Honor Holly 2 Plus Review [In Depth Review With Video]

Huawei’s e-brand Honor has launched its Holly 2 Plus smartphone in the Indian market. The phone succeeds the Honor Holly which was launched in India in 2014 and comes with several upgrades and improvements over the predecessor.

Holly 2 Plus is priced at Rs. 8,499 and will go on sale via online retailers Amazon India and Flipkart starting February 15, 2016. With sub-Rs. 10,000 segment of smartphones already being flooded with plethora of phones, is the new-entrant Holly 2 Plus worth putting your bet on? Let’s find out how the Holly 2 Plus performs and whether you should prefer it over the competition or not. We got to spend few days with the phone, and here is our Honor Holly 2 Plus in-depth review.

Design

The phone feels very premium in hand. It features high quality plastic body with faux-metal frame. The phone has a textured back which is smudge free and doesn’t look cheap. The handset feels durable and sturdy. Overall quality of build, finish and feel in hand is far more superior than many other smartphones available in the same price range.

At the front, there is a 5-inch HD display. Above the display, on the top bezel, there are sensors, earpiece, LED notification and front facing camera.

Bottom bezel is clean and three touch capacitive buttons are a part of the display.

Right edge houses volume rockers and power button.

The left edge of the phone is clean. On the top edge, there is a 3.5mm audio jack.

USB charging port and speaker grille are located on the bottom edge.

On the rear of the phone, you will find secondary microphone for noise cancellation, LED flash, a 13 mega pixel primary camera and Honor branding.

The rear panel is removable and gives access to battery, dual SIM card slots and a microSD card slot. The device supports both GSM and CDMA protocols on both SIM slots. The mammoth 4000mAh battery of the device is non-removable.

Display

The Honor 2 Plus comes with a 5-inch 720p HD display. The colour tones and the viewing angles are pretty good. The video viewing as well as internet browsing experience on the phone, is a delight due to the size and quality of the display.

Audio

The audio loudness of the phone is one area which disappointed us a bit. It is not the loudest phone in the segment and gives you moderate loudness with bottom firing speakers.

Performance

It is powered by a 64-bit 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek 6735 processor paired with 2GB of RAM. As for gaming, we played Dead Trigger 2 game on this phone, which it handled with ease. Despite lacking high-end specifications, the phone does offer smooth performance.

We tested the phone on Antutu benchmarks and got a score of around 32000 points which is quite impressive at this price. In terms of general performance and responsiveness, the phone is really smooth.

Camera

The 13 mega pixel rear camera takes stunning shots in normal lighting conditions. The shots taken in tricky lighting conditions however, are not that impressive. We cannot complain about anything on the camera as we hardly get good cameras smartphones in this price range. The 5 mega pixel front facing camera comes with wide angle lens and gives excellent quality selfies. Here are few camera samples:

Storage

It stands at 16GB of internal memory, out of which, around 10GB is user available. The memory can be further expanded up to 128GB via microSD card.

Battery

The Holly 2 Plus is backed up by a 4000mAh battery which should be good enough to survive for 2 days on moderate usage. It supports Quick Charge technology, which is claimed to give 3 hours of talk time with just 10 minutes of charging. The phone also supports reverse charging and is capable of charging other smartphones as well.

Software

It runs Android 5.1 Lollipop operating system wrapped under EMUI 3.1 Lite. The interface is simple and comes without any app drawer. It comes with a very few preloaded apps and hence, the bloatware is minimal. The software is simple, easy to use and responsive.

It runs Android Lollipop, Huawei, has however, told us that the Honor series of smartphones will get Android Marshmallow soon.

Specifications Of Huawei Honor Holly 2 Plus

Processor: 64-bit 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek 6735
Operating System: Android 5.1 Lollipop with EMUI 3.1 Lite
Display: 5-inch HD (1280×720 pixels resolution)
RAM: 2GB
Storage: 16GB (expandable up to 128GB via microSD card)
Rear Camera: 13 mega pixel
Front Camera: 5 mega pixel
Battery: 4000mAh
Connectivity: 4G LTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS

What We Liked / What We Didn’t Like

Pros	Cons
Sturdy build Long battery life· Reverse charging Decent camera combination	Non removable battery Average audio loudness

Verdict

Honor Holly 2 Plus is a fresh breath of air in this vying smartphone market. The smartphone shows a lot of upgrades and improvements over its previous iteration, Honor Holly. It is the perfect combination of hardware and software. If you are looking for a long battery life smartphone in this price range, then it is the right phone for you. While massive battery is its highlight, it doesn’t mean that it compromises in other departments. At price tag of Rs. 8,499, we think that Honor Holly 2 Plus is one of the best Android devices in this price range which provides the best combination of aesthetics, performance and camera. Packed with powerful innards, the Holly 2 Plus is certainly going to give its rivals, run for their money.