts
My overall impression is one of a company that is selling a smartphone at a very reasonably price that does not try to fleece customers.
The Honor 6 Plus makes a good first impression, offering some truly high-end specs. The sensible zinc alloy chassis doesn’t grab the eye at first, but seeing as the phone will only be available to buy online, it’s not necessarily aimed at those looking for a piece of eye candy.
The stand-out features on the Honor 6+ are the massive 3600mAh battery and 8MP dual rear cameras. These wildcard features delivered on their promise, they certainly make the octa-core Honor 6 Plus a contender in the premium smartphone league.
Hats off to honor for delivering a solid well made smartphone.
The honor 6+ is available for just £299.99 SIM-free from Three UK which has an a exclusive deal with honor, but this is still a damned good price.
Our thanks go to honor for putting a great event for the select few attendees.
honor 6+
KEY SPECIFICATIONS – HONOR
DISPLAY
5.5 inch
PROCESSOR
Huawei 925 Kirin 1.8 GHz
FRONT CAMERA
8 megapixel
RESOLUTION
1080 x 1920 pixels
RAM
3 GB
OS
Android 4.4
STORAGE
16 GB
REAR CAMERA
Dual camera 8 MP
BATTERY CAPACITY
3600 mAh
DETAILED SPECIFICATIONS – HONOR 6+
GENERAL
RELEASE DATE
Spring 2015
BATTERY CAPACITY (mAh)
3600
DIMENSIONS (MM)
150.4 x 75.7 x 7.5
REMOVABLE BATTERY
No
WEIGHT (G)
165.00
SAR VALUE
TBC
DISPLAY
SCREEN SIZE (INCHES)
5.5
RESOLUTION
1080 x 1920 pixels
TOUCHSCREEN
Yes
PIXELS PER INCH (PPI)
401
TOUCHSCREEN TYPE
Capacitive
COLOURS
16 Million
HARDWARE
PROCESSOR
1.8 GHz octa-core
EXPANDABLE STORAGE
Yes
RAM
3 GB
EXPANDABLE STORAGE TYPE
microSD
INTERNAL STORAGE
32 GB
EXPANDABLE STORAGE UP TO
128 GB
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