Huawei Honor 6 Review
by Andrei Frumusanu & Joshua Ho on September 12, 2014 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Huawei
- Android
- Mobile
- Honor 6
Camera
The main camera is equipped with a Sony IMX214 sensor with a F2.0 28mm wide angle lens. The stock camera application offers all basic functionality you would expect. It doesn't try to revolutionize the traditional camera design and keeps it pretty simple in terms of aesthetics.
The camera offers a few pre-set shooting modes you can choose from, but most people will not deviate from the standard "normal", "smart" and "HDR" modes for most of their photography uses. The software allows to re-bind the volume buttons as a shutter key if wish to do so. Capture resolutions come in 4160 and 3264 horizontal resolutions in either 4:3 (4160x3120, 3264x2448) or 16:9 (4160x2336, 3264x1840) formats ranging from the full 13MP down to 6MP.
Huawei offers some manual image adjustment controls which allow you to change the exposure, saturation and contrast of the picture. Such controls are always welcome but in this case the sliders which are exposed do not display any kind of value, so you are not aware of what they actually do in absolute terms. Their location in the camera menu settings are also tedious to reach in case you want to achieve a specific result by manual fine-tuning.
The panorama mode shoots up to around 15744x2432 pixels and file sizes of up to 13MB in size. The resulting images are good in quality and there is no visible stitching throughout the picture.
Next let's take a look at normal camera shots in various outdoor lightning conditions.
1/1501s @ ISO 50
1/20s @ ISO 320
1/16s @ ISO 2500
In the low light shot, the Honor 6 is able to produce a pretty good result considering the ISO 2500 sensitivity on the shot, all while maintaining a reasonable exposure of 1/16s. It's in the dusk shot that the device is struggling to properly set its exposure and ISO level as it produces a very dark picture even though there was still enough ambient light available, seemingly caused by the metering algorithm trying to expose for the sky instead of the environment.
In perfect lighting conditions the camera has no issues in terms of exposure, but here we see a definite lack of detail. The IMX214 should have been able to produce a shaper image here, but instead we see a lot of fuzziness compared to other phones.
Normal mode
A trend that I saw in all pictures that I took is that the HDR mode is too aggressive. Instead of trying to underexpose bright areas, and increase exposure on darker ones, the phone tends to overexpose everything. I haven't been able to make a single shot where the HDR mode didn't result in oversaturated and unrealistic colours. It's more of a hit and miss and you're required to take several pictures because the metering algorithm was very unpredictable for me. I've been able to take a lot of over- or under-exposed pictures in what was otherwise very good lightning conditions. Here Huawei has a lot of catching up to do to be able to come close to the consistency that Apple, Samsung, HTC and LG are able to provide.
Video Capture
In terms of video capture the Honor 6 offers the usual 1080p and 720p resolutions on top smaller formats like VGA and even a 176x144 for MMS video. The 1080p video mode comes with several limitations: HDR and Beauty Mode are disabled and only available to 720p and lower resolutions.
Original 1080p video file (90MB)
In the standard 1080p mode we get a 24Mbps AVC Baseline@L4.0 video stream at 25fps with 96Kbps stereo AAC audio. The video is sharp and fluid, albeit the colours are a tad oversaturated. It's the lack of any kind of stabilization is very obvious and the video is very shaky. I was surprised by the audio quality of the video recordings as I could not only hear my own breath but also far away kids playing in the background. The microphones on the device seem to do their job pretty well in that regard.
Original 1080p + EIS video file (95MB)
When turning on the electronic image stabilization the quality of the video dramatically decreases. We see a big reduction in the details of the video and what should be 1080p turns into something inferior to 720p. It's pretty obvious what's going on here: Instead of increasing the capture frame beyond 1080p on the image sensor, Huawei is retaining the 1080p capture frame and then reduces the actual video window inside of the frame and reserves the margins needed for the EIS to operate. The video window is then upscaled again to 1080p, resulting in a blurry image and loss of detail. The effect also reduces the field-of-view of the camera.
Original 720p HDR + stabilization video file (59MB)
The 720p video with both HDR and EIS is even worse off. We go down to a 14.4Mbps AVC video stream on a custom encoding profile, while retaining the audio track quality. Here the resulting image resembles more what a 480p recording would produce. It is pretty clear to me that there limitation here lies in the SoC's ISP. It either cannot handle the sensor data bandwidth at high resolutions due to a lack of enough MIPI CSI lanes, or the ISP is underpowered and cannot handle the heightened load that EIS and HDR require. This is quite a blow to the Kirin's video capabilities, and we end up with one of the worst results in the SoC space.
