Honor 8 Review

Earlier this year, Honor released the Honor 5X, which we proclaimed to be one of the best sub-$200 smartphones available in the United States. Huawei is now looking to further build up their Honor brand with the Honor 8, Honor's take on the "affordable flagship."

Interested in ZTE?

• Honor 8 hands on
• Honor joins the 'flagship killer' fray with the Honor 8
• Huawei announces super-affordable honor 8
• Honor 5X review

At $400, does the Honor 8 have what it takes to go up against segment leaders ZTE and OnePlus? Let's find out in our written review of the Honor 8!

Buy the Honor 8 now!

Design

The Honor 8 is an absolutely gorgeous smartphone. Even before digging into the details, it's difficult to associate the Honor 8's design with its price; its level of premium appeal is comparable to that of the more expensive Samsung Galaxy S7.

The dual glass panel design is admittedly reminiscent of the Galaxy S7 and even more so of the Xiaomi Mi 4S. It is still quite remarkable, however, with the rear's 15-panel light-refracting glass composition. This composition primarily enables some very enthralling light patterns.

Both glass panels curve down to meet with the chamfered aluminum band, which gives an impression of cohesion. The tactile power and volume buttons can both be found on the right edge of the phone. There is a nice texture on the power button, but I wish it was less subtle.

There is an IR blaster at the top of the device which can be used to control TVs and other household appliances. It worked quite well in my testing, and I think it's a valuable addition.

Despite the metal band, handling can be a bit challenging due to the device's slippery glass profile. You'll want to be especially careful when setting the Honor 8 down, especially on uneven surfaces. The glass has what could be described as an "ice cube effect," where it slips and slides very easily.

The build quality seems strong enough to resist most damage

During my five days with the device, it fell a total of three times. Thankfully, the build quality seems strong enough to resist most damage, but you'll probably still want to consider adding a case. That'd also help cover up any fingerprints, which can collect surprisingly easily. Huawei has designed a few cases that compliment the 8's beauty, which should be available soon.

I would have preferred capacitive keys in place of the "honor" chin branding, but the on-screen navigation keys are still very pleasant to use. I also really appreciate the added software option to change the key layout as well.

Display

The Honor 8 is sporting a 5.2″ 1080P LTPS display, which looks great with a good amount of sharpness and saturated and punchy colors. Color reproduction could have been more accurate, however. Mainly, the display's color temperature is very cool. Thankfully, you can make adjustments in the settings to compensate for this, but it's a shame that the device didn't ship with a better calibrated display.

The smaller display size does make handling easier in comparison to larger devices on the market. In fact, the Honor 8's smaller size may seal the deal for some, as we rarely see this, especially at this price. The display brightness maxes out at 455 nits, which is about average. Sunlight readability is consequently good, especially for the price.

Performance

It should come as no surprise that the Honor 8 is powered by one of Huawei's own in-house processors, a HiSilicon Kirin 950. The Kirin 950 offers comparable performance to that of the high-end Qualcomm Snapdragon 820

See Also: In-depth look at the Kirin 9508

As expected, performance was absolutely excellent. Everything is very smooth and responsive, which is what you'd usually expect from a more expensive device. Thankfully, there is 4 GB of RAM in both US models, so you can expect a smooth multitasking experience as well.

In my experience, the Honor 8's Mali-T880 MP4 GPU performed very well when playing mobile games. Do keep in mind, however, that it may not be as future proof as the high-end Adreno GPUs. For example, in a 3Dmark test, the ZTE Axon 7 with the Adreno 530 scored a 2580 whereas the Honor 8 with the Mali-T880 MP4 scored a 964.

Hardware

As is the case with many Chinese smartphones, the Honor 8 is unlocked and includes dual-SIM card support, meaning that you can use up to two different lines with this single phone. In the US, carrier support includes AT&T, T-Mobile, and their respective MVNOs. The phone also supports Band 12 LTE, so you'll receive T-Mobile's extended range coverage.

