Honor 8 Device Unveiling Recap

Last night I had the awesome opportunity to attend an event hosted by Honor and Huawei. The event was well attended and there were many familiar faces there. I saw Joshua from Bane-Tech, Tim from Qbking77, Juan from Talk Android News, Kevin the Tech Ninja, Zedomax and many, many more people! The highlight of the event was definitely getting to see all the people but the device unveiling was a pretty close runner-up.

The evening began with drinks and hors d’oeuvres in the Tusher African Hall at the California Academy of Sciences. All around us were exhibits featuring stuffed African animals, there was blue LED lighting everywhere and there was some loud music thumping in the background. The hors d’oeuvres were scarce but there were lots of drinks to be had. After allowing everyone to spend some time visiting we were ushered past some aquariums and in to a room with a stage at the front. Joshua, Juan and I were fast enough that we made it in to the fourth row.

The first person on stage was the mistress of the event, Amy Paffrath.  She introduced, George Zhao, the President of Honor. George went over several interesting tidbits about Honor, covering everything from their growth rate, market share, user base, Pokémon Go and more. One of the points he made repeatedly was that their target market was “Millennials” or those who are between the ages of 18 and 34. George made a point of saying that they were targeting those “who are young and young at heart.” Currently 80% of their user base falls in to that category. They then took surveys of people within the millennial age range to find what it was they used their devices for. They took that data and used it to come up with the “3 Pillars of Honor’s Philosophy.” Those pillars are Innovation, Quality and Style. One last point that George made was, “Smartphones are too expensive, today we change it all, ‘Flagship doesn’t equal high prices.’”

George then handed the reins over to Taylor Wimberly, the Honor 8 Product Manager. Focusing on the 3 Pillars that George introduced, Taylor then introduced us to the Honor 8.

The back of the Honor 8 comes with 15 layers of glass that were made using a milled 3D diffraction grating. What this means is that when looking at the back of the device it will reflect light in different patterns, based on the angle of the light on the device. The glass on the front and the back of the device merges seamlessly with the metal frame and gives it a very smooth look and feel. Completing the smooth look is the dual cameras that Honor included. I’m not sure how they did it but they did it in such a way that the back of the device is completely flat! There was literally no bump for the cameras! The device comes in three different colors, Sapphire Blue, Midnight Black and White. The blue looks especially sharp with the glass back and was by far my favorite of the three colors.

The Honor 8 comes with a Kirin 950 processor, 4GB of LPDDR4 memory and either 32GB or 64GB of storage. It also comes with two 12 megapixel lens that work independently to create a better picture quality by taking a photo in black and white, and another in color and merging them together. It also comes with an 8 megapixel front facing camera for the occasional selfie.

The device supports 4 2G bands, 5 3G bands and 10 4G bands. Of those 4G bands it includes band 12 which means you get VoLTE! It also comes with what they referred to as smart dual-antenna switching. This allows the device to look at the available connections, to pick the best connection and then automatically make the switch to it. They claim that the technology used will also guarantee that when you take your phone out of airplane mode you will be the first person to get service.

The Honor 8 has a 5.2 inch FHD screen with a 96% NTSC color reproduction. This means you will have a more vibrant screen with better coloration than you will with many other devices. Further enhancing the screen is the built-in 3D color temperature adjustment. The device detects the available lighting and then adjusts the coloring of the screen to give you the best view with the least amount of eye strain.
Powering all of this is a 3,000 mAh battery that supports 9V/2A fast charging. You could binge watch 630 minutes of video or listen to 1,000 songs before running your battery out. You can then turn around and with 30 minutes of charging get it back up to 47%!

All of those features make for a great device but what really grabbed my attention was when Taylor started talking about the camera. The 12MP dual-lens camera uses separate sensors to take pictures with stunning quality. The first sensor takes the image in color and the second takes it in black and white. It uses some insane tech wizardry to combine the two images together and give you an end result that looks like it was done with a professional DSLR. And that is without using the various camera modes or features!

At the end of the event we were given the opportunity to try the device at a demo station. Each demo station was staffed by at least two Honor representatives who were able to show us all the nitty-gritty details. The drinks and hors d’oeuvres were back (and there were a lot more of the hors d’oeuvres this go around). I was able to meet Taylor and several members of his team in person and talk with everyone and play with the Honor 8.

At the end of the event there were gift bags for everyone. Imagine my excitement when I opened mine and found my very own, Sapphire Blue Honor 8. I’ve already started playing with it and am having a blast! This is a great device and I can’t wait to do a full review for everyone!

Thank you to Honor for making this happen!  It was an honor to be a part of the event and to see the device unveiling!  I look forward to more in the future!