Honor 6 Plus review: powerful device in a solid, simple body [hands-on]
Robert Zak 2015-03-08T15:00:00Z1 month ago
Robert Zak A tech aficionado since he first picked up a NES controller, Robert has written about technology, videogames, and film across a range of sites and magazines, including Den of Geek, Gamasutra, and Computeractive. At AndroidPIT, he'll be bringing you the latest Android news and reviews from the front line in the UK. The Honor wing of Huawei has proven it can deliver solid performance on a rock-bottom budget (see our Honor Holly review), and now it's fighting for a share of the upper end of the smartphone market with the Honor 6 Plus. The 6 Plus?improves on the Honor 6 in several ways, with a bigger screen, bigger battery, and an experimental UltraPixel camera that's caught our curiosity. Read on for our hands-on?Honor 6 Plus?review.
The Honor 6 Plus release date in the UK and Europe will be around?May 2015. For the first time, Honor will also be offering its phone on a network tariff, as the Honor 6 Plus?will be available on UK network Three. We have no more details on the tariff yet, but Honor said there'd be some 'special deal's in store for people getting the phone on the Three network.
We don't know the exact Honor 6 Plus price?yet, but expect it to come in around the ￡400 mark (around?Rs. 25,700 in India).
The Honor 6 Plus?shows it's serious about being treated as a high-end device, doing away with the plastic exterior of its predecessor. The Honor 6+ is instead made from zinc alloy, which Honor claims is tougher and more rigid than the fashionable aluminum chassis on many premium smartphones of today. We didn't get to test out its toughness in the hands-on of course, but it felt satisfyingly weighty to hold.
The Honor 6 Plus?has a metallic rim, which enhances the premium feel, while not exactly screaming originality. Sexing up phone sides was a theme at MWC this year, with the HTC One M9 having super-reflective sides, and Samsung extending its screen to both sides of?the Galaxy S6 Edge. The Honor 6+ looks a bit generic in comparison, but then not everyone wants a diva for a phone.
The volume?rocker, power buttons, and SIM and microSD slots all live on the same side of the Honor 6+, making the buttons easily accessible, if a little prone to the wrong one being pressed.
All in all, the Honor 6+ feels much better in the hand than the Honor 6. The phone still feels like a bit of a smudge magnet, and it's perhaps a bit too much of an iPhone lookalike, but it's not a bad effort.
With a 5.5-inch display, it's understandable that the Honor 6+ misses out a bit on pixel resolution. The Honor 6 Plus?has a full HD screen with 401 ppi, which means it falls a bit short of the clarity offered by rival high-end devices with same-sized or bigger screens. From our hands-on, the screen had?decent brightness, while not exactly being eye-catching.?
Judging a screen's quality should take into consideration the price of the device of course, so stay tuned for our full review when we'll establish whether this sizeable, medium-quality display will give you bank for your buck.?
The Honor 6+ has so-called 'Active' dual SIM card slots. This means that you can set the phone up to only have a data connection on one SIM card, while carrying out phone calls with the other, or other interesting combinations that could end up saving you money. If you're abroad and have a SIM card for that country as well as your home country in the phone, the Honor 6 Plus will automatically use the SIM card for that given country, saving you the hassle. It's a great idea, and we're looking forward to seeing it in action.
The Honor 6+ runs Emotion UI 3.0 and ran Android KitKat 4.4.4 when we tested it. However, Honor said that the device is due to get the Android Lollipop update in the summer, which should coincide more or less with its release date in May.
EMUI 3.0 is a slender, elegant-looking UI that's an?improvement on older versions of the interface. It takes a few pages out of Lollipop's book with identical navigation buttons, and a clean-looking notifications screen, which includes a neat little timeline running down the left of the screen.?
The Kirin 925 octa-core chipset is a slight improvement on that in the Honor 6, and is the same one used in the Huawei Ascend Mate 7?- a phone that we loved, and that achieved a very respectable 42,837 in our AnTuTu benchmark tests, beating the Samsung Galaxy S5. There are other variables that can affect benchmark scores, so these scores are?by no means gospel, but these should give a good guideline of the performance to expect from the Honor 6 Plus - which is very good indeed.
In our hands-on, everything on the phone ran swimmingly, though of course we'll put it through more rigorous testing when we do our full review in May.
The dual 8MP rear camera - or 'Eagle Eye Camera' - on the Honor 6 Plus?is a bit of a maverick. It uses the UltraPixel technology, has an impressive f0.95 aperture and 22mm wide-angle lens, and Honor claims the dual rear cameras equate?to around 13MP when added together.
I'm always drawn to?a company that tries something a little different, so am at the very least intrugued by the Honor 6+ camera. In the shots that we took, the 'Super Night Mode' certainly cleans up dark scenes.
The Honor 6+ also has a 8MP front-facing camera that did a decent job of brightening up the dimly-lit room in which the phone?was unveiled.
With its f0.95 aperture, the Honor 6 Plus does a good job of night shots... / c ANDROIDPIT 
... which get even better when you put on the Super Night Mode/ c ANDROIDPIT 
A group selfie on the 8 MP front camera. Nice and bright, if a bit washed out. There's my growing out of the side of the Honor rep's head. / c ANDROIDPIT The Honor 6 Plus packs a monstrous 3600mAh, which exceeds that of bigger high-end?phones like the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and the Google Nexus 6. A big battery is to be expected when it's non-removable, but Honor certainly went all out here. This technically means you should get over two days standard use out of the Honor 6+ before it needs a top-up, and it also comes with an ultra-power-saving mode to help it last even longer.
We'll be sure to field-test this impressive battery when we do the full review in May.
Model:Sorry, not yet available! Dimensions:150.5 x 75.7 x 7.5 mmScreen:1920 x 1080 pixels (401 ppi)Android version:4.4.4 - KitKatConnectivity:HSPA, LTE, NFC, Dual-SIM , Bluetooth 4.0The Honor 6 Plus makes a good first impression, offering some truly high-end specs. The sensible zinc alloy chassis doesn't grab the eye at first, but seeing as the phone will only be available to buy online, it's not necessarily aimed at those looking for a piece of eye candy.
The stand-out features on the Honor 6+ are the massive 3600mAh battery and 8MP dual rear camera. The jury is still out on these, of course, until the full review, but if these wildcard features?deliver on their promise, then they'll certainly make the octa-core Honor 6 Plus a contender in the premium smartphone league.
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