If you're willing to give up one of the SIM card slots, you can expand the phone's base 32 GB of storage via microSD card, up to 128 GB. This is always a great option to have, even if you don't think you'll need it.

The USB Type-C charging port is accompanied by the headphone jack on the left and a single speaker on the right. The speaker is decent; it gets the job done, but sounds hollow and distorted. I would say that it performs slightly below average overall.

The fingerprint reader on the back of the Honor 8 is quite good: it's fast while still being accurate. It's comparable to the one found on the Axon 7, but that's before considering the unique functionality that Huawei has implemented.

Since the reader also doubles as a tactile button, or what Huawei calls a "smart key," you can program different shortcuts including flashlight, screenshot, or voice recording to tap, double tap, and hold. You can also have it open an app instead, if you find that useful. It's a pretty nifty idea, and I've found my settings for double tap for flashlight and hold for Google Now to be quite handy.

Battery Life

Huawei provides three battery profiles out of the box: performance, smart, and ultra. While the default smart mode does seem to marginally improve battery life, I noticed that it prevented many of my apps from sending notifications. This made me miss a few important messages in Slack and a couple of Snapchats within the first few hours of using the phone, so I had to switch to the less power-conservative performance mode in order to continue with my review.

Heavy users may need to charge up more than once per day

In my testing, the 3000mAh battery delivered lackluster results. Battery life is long enough to get most light to moderate users through a full day of use, but heavy users may need to charge up more than once per day. While three and a half hours of screen on time isn't terrible, it's not nearly as much as what some competing options offer. Also check out: Best USB Type-C Cables16

Thankfully, the Honor 8 supports 9V/2A fast charging with the factory supplied charger. You can charge the phone from 0 to about 42% in 30 minutes, which is almost as good as competing options. I do wish that the phone supported fast charging with third party 9V/2A chargers, but Honor has informed us that they will be selling compatible chargers directly to US consumers in the future.

Camera

The Honor 8 includes a 12 MP dual-camera configuration with an f/2.2 aperture and hybrid autofocus (laser assisted). One of the lens captures color, while the other is monochrome; Huawei states that this setup helps the phone capture better, crispier looking images.

It's a great shooter overall

And for the most part, the Honor 8 takes great, contrasty images with a good amount of sharpness and excellent dynamic range. I was surprised at how well it handled balancing the highlights and shadows in many of the images I took.

Honor 8 camera samples:

It's a great shooter overall, and you'll likely be very pleased with the images it takes. It's not going to outperform the Samsung Galaxy S7, but that's okay considering the Honor 8's price. The 8 MP front-facing camera is also good.

Low-light performance was surprisingly strong, unlike many other affordable smartphones. Images don't turn out excellent, but they're more acceptable than those taken by the Axon 7 and even the OnePlus 3.

One of the perks of having the dual camera setup is the wide aperture mode, which allows you to set an aperture from f/0.95 to f/16 when taking a photo. Once you take the image, you can go back and change the aperture or focus point. This worked pretty well in my testing overall, although the widest of apertures weren't as convincing.

Unfortunately, there's no 4K video recording, and you're limited to 1080P/60p. That'd be acceptable on its own given the phone's price, but the video quality itself is poor as well with disappointing colors. You can see a sample clip in our video review, featured above.

The camera app is fairly nice, and offers some very useful manual controls. Unfortunately, they don't rotate when switching to landscape mode, which is quite annoying. The myriad of camera modes can be overwhelming too, and many of them feel half-baked.

Software

For software, the Honor 8 is running Huawei's Emotion UI 4.1 over Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Overall, the software is very different from stock Android: there's no app drawer, the UI is iOS-like, and there are a great number of additions. Some users will enjoy this experience, but it may not be for everyone.

