Honor 4C Review
This year Huawei has come to the market with a new device, Honor 4C. Its price is a little less than Rs 9,000 and its specifications are also decent. We have reviewed this phone. This time we have tried to know whether this time Huawei has succeeded in making the best budget device or not.
Look and Design
When you pick up the Honor 4C, the first feeling you will feel will be its weight. Its weight is 162 grams which is more than other smartphones available today. And this phone also does not have a high capacity battery, which makes the situation worse. Apart from this, the thickness is 8.8 mm, which is also more. Plastic has been used in making Honor 4C, while the rear side has a textured design. It looks good, but the phone cannot be gripped well. It was slipping out of our hands again and again. There is a metal plate on the top left side of the rear cover, in which there is a cutout for the primary camera and flash. At the bottom, there are machine-made holes for the loudspeaker. Removing the rear cover reveals the battery which cannot be taken out of the handset. Apart from this, there are three slots – one for microSD card and two for micro-SIM card.
The volume rocker and power button are on the right side of the phone. Metal has been used for the power button, which can be identified by touch. The micro-USB port and microphone are located at the bottom of the handset, while there is also a 3.5mm audio port at the top. There are three capacitive buttons below the screen to access the operating system in the phone, but these are not backlit. Above the display are the earpiece, front facing camera and LED indicators for notifications.
Specifications and Software
Huawei has used its 1.2GHz octa-core Kirin 920 SoC in the handset and it is supported by 2 GB RAM. The inbuilt storage of Honor 4C is 8 GB, which can be expanded up to 32 GB via microSD card. The phone has a 13-megapixel primary camera, which is excellent and the handset also has a 5-megapixel front facing camera for selfies.
One disappointing thing about Honor 4C is that it does not support 4G network. We believe this should be the default feature as LTE rollouts are happening so rapidly. Rest of the connectivity features include Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth v4.0 and FM radio. Battery capacity is 2550mAh.
The 5-inch IPS panel has a resolution of 720×1280 with a pixel density of 294ppi. The screen is crisp and colors are natural, but it is dull even at the highest brightness. Viewing angles are also bad. It becomes a little difficult to read anything on the screen in sunlight.
The phone runs on Android 4.4.2 on which Huawei’s Emotion UI 3.0 skin has been used. It is very disappointing that the phone does not come with Android Lollipop out of the box. The skin doesn’t have an app drawer, so the homescreen looks cluttered with apps. The UI looks sleek and is smooth to use. Like previous Honor devices, this handset features one-hand UI and suspended buttons. Overall, it’s a good experience.
Performance and camera
Huawei has done a great job of optimizing the performance of software and hardware. The pairing of octa-core SoC and 2GB RAM helps in smooth running of the phone and we never faced any problems. Some buyers of this handset have complained about the phone getting hot on various platforms but we did not find this to be the case during benchmarks and battery tests. With this, high-end games ran smoothly.
In AnTuTu and GFXbench tests, the phone got 24,139 and 6,435 points respectively. Even though the GFXbench score is low, the AnTuTu score is much higher than other phones in the same price range. The phone scored 5,803 in the 3DMark Ice Storm test, which is again higher than many phones.
The phone had no problem playing all our video samples. We have always had one complaint about Honor’s phones, and that is its sound quality. Very low sound comes from the speaker and earpiece. To enjoy music and videos you will need a headset. We did not face any call drop issues and the connection remained intact even in congested areas during our test. During the video loop test the phone lasted 8 hours and 5 minutes before switching off, which is quite good.
The 13-megapixel rear camera shoots fast. It takes very little time to focus and most importantly, takes pictures with great detail. Natural colors give a very pleasant feeling to the eyes. We did not complain of any chromatic aberration or barrel distortion. We are very happy with the performance of the camera. Low light performance isn’t great, but not bad either. The camera captures 1080p video, whose quality was decent. The 5-megapixel front camera can also capture photos with good detail.
our decision
We believe that Huawei has introduced a very good handset at this price. The Honor 4C has a good camera, performs tasks quickly and doesn’t have any useless software. It would have been nice if the weight of Honor 4C was a little less and the sound quality was better, but these are very small problems. If it is not so important for you to get a 4G phone, then Honor 4C is a good option for Rs 8,999. In this price range you can buy Yu Yureka, Lenovo A6000 Plus and Lenovo A7000.
