Honor 6 Plus review: powerful device in a solid, simple body [hands-on]

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.

c ANDROIDPIT

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+ looks simple but solid with its zinc alloy frame. / c ANDROIDPIT

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.?

Colors and pixel resolution are decent on the Honor 6+, but the screen's strong-point is its size. / c ANDROIDPIT

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.

The Honor 6 Plus will come with Android KitKat 4.4.4 and EMUI 3.0. It should get the Android Lollipop update in the summer. / c ANDROIDPIT

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 4.0

The 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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( Labels: Device, handson, Honor, powerful, Review, simple, solid ) Read more

The South Korea Report: Device and App Trends in The First Saturated Device Market

The South Korea Report: Device and App Trends in The First Saturated Device Market

Posted by Mary Ellen Gordon, PhD on Mon, Oct 14, 2013

In August of this year Flurry Analytics measured 33,527,534 active smartphones and tablets in South Korea. While that was only 2.8% of the entire worldwide connected device installed base Flurry measures, South Korea is an important market for connected devices for several reasons. First, it is the first connected device market in the world to approach saturation. Second, it is Samsung’s home market, and largely as a consequence of that, more of the devices in use there are manufactured by domestic firms than is the case for any other country. Finally, it is home to more phablet fans than anywhere else.

Worldwide the installed base of connected devices measured by Flurry grew by 81% between August of 2012 and August of 2013, whereas growth for South Korea during the same time period was only 17%. It was a different story just a couple of years ago. During late 2011 and early 2012, the South Korean connected device market grew more rapidly than the worldwide market, as shown by the divergence of the black line from the red in the chart below. This was the period during which Samsung introduced the Galaxy Note. It was the first successful ‘phablet’, enabling Samsung to capture two-thirds of the South Korean mobile phone market, and driving rapid growth in that market. As shown in the graph, that growth has slowed markedly in the past year or so, and has even been negative in some months. That implies that the South Korean connected device market either already is, or will soon be, the first in the world to reach saturation. As such, it provides a good early indicator of what other markets can expect once the rapid growth period the mobile market has experienced over the past few years ends.

Even as growth in its domestic market has slowed, Samsung continues to dominate the South Korean connected device market. It had a 60% share of a random sample of 3,124 of the devices in our system in South Korea that run iOS or Android apps. Between them, two other South Korean device manufacturers, LG and Pantech, had another 25% of the market, meaning that the vast majority of the smartphones and tablets being used in South Korea (85% of the devices in our sample) are manufactured in South Korea. That dominance of local manufacturers is unique in the world now that Apple’s share of the US market, Blackberry’s share of the Canadian market, and Nokia’s share of the market in Finland have all weakened.

Given that South Korea’s rapid period of connected device growth was ushered in by the phablet, it is perhaps not surprising that it continues to surpass the rest of the world in its preference for that form factor. As shown below, in a worldwide sample of 97,963 iOS and Android devices, only 7% were phablets, but for South Korea that percentage was 41%. The appeal of phablets in South Korea appears to suppress the tablet market there. Worldwide, 19% of the devices in our sample were tablets compared to only 5% in South Korea.

Games are the most popular app category in South Korea, as they are in much of the rest of the world. SK Planet's T Store, the largest app store in South Korea, provided data to Flurry showing that 68% of its revenue from apps plus other digital content comes from games. On average, their gaming customers generate ?5,657 (~U.S. $5.27) per user per month in gaming revenue alone compared to an overall average of ?3,135 (~U.S. $2.92) per user per month in revenue across all forms of digital content for all customers.

Social networking accounts for a significant share of app activity in South Korea, as it does in many other countries. Tool apps are used heavily by South Korean Android users, and entertainment apps capture a lot of time spent in iOS apps.

Compared to app users elsewhere, South Koreans over-index on Entertainment apps on iOS and several Android app categories (Media / Video, Photography, Lifestyle, Shopping, and Tools).

As in the U.S., the vast majority of apps used in South Korea – 96% of those available through the T Store – are free.

The fact that the South Korean connected device market is saturated (or very close to being saturated) makes it an interesting test case for considering the future of the connected device market worldwide. What happens once more or less everyone who is likely to is carrying at least one smartphone or tablet?

One area to keep an eye on is new uses for connected devices, such as mobile payments. South Korea is a world leader in mobile payments – probably in part because of the prevalence of NFC-enabled devices. For example, SK Planet has a mobile payment system called T Cash, which is used for 54% of in app purchases, and also can be used to pay for off-device transactions such as train and taxi fares. Interestingly, another third of in app purchases are paid for using gift certificates, demonstrating the potential of mobile devices as a mechanism for giving and receiving gifts. It doesn’t seem like a big leap for that to go from in app purchases to physical goods that could be delivered or picked up with the mobile device used for authentication. Already merchants in South Korea are using tablets to manage payments, inventory, and even promotion.

Another area to watch is interoperability across connected devices. The fact that Samsung manufactures smartphones, tablets, and connected TVs (as well as other consumer electronics that are becoming part of the Internet of things) makes it well-positioned to better integrate those devices and the content that runs on them. With Samsung being so dominant in South Korea and that market being so well developed for connected devices, it is a logical test market for products and services that take advantage of that type of cross-device integration.

Download The South Korea Report with additional data

View the original article here

( Labels: Device, First, Korea, Market, Report, Saturated, South, Trends ) Read more

China Knocks Off U.S. to Become World's Top Smart Device Market

China Knocks Off U.S. to Become World's Top Smart Device Market

Just days into the Chinese New Year (Year of the “Snake” for anyone keeping track), China has passed the U.S. to become the world’s top country for active Android and iOS smartphones and tablets. This historic milestone takes place a year after Flurry first reported that China had become the world’s fastest growing smart device market. Since then, it took China’s rapidly growing middle class just twelve months to close the gap on the U.S.

( Labels: Android, China, Device, Knocks, Market, Smart, Worlds ) Read more

Christmas 2012 Shatters More Smart Device and App Download Records

Christmas 2012 Shatters More Smart Device and App Download Records

More iOS and Android devices are activated on Christmas Day than on any other day of the year. This year was no exception. On this Christmas Day 2012, more iPhones, iPads, Galaxys, Kindle Fires, and more, were activated than on any other day in history.?Moreover, as soon as we could tear the wrapping paper off our cool new devices, we started downloading a record volume of apps. ?Let’s get into the numbers.

( Labels: Android, Christmas, Device, Download, Market, Records, Smart ) Read more

China Now Leads the World in New iOS and Android Device Activations

China Now Leads the World in New iOS and Android Device Activations

Flurry recently quantified China’s meteoric adoption of iOS and Android applications.? While China ranked 10th in application sessions at the beginning of 2011, it finished the year in 2nd place, only behind the United States.? With its large population and rapidly emerging middle class, adoption of apps vaulted China into the position of world’s 2nd largest app economy.? In additional analysis, Flurry also determined that China has the most market upside, based on calculating those in China who can afford smartphones versus the current installed base.

( Labels: Activations, Android, China, Device, Leads, World ) Read more