Some users will enjoy this experience, but it may not be for everyone

Some of Huawei's additions are certainly appreciated, but a lot of them can come across as gimmicky. For example, the knuckle gestures are cool in theory, but don't always work in practice. There's also a good number of bloatware apps, which I quite frankly wasn't expecting.

EMUI also has an entirely different scrolling mechanic than stock Android, which is smoother but slower. It looks pretty nice, but you have to wait for the inertia scrolling to completely stop in order to select something. This is incredibly frustrating in day-to-day use, as you'll find yourself having to repeatedly tap on something until the phone finally responds.

It's not all bad, however, as the lock screen view is refreshing, the timeline notifications are kind of cool, and the power management tools are quite useful. I just wish that Huawei would have approached software wholeheartedly and made more refinements instead of including a bunch of features that few people will actually use.

On a positive note, Honor has committed to updating the Honor 8 with new features every three months for the first year, and then providing security and bug fix updates for an additional year. With this phone, the question is not whether you will receive the Android 7.0 Nougat update, but rather, when it will arrive. It's great to see this kind of software support, especially at this price.

There's also the recently announced partnership with XDA-Developers that aims to create developer interest in the Honor 8. While it's difficult to say just how many custom ROMs will be available for the phone in the future, this is certainly a step in the right direction.

Gallery

Price

The Honor 8 is now available for pre-order from Amazon, Best Buy, Newegg, and HiHonor starting at $399.99 for the 32 GB storage option or $449.99 for the 64 GB storage option. There are several promotional offers available, including a $50 gift card, which can certainly sweeten the deal. The color options include blue, black, and white.

If you accidentally crack the Honor 8 within the first three months of owning it, Huawei will repair it for free. This is a great protection to have, although I wish it covered the phone for a bit longer.

Buy the Honor 8 now!

Conclusion

Huawei has brought what many have wanted from an affordable flagship for a while now: a gorgeous design, a smaller size, and a great camera. In addition, the Honor 8's excellent performance and IR blaster are not always common on an affordable smartphone.

While the Honor 8 is indeed a great value for the money, it is important to recognize that this is a very competitive price segment so you have many options to chose from. It would be wise to consider what you value most in a smartphone and base your final decision off of that.

• Honor 8 hands on
• Honor joins the 'flagship killer' fray with the Honor 8
• Huawei announces super-affordable honor 8
• Honor 5X review

We want to know: what are your thoughts on Honor's affordable flagship? What do you value most in your smartphone? Let us know in the comment section below!

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Hate your job? Android developers don’t even have to put on pants.

The AA Picks team is on the prowl for things we think our readers will value. If we make an affiliate partnership to reduce the costs of purchases, then we may see a share of revenue.

I've been there myself.

Trapped under the glow of unnatural fluorescent light, hunched over a keyboard, crammed into a tiny cubicle, and forced to constantly engage in inane office banter…

"Uh oh. Somebody's got a case of the Mondays."

"What's our workflow going to be going forward?"

"TGIF, am I right?"

Human beings didn't evolve to be office drones. We're not built to wake up for the morning commute, fight traffic, and crawl home just to pass out long enough to survive the next day.

We shouldn't dread Mondays.

Fridays shouldn't be a cause for celebration.

A recent study shows that we spend over half our waking life working. Why should we be miserable for more than half our lives?

And what even are neck ties? Okay, this might be more of a personal gripe, but is this thing supposed to keep me warm? It doesn't clothe me. It doesn't serve any function except to serve as a constant reminder that this job has me by the throat.

Here's the thing…

The 9-to-5 job is dying. And with good reason.

A report from the Roosevelt Institute and the Kauffman Foundation have determined that the US economy will be "scarcely recognizable" by the year 2040.

The traditional work day is in its death throes because millions of people are finally saying "enough is enough." It's a cycle of misery, isolation, and dehumanization, and people are starting to aggressively take their lives back.

But where are they going?

For many, the answer is freelancing. Freelancers now constitute a full 34% of the American workforce. That's 53 million people living on their own terms rather than bowing to the demands of an office.

