This year Huawei has come up with a new device, Honor 4C. Its price is a little less than Rs 9,000 and its specifications are also decent. We have reviewed this phone. This time we have tried to find out whether Huawei has succeeded in making the best budget device this time or not.
Look and design
When you pick up the Honor 4C, the first thing you will notice is its weight. It weighs 162 grams, which is more than most other smartphones available today. And this phone does not have a high capacity battery, which makes the situation worse. Apart from this, the thickness is 8.8 millimeters, which is also high. Plastic has been used to make the Honor 4C, while the rear side has a textured design. It looks good, but the phone cannot be gripped properly. It was slipping from our hands again and again. There is a metal plate on the top left side of the rear cover, which has a cutout for the primary camera and flash. At the same time, there are machined holes for the loudspeaker in the lower part. On removing the rear cover, the battery is visible, which cannot be taken out of the handset. Apart from this, there are three slots – one for microSD card and two for micro-SIM cards.
The volume rocker and power button are located on the right side of the phone. The power button is made of metal which is tactile. The micro-USB port and microphone are located at the bottom of the handset, while the top also houses a 3.5mm audio port. There are three capacitive buttons below the screen to use the operating system, but they are not backlit. Above the display are the earpiece, front facing camera and LED indicators for notifications.
Specifications and software
Huawei has used its 1.2GHz octa-core Kirin 920 SoC in the handset and it is supported by 2GB of RAM. The Honor 4C has 8GB of inbuilt storage, which can be expanded up to 32GB via microSD card. The phone has a 13-megapixel primary camera, which is excellent and the handset also has a 5-megapixel front-facing camera for selfies.
One disappointing thing about the Honor 4C is that it does not support 4G networks. We believe this should be a default feature as LTE rollouts are happening at a rapid pace. Other connectivity features include Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth v4.0, and FM radio. The battery capacity is 2550mAh.
The 5-inch IPS panel has a resolution of 720×1280, with a pixel density of 294ppi. The screen is crisp and colours are natural, but it is dull even at the highest brightness. Viewing angles are also poor. It becomes a bit difficult to read anything on the screen in sunlight.
The phone runs Android 4.4.2 with Huawei’s Emotion UI 3.0 skin on top. It’s disappointing that the phone doesn’t come with Android Lollipop out of the box. The skin doesn’t have an app drawer, so the homescreen is cluttered with apps. The UI looks sleek and is smooth to use. Like previous Honor devices, the handset features a one-handed UI and suspend button. Overall, the experience is good.
Performance and camera
Huawei has done a great job of optimising the performance of the software and hardware. The combination of octa-core SoC and 2GB of RAM ensures that the phone runs smoothly and we never faced any issues. Some buyers of this handset have complained of heating up on various platforms but we did not notice any such issues during benchmarks and battery tests. High-end games ran smoothly without any lags.
In AnTuTu and GFXbench tests, the phone scored 24,139 and 6,435 points respectively. Even though the GFXbench score is low, the AnTuTu score is much higher than other phones in this price range. In the 3DMark Ice Storm test, the phone scored 5,803, which is once again higher than many phones.
The phone had no problem playing all our video samples. One complaint we have always had with Honor phones is their sound quality. The speaker and earpiece produce very low sound. You will need a headset to enjoy music and videos. We did not face any call drops and the connection remained intact even in network congested areas during our tests. During the video loop test, the phone lasted for 8 hours and 5 minutes before switching off, which is quite good.
The 13-megapixel rear camera shoots fast. It takes very little time to focus and most importantly, captures pictures with a lot of detail. Natural colours are very pleasing to the eyes. We did not notice any chromatic aberration or barrel distortion. We are very happy with the camera performance. Low light performance is not great, but not bad either. The camera captures 1080p video, the quality of which was decent. The 5-megapixel front camera can also capture pictures with good detail.
Our verdict
We believe that Huawei has launched a very good handset at this price. The Honor 4C has a good camera, it performs tasks quickly and there is no useless software. It would have been better if the Honor 4C weighed less and the sound quality was better, but these are minor issues. If buying a 4G phone is not that important for you, then the Honor 4C is a good option for Rs 8,999. In this price range, you can buy Yu Yureka, Lenovo A6000 Plus and Lenovo A7000.