I've already played a bit with the Ascend Mate 7 hoping that the situation would improve, but alas it seems that my suspicion holds as it has the same limitations and problems when recording video.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
59 Comments
View All Comments
TekDemon - Thursday, September 18, 2014 - link
I wonder if the "Rog" mode is a reference to ASUS' Republic of Gamers (ROG) hardware line-i.e. a gaming mode. Given the weak GPU maybe the mode is there for people who want to play 3D games to be able to run everything at 720P and thus get acceptable framerates instead of everything having to be rendered at 1080P. It's actually a pretty great idea, especially with the newer 1440P screens on high end phones even the beefiest GPUs will struggle for framerates in graphics intense games.p51d007 - Wednesday, September 24, 2014 - link
I don't care for a user replaceable battery in my Ascend Mate2...it's 400mAH and lasts days at a time, plus, I'm tech savvy enough (40 years in electronics) that I can get one and replace it myself.Huawei is starting to make some noise in the market, which "should" benefit consumers by causing the competition to either step up to the plate, or get left behind.
Right now, I'm a big fan of Huawei, even though the Mate2 isn't "flagship" in the spec department, it runs perfectly, fast, bright screen and the 2-3 day battery life? LOVE IT!
cnanews - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
I experienced a few surveys and purchaser remarks in a Chinese shopping sites where individuals have complained about wifi gathering issueshttp://cnanews.in/huawei-honor-6-with-octa-core-so...
ritwik - Tuesday, October 14, 2014 - link
Isn't it an amazing device? It's just awesome, 3GB RAM with 1.7Ghz Octa core processor it's just superfast http://goo.gl/4wojuWsiteOwner - Saturday, October 18, 2014 - link
Hi,Do you know if scheduler and governor used in Huawei Honor 6 are custom made by Huawei or are default from Linux Kernel? So if I install other rom will I get those core/task/scheduler/governor settings??
Best Regards
equanim1ty - Wednesday, October 22, 2014 - link
Yes.. There is definitely some issue with the Bus Bandwidth config for Honor 6 .Honor 6 has real problem with using Bluetooth and Internet simultaneously. Whenever I connected my Bluetooth (Stereo Headset), the internet bandwidth drops drastically
Use case: If I'm on Viber through (Wifi @ 16Mbps or H+) , the bandwidth drops and it works fine without the Bluetooth. In order to confirm this I did multiple speed test while streaming offline Music ( Note: Music on SD card) - The internet connection speed dropped drastically from 16Mbps to the range of 1- 1.2 Mbps. I paused the music and it again jumped back to 14- 16Mbps. This happens even if I'm on 3G. I'm suspecting this is some type of implementation issue either with the architecture / bus configuration? Just wish this gets resolved with future ROM updates for an otherwise great device
equanim1ty - Wednesday, October 22, 2014 - link
Yes.. There is definitely some issue with the Bus Bandwidth config for Honor 6 .Honor 6 has real problem with using Bluetooth and Internet simultaneously. Whenever I connected my Bluetooth (Stereo Headset), the internet bandwidth drops drastically
Use case: If I'm on Viber through (Wifi @ 16Mbps or H+) , the bandwidth drops and it works fine without the Bluetooth. In order to confirm this I did multiple speed test while streaming offline Music ( Note: Music on SD card) - The internet connection speed dropped drastically from 16Mbps to the range of 1- 1.2 Mbps. I paused the music and it again jumped back to 14- 16Mbps. This happens even if I'm on 3G. I'm suspecting this is some type of implementation issue either with the architecture / bus configuration? Just wish this gets resolved with future ROM updates for an otherwise great device
spixel - Saturday, October 25, 2014 - link
"The 5" 1080p display is manufacutred by JDI. The display is a non-IPS display and the viewing angles are visibly suffering from this, however it's not terrible"Seriously??? Of course the display is IPS, what on earth are you talking about? IPS is the standard display type for all modern smartphones except extremely cheap budget phones or those with Amoled.
Bala63 - Friday, October 2, 2015 - link
Well, I have been using Honor 6 for almost a year and I would say this is the best budget phone that I ever had! Kirin outperforms Snapdragon in most segments and the phone performs like a butter! I'm a hardcore gamer and I enjoyed playing MC4, Mortal Kombat X, Immortals and what not and I never witnessed any lag at any point of time. Camera is decent and yes, u can't expect a DSLR for 20k. But trust me, for this price, there's no better camera in the market. Battery backup is excellent! I use 4G and I get 30% charge left after using it for 5 hours continuous. Wi-Fi is a real boon! The connectivity is continuous and it is through Wi-Fi that I download movies from yify! Believe me, I wasn't disappointed with the speed and downloading of torrents, not even once. And yes, Huawei did an excellent job providing a Lollipop update for Honor 6. Now I'm able to record games in 720p and upload it to YouTube! Come on guys, Huawei is new to smart phones and we can't expect miracles in their initial attempts. EMUI offers a smooth interface with a lot of cool new themes from Huawei market. And I forgot to tell you, this is a mini-HDD! With all apps installed, I still have around 8 GB of internal storage and a mammoth 64 GB external, memory card option. The phone offers an inbuilt phone manager that scans apps, informs you about junk files, apps that take space and stuff like that! So no need for an external anti virus app. Video calling works so well and flawless in 4G.In addition, Huawei offers special features like backup, touch functions for calls, gestures for apps and what not! Honor 6 is nothing short of a marvel and I'm proud to say this is the best budget phone that I've ever had!