This is a massive opportunity for early adopters.

The previously mentioned Roosevelt-Kauffman report enlisted 30 economists, technologies, policy makers, and entrepreneurs. It's goal was to attempt to describe the future of work, technology, entrepreneurship, and inequality. It's conclusions?

I'll avoid burying the lead here. The takeaway is that Android developers are going to be making bank. But here's why:

The future is tech

Roosevelt and Kauffman determined that the future of the economy is intrinsically tied to the tech industry.

Although niches will exist for other goods and services, such as handcrafting products for markets like Etsy, the muscle of the looming economic market is tech. This isn't even something that people are debating.

As automation continues to be on the rise, baristas, retailers, truckers, and even writers will start seeing robots edging in on their jobs.

The machines are rising, and the world needs masters of these machines.

I have four heavily educated friends, three of whom are lawyers and one who is a physician. All of them are struggling to make it in their careers.

Two of the lawyers and the physician seem pretty disenfranchised with their current position. They were told that these jobs were basically automatic success.

And hey, it's not like they were fed a lie.

For the previous generation, this was true. So an entire generation of doctors and lawyers and business executives, encouraged by their parents, poured through the college system and came out with mountains of debt to face a saturated job market.

Meanwhile, I've got a friend in Seattle who decided college wasn't for him and just got to work coding.

He's pulling in six figures a year.

However, my third lawyer friend who has two degrees from Tulane is struggling to find viable work that will support her and help her pay off her student loans.

The future of tech is mobile

My Seattle friend doesn't work in mobile. He's a coder for a major retailer.

However, the tech world is getting increasingly mobile.

This is patently obvious. I mean, odds are you're reading this article on your smartphone, because mobile browsing outstripped desktop browsing all the way back in 2014 and continues to be on the rise.

And although web content continues to be valuable, the real moneymakers are app developers.

Hell, we all know the story of the Vietnamese programmer Dong Nguyen, the creator of Flappy Bird. The guy saw so much success from his homespun creation that he literally removed the app from the Play Store because he felt guilty about how much money he was making off of it.

At its peak in 2014, Flappy Bird was earning $50,000 every day.

We probably won't be married to our smartphones indefinitely. The trend of the tech world seems to indicate that our technology will become increasingly wearable and maybe even embedded.

However, even if smartphones begin to fade, mobile operating systems will still be the primary platform.

Mobile is Android

Android is the largest operating system on the planet.

That's not a brash claim or empty bluster. It's just cold, hard facts. More devices run Android, and more users engage with Android, than any other operating system currently in existence.

Sure, stateside Apple and Android feel pretty well matched. No argument there. And there's a lot of positive things to say about iOS. Users love that buying all Apple products means everything "just works" together.

However, that "just works" simplicity comes at a premium, and users the world over are willing to forego the extra cost of Apple products in favor of a platform that gives them flexibility and customization.

Take a look at these numbers for device shipments, worldwide, in 2015:

• Windows: 11.79%
• iOS+OS X: 12.37%
• Linux + Other: 21.66%
• Android: 54.16%

Literally, more than half the world's technology runs on Android.

The best news? Most people who are developing for Android are working from home. They don't even have to put on pants.

Stop being miserable

Life is too short. Sure, if you like putting on pants every day, go for it. Most guys look pretty schnazzy in a tie, so if that's your style, then rock it.

However, if you're looking to get out of the grind, then Android developing might be your escape hatch.

There's only one problem. You're not an Android developer.

Learning how to program has historically required a lot of time and money. However, based on a surge of interest in Android app development in our audience, we've partnered with Udemy to create an offer that makes this as efficient as possible.

Right now, Udemy is offering a course that aims to bring you from total beginner to paid professional in 22 hours of video across 85 articles.

It's normally a $120 course, but we've made an exclusive arrangement to bring that price down for our readers. Currently over 3,400 students are enrolled, and the class has received a 4.6-star rating from over 354 reviewers.

