Huawei’s e-brand Honor launched its Honor 5C smartphone in India last month in June 2016. Since then, the device has been making a buzz in the Indian smartphone market with its impressive build quality, decent specifications and competitive price tag. It proves to be a great phone on spec-sheet but does it fare equally well in real life performance? Let’s find out in this post. We spent a couple of days with the phone and here is our Honor 5C in-depth review.
Design
The Honor 5C takes its design cues from the Honor 5X. The Honor 5C, however, is a step below the 5X and carries a lower price tag. It features metallic design which looks elegant. The brushed finish on the rear gives it a premium look and makes it stand out in the competition. The brushed metal finish is complemented by the ridged edges that offer better grip and makes sure that the device stays firm in user’s hand.
On the front, it features a 5.2-inch full HD display with on screen navigation buttons. The sensors along with earpiece, front camera and LED notification are located above the display.
Below the display, there is Honor branding. Microphone, USB charging port and speaker grill are place on the bottom edge.
There is a hybrid dual SIM slot on the left edge.
Volume rockers and power button sit on the right edge.
There is a 3.5mm audio jack on the top edge. The rounded edges are made up of plastic with a texture on them which goes well with the brushed metal design.
Fingerprint sensor sits on the rear, below camera module. It is easy to configure and unlocks the phone very quickly and accurately. Besides unlocking the phone, you can swipe on the sensor to browse photos, answer a call or to bring down the notifications panel. We are impressed with the overall build quality of the phone.
Display
It features a 5.2-inch full HD screen with 1080p resolution. There are no touch capacitive buttons on the phone. Instead you get on-screen navigation buttons. The display is sharp and bright. Sunlight legibility of the screen is satisfactory and viewing angles are good. It is perfect for watching videos and playing games.
Camera
The Honor 5C sports a 13 mega pixel primary camera with LED flash. There is also an 8 mega pixel front facing camera. The camera app launches quickly and comes with a lot of modes such as Beauty, Good Food, Light Painting and even Pro Manual settings for photo and video recording. It also offers a lot of filters like Mono, Impact, halo and Dawn among others. The rear camera takes decent images with good sharpness and color reproduction. The front camera also does a decent job in capturing selfies. Images taken in both well-lit and low lighting conditions come out to be good, however you can expect little noise in some of the low light shots. It can shoot up to 1080p videos with the rear camera and 720p videos with the front camera. Overall camera performance of the phone is great for the price. Check out Honor 5C camera review here.
Hardware & Performance
The Honor 5C is powered by an octa-core Kirin 650 processor paired with 2GB of RAM. It houses 16GB of internal memory which can be further expanded up to 128GB using microSD card. The Kirin 650 chipset is based on 16nm fabrication instead of the 28nm process which is common with smartphones in this price range. The high-performance 16 nm processor ensures super-fast performance with reduced power consumption.
On testing the phone on AnTuTu benchmarks, we got score of around 53,000. Graphic intensive tasks may tend to push the phone to its limits. Basic functions however, are handled seamlessly. This phone handles moderate gaming, multitasking, watching videos and web browsing with ease without showing any signs of lags or stutters.
Software
The phone runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow operating system wrapped under EMUI 4.1. The interface is simple, clean and intuitive. It lacks an app drawer but that is something we can make peace with.
It offers features like scroll shot and also allows to change EMUI icons by switching themes. The Scrolling screenshots feature lets users take screenshots longer than one screen. It also allows users to record a gameplay using the screen recording feature.
Battery
Honor 5C is backed up by a 3000mAh battery which helps it survives for one full day or even more without struggling. Android Marshmallow’s Doze Mode and Huawei’s SmartPower 3.0 power technology are so well optimized that the battery can last up to more than one day on moderate usage. During our time with the phone, it lasted for a day on moderate to heavy usage. Check out Honor 5C battery test here.
Additional Features
The Honor 5C offers high quality RF performance. It features automatic band switching technology which is optimized for superior network performance. Moreover, the phone doesn’t fail to impress us in sound quality department as well. Audio quality and clarity from the speakers is decent enough for a phone in this price range. It performs really well in all the departments.
Price & Availability
The Honor 5C is priced at Rs. 10,999 and can be grabbed from Flipkart and Honor’s official e-store, HiHonor.com via open sale.
What We Liked / Didn’t Like About Honor 5C
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Verdict
Honor 5C is one of the hottest smartphones in the budget smartphone segment. It comes with a lot of improvements over its predecessor. It has a better design language, more capable chipset and an improved camera combination. Its competitive price tag makes it even more enticing for the buyers. This phone has a lot to offer in terms of premium design, decent camera combination, fast performance and good battery life. If you are going to buy a new budget smartphone, then Honor 5C is worth putting your bet on.
