Huawei Honor 8 Pro review – CNET

The Huawei Honor 8 Pro brings you much of the power and capabilities you’d expect of a high-end flagship phone, but with a UK price of £474 (direct from Huawei), it comes in cheaper than most other premium handsets. That converts to roughly $610 or AU$820, but there’s no word yet on US or Australian availability.

Let’s start with the all-metal body, which most phones now sport. My review model has an attractive cool blue finish, with glass that curves gently at the sides. There’s an accurate fingerprint scanner mounted on the back that’s easy to reach when you pick up the phone.

The display? A 5.7-inch, 2,560×1,440-pixel panel that’s pin-sharp and kicks out extremely rich, vivid colours. That’s the same screen resolution you’ll find on the much pricier Galaxy S8 and Google Pixel XL. Diving deeper, the powerful octa-core processor easily handles the demanding gameplay in Riptide GP: Renegade and photo editing in Snapseed. There’s also a hearty 64GB of storage and, yes, you can expand that with a microSD card, up to 128GB in size.

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There are two 12-megapixel cameras on the back, with one shooting in colour and the other in black and white — it’s a similar setup to what you’ll see on on Huawei’s P10. Colour shots are generally well exposed, with strong hues, while the rich contrast from the monochrome sensor means your artsy black and white snaps are Instagram-ready without any additional tweaking.

The Honor’s colour shots have much higher contrast and saturation than the Galaxy S8’s, which can make them look a little unnatural. If you want the most accurate lighting and colour in your shots, go for the S8, but the Honor will suit you well if you want punchy snaps from the beach to share with your friends immediately.

If you love taking selfies, the 8-megapixel camera on the front does a great job of capturing your face, with natural colours and enough resolution to make you and your friends’ grinning faces stand out. There’s a beauty mode, too, which smooths out and brightens your skin if you’re feeling particularly self-conscious. Mercifully, you can alter the amount of “beauty” it applies — at full whack, you’ll come out looking a bit like a porcelain doll.