Over the course of 12 sections, you'll learn everything from the basics of Java programming to a walkthrough on the process of getting your app on the Google Play Store and marketing the hell out of it.

This course comes with access to an online chatroom where you can get help from the instructors as well as fellow students. Although it is currently focused on Marshmallow, the instructors are actively updating it to make it fully Nougat relevant.

You'll design a variety of  trial apps from scratch that gradually build on the basics laid out from previous course materials before finally being set loose to construct your dream app from the skills you've learned.

The course even comes with 10 professionally designed app asset packs that you can use to build high quality content into your apps. Normally such a media kit would cost somewhere in the ballpark of $2500.

Although the course is normally pretty pricy, we've negotiated with Udemy to offer our readers a 92 percent discount. If you checkout using the promo code ANDROIDA10, or just click the button below, then you'll get the entire course, full support in the chats and forums from the instructors, and the media kit for just $10.

That's right. We got the whole $120 package down to $10.

If you're sitting on a killer app idea but don't know how to get started, there's never been a better opportunity than right now. Click the button below to learn how to go from codeless scrub to paid professional in just a handful of weeks.

The future is Android. Get out of that cubicle.

Start Creating

Disclosure: This offer is brought to you by AA Picks. Our purpose is to highlight products or services we think you as our readers might be interested in and, if you buy them, we may get a share of the revenue. We operate independently from our advertising sales team, and we welcome your feedback and questions. Email us at aapicks@androidauthority.com.

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OnePlus Back to School sale knocks up to 70% off accessories

So it's that time of the year again. School is restarting and Back to School sales are still going full steam. The smartphone industry makes sure it is part of the action, with enticing deals to get you starting the school year refreshed with the newest mobile capabilities. If you've partaken on a new OnePlus device as of late, you should know that the manufacturer is having its own price-cutting event. Right now, you can grab accessories for your precious at up to 70% off.

See also: Back to school tech guide 2016: the definitive gadget list for work and fun12

Most of the offerings are a flock of phone cases that OnePlus has in its online store, for last year's OnePlus 2 and OnePlus X phones, to the company's current OnePlus 3 flagship. Naturally, accessories for the older devices get a steeper price cut. For instance, the various OnePlus 2 and OnePlus X StyleSwap covers/cases get the 70% drop, while the OnePlus 3's corresponding cases only get knocked a couple dollars.

Other types of cases and screen protectors are also part of the sale, as well as the Dash charger at a modest 10% off. Take a gander via the source link and see if any item and deal tickles your fancy.

Next: Back to school: best smartphones and tablets for students

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European Commission slams Apple for back taxes, sets sights on Google

This article was originally published on our sister site TabTimes.

The European Commission has just completed a three-year investigation into Apple's taxes, and they've determined that the benefits the company receives from Irish banking entities are illegal. As a result, Apple will have to pay 13 billion euros to Ireland, and a precedent is now set that puts other massive multinational companies like Google in a tight spot.

What's interesting is that Ireland has no interest in collecting the money. Finance minister Michael Noonan has gone on record saying, "I disagree profoundly with the Commission… The decision leaves me with no choice but to seek cabinet approval to appeal. This is necessary to defend the integrity of our tax system; to provide tax certainty to business; and to challenge the encroachment of EU state aid rules into the sovereign member state competence of taxation."

See also: Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Samsung band together to kill automated telemarketing24

Apple is unsurprisingly in the same boat claiming, "Apple follows the law and pays all of the taxes we owe wherever we operate. We will appeal and we are confident the decision will be overturned." The company went further to say that the Commission's case is needlessly aggressive and harmful to the economy:

The European Commission has launched an effort to rewrite Apple's history in Europe, ignore Ireland's tax laws and upend the international tax system in the process.

