Phonecurry's 2-Minute Review
quick-read review written by the phonecurry editorial team, summarising opinion across 22 Expert Reviews
What we liked
- Stunning metal build and design - great handling, slim profile and sleek look - continuing the premium design tradition of the Honor line
- Very good fingerprint scanner with class-leading speed and accuracy
- Excellent, VR-Ready QHD display - great punch, superb contrast, and brightness
- EMUI is a decent Android overlay - and is filled to the brim with features that allow you to tweak pretty much every aspect of the UI - gesture support is rich too
- Excellent, flagship-worthy speed and performance, powered by the powerhouse Kirin 960 chipset, along with copious amount of RAM and smart memory management - on the whole, the performance is only slightly below the level of the Snapdragon 835 powered devices, and even that difference will be really difficult to spot in ordinary use
- Very good set of rear dual cameras - still images show mature processing with accurate colors, high detail level, and great dynamic range - the monochrome camera takes these up another notch (sans the colors, obviously) - lossless zoom works pretty well too
- Pretty decent low-light images too, and excellent long exposure photos
- The front camera does well too
- Video recording too is good (though not exceptional)
- Good, loud speaker
- Good audio output over headphones too
- Good gallery, image editing, and music apps
- Solid battery life - arguably among the best in modern phones with Quad HD displays
- Fast charging time
- On the whole, the phone is the closest competition to the excellent OnePlus 5 as on date - while performance is a tad lower and the user interface isn’t as light as OxygenOS, the Honor 8 Pro has a larger, higher-resolution screen which is better suited to VR and media use - additionally, there’s 128GB of internal storage and the possibility of expansion, which is more than what’s present on the 6GB/64GB variant of the OnePlus 5 - both phones feature dual-camera systems, which are excellent and on par with each other
- In the end, if you are looking for raw power and close-to-stock Android, then the OnePlus 5 is the way to go - but if a sleek and sexy device is what's on your mind, and stock Android is not a must, then the Honor 8 Pro takes the cake
What we didn't
- Unwieldy for one-handed usage and pocket-dwelling
- No waterproofing, a feature that's present in some of its top competition
