Gadget review: Wait and watch for Huawei's Honor 6 Plus

Last week Huawei launched two new smart phones under the Honor brand mdash the Honor 4X and Honor 6 Plus We have already spelt out what makes the Honor 4X the best budget 4G smart phone in the market Since the Honor 6 Plus unit hadnt arrived then we withheld our comments and now after spending a week with this premium sibling of the Honor 4X we have to admit that the advantages for Huawei seem to have diminished with the Honor 6 Plus Yet theres plenty to be happy about Lets see howWhat we likedPrice build and design Honor 6 Plus makes for great eye candy An absolute beauty from top to toe it is lightweight and also easy to handle with a single hand Despite the fact that it comes with glass panels on front and back similar to what we have seen with the Sony Z3 range of devices its solid While a special glass fibre rear panel adds strength and style to the body a metal bracket on the sides and top offers protection from any unfortunate falls on hard concrete surfaces As for protecting these glass panels from scratches the box included two complementary scratch guards with the device along with a charger no headphones thoughHardware Deep inside its chic body the Honor 6 Plus gets plenty of hardware to boast about The phone comes equipped with the Super Octacore System on Chip SoC Kirin 925 developed by HiSilicon a subsidiary of Huawei This 64bit SoC has eight cores featuring A15 and A7 processors along with Mali T628MP4 Graphic Processing Unit Coupled with 3GB LPDDR3 RAM and 3600mAH battery the Honor 6 Plus becomes a computing powerhouse instantlyThe battery wowed us as it lasts easily for more than one and half day with WiFi on throughout the period The display is a 55inch FHD screen with 1920x1080 resolution and pixel density of 480ppi Its comfortable to read in lowlight conditions in shade or indoors as well as in broad daylight as the light sensor is superreceptive The inbuilt storage stands at 32GB which should be sufficient for most and can support up to 128GB external SD card As for connectivity the device supports 2G and 3G as well as 4G LTE bandsIt also supports WiFi NFC Bluetooth and WiFi Direct The 8MP front camera is an absolute joy to work with mdash a feature that we will enjoy Unfortunately we cant say the same about the rear camera We were also impressed by the user interface UI of the Huawei like we did of the Honor 4X but were disappointed to find a missing settings key from the shortcuts drop down menuWhat we didnt likeThe 8MP rear camera looks impressive mdash an aperture support range from f095 to f16 is a dream and thats what Huawei Honor 6 Plus manages to fulfill However its dual camera setup the device uses two 8MP rear cameras working simultaneously like the human eye to capture images doesnt bring any difference in image qualityIn fact it slows down in the wideaperture mode the rear camera takes slightly longer time to capture an image and often results in hazy and blurred images irrespective of the aperture size And we arent talking about night shots but in day shots as well Besides the smart phone heats up while the camera is on Also the UI of the camera is a bit difficult to work around a separate capture key could have made things much easierOverall verdictTheres no doubt that Huawei has made a lot of effort to offer a mix of premium features and revolutionary technology within 27K in the Honor 6 Plus but its most important tech mdash the dual rear cameras mdash isnt very impressive Only time will tell whether or not it will lead the 20K30K range but its a definite attraction in the price bracket which also includes two incredibly popular devices mdash One Plus One and Motorola X2Will be Available on Flipkartcom