The Commission is standing their ground, stating that Apple's taxable profits "did not correspond to economic reality." The current corporate tax rate in Ireland is 12.5 percent. In 2003, the European Commission concluded that Apple paid a mere 1 percent in taxes, and that in 2014 they paid less than .01 percent.

The Commission says that all they are doing is requiring Apple to pay taxes that they would have owed anyway. "The Commission's investigation concluded that Ireland granted illegal tax benefits to Apple, which enabled it to pay substantially less tax than other businesses over many years."

The reason that Ireland doesn't want Apple to have to pay these back taxes is that their leniency on international businesses drives a lot of commerce through their system. In the aftermath of this Apple decision, the Commission is gearing up to investigate Google in a similar capacity.

What are your thoughts regarding the European Commission cracking down on tech titans' taxes? Should big corporations be able to get away with such extreme tax benefits because their business creates jobs and profit in the areas where they feel most welcome, or should the rules still apply to entities that are 'too big to fail'? Give us your take in the comments below!

Next: Homegrown vendors are taking China back from Apple, Xiaomi, Samsung11

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Pokemon Go code reveals plans for trading and PvP, but what are ‘forts’?

Oh, Pokemon Go. We just can't quit you. Every time the buzz starts to die off, new features or rumors of features arrive to hook us right back in.

Niantic hasn't made a whole lot of friends on the PR side of things, what with the tracking system getting stripped down and Niantic putting the kibosh on anyone trying to use third party apps to supplement its absence.

Although the recent update didn't offer much beyond a promise of things to come, we're now seeing evidence for these long-awaited features.

Niantic has been pretty public about the kind of things they'd like to bring to the game, such as a better tracking system which is currently being tested in the Bay Area, but they've been more coy about the future of the popular augmented reality game. Fortunately, the code-diggers of Reddit have been getting their hands dirty scrounging around in the games guts.

See also: In latest update, Pokemon Go devs swear actual features on the way24

Item Variations

We definitely appear to have some new items on the way. Evidently, Incense will start coming in three different flavors, according to a lines reading Item_incense_spicy, Item_incense_cool, and Item_incense_floral. We're honestly not sure what the differences between these could mean in terms of gameplay. There's also evidence that new berry varieties may be in the works. Perhaps Jazzberries?

Forts?

"Forts" are the real head-scratcher here. Sometimes developers will use in-language to refer to concepts that are later given another name in the game proper, but the original nomenclature remains intact in the software's code. So it's possible that lines containing such language as Add_fort_modifier are simply referring to gyms. However, it seems that players will be capable of recalling Pokemon from these "forts." Gyms currently don't let you get your Pokemon back until they are defeated.

Legendary Pokemon

Activity_catch_legend_pokemon is a new line of code that varies from the typical activity_catch_pokemon that refers to a player snagging a new pocket monster from the wild. We've known legendaries were on the way, but does this mean they're even closer than expected?

Trading

Pokemon trading is something that the fanbase has been clamoring for pretty much since day one. Niantic has been evasive on the subject, but now we're seeing language for Trade_search_offer, Trade_search_response, and Trade_search_result. It seems pretty clear that some kind of trading system is in the works, but there's no indication as to how this mechanic will work in gameplay.

PvP

Most subtly, sharp-eyed Redditors have identified an initially innocuous term scattered throughout the game's code. English speakers might not see the immediate implications of the word sfida, but Italian speakers will recognize it as a word that means "challenge, defiance, or dare." Some believe this is an indication of player-to-player battling, so if you start seeing people lined up on bridges staring rigidly into the distance, be careful not to make eye contact unless you're ready to throw down.

---

As with all evidence dredged up from coding language, these reveals should be taken with a grain of salt. It's possible that they represent missteps or scrapped endeavors on the parts of the developers, but we're hopeful that some substantial new features are on their way to the world's favorite catch-'em-all simulator. While we wait for these code scraps to become a reality, let us know what you think of them in the comments below!

Next: What your Pokémon GO team says about you53

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