Honor a sub-brand of Huawei has launched their second smartphone for India, meet the Honor 8 Lite. It’s a Lite version of the popular Honor 8. The phone is available on sale offline and is priced at Rs 17,999. The price point makes it interesting as not many choices are there to make among smartphones that are between Rs 15,000- Rs 20,000. Moreover, the choices that one gets are mostly available online and are commonly out of stock. Honor 8 Lite tries to change that as it will be available for retail in all probability at your nearest mobile shop. But does it have the ability to make our cut? We get you the review of the Honor 8 Lite.
Honor 8 Lite is the stripped down version of the Honor 8m, but that does not mean it is not a looker. The Honor 8 Lite has a lot of resemblance to the Honor 8 in terms of the looks. It sports a beautiful glass body that’s strong and shiny. There is no camera bump at the rear of the device which makes the back of this device seamless and comfortable to hold. There is also a fingerprint sensor at the back that nicely integrates with the body shell of this smartphone. The speakers are placed at the bottom of the device and upfront it sports a full HD display with a 2.5D curved glass. The 5.2-inch display is bright and offers great viewing angles as well.
There is no denying the fact that under Rs 20,000 this is the best-designed phone that money can buy. It looks different and premium, unlike many clone designs that you see in this price bracket. If you like to flaunt your phone then this is the one to buy. The glass back is also a bit scratch resistant and our recommendation to you if you buy this phone is to use it without a cover. Honor does bundle a transparent plastic cover inside the box of the Honor 8 Lite though.
Performance wise this smartphone also delivers on the money. It is powered by a Kirin 655 octa-core CPU that has four cores clocked at 2.1 GHz and the other four clocked at 1.7 GHz. That’s more than enough firepower that you’ll need for your daily usage. The Honor 8’s processor is also not a MediaTek one, so you don’t have to worry about heating issues or app crashes. The device also comes loaded with Android 7.0 Nougat operating system out of the box. So you basically get the latest OS to play around with the moment you unbox this device.
There is also 4GB RAM on offer and the RAM management on the Honor 8 Lite is better than many phones that are offered in the market right now, including those Xiaomi devices that are priced less than this one. Honor has also put in 64GB of onboard storage on this device and there is also expandable storage on offer.
The Honor 8 Lite sports a 12-megapixel rear camera with LED flash that offers decent images in good lighting conditions. The low light images are just decent. Also, unlike the Honor 8, the Honor 8 Lite comes with only one camera and does not feature a dual-camera setup, so no bokeh effect images for you on the Honor 8 Lite. The camera app is easy to use and does offer some great software add-ons like HDR, Document Scan, Panorama, Light Painting, Time-lapse, slow-mo, watermark and even Audio Note.
There is also a front 8-megapixel camera that’s capable of clicking some amazing selfies. It comes with two modes which are Perfect selfie and a standard beauty mode. The images are good enough on the selfie front and you really don’t require a flash for low-light selfies.
The device also is a 4G Ready and has VoLTE support. It’s a dual-SIM device with a hybrid SIM slot which has pretty much become a standard on phones these days. To top it all this phone has one of the lowest SAR values of just 0.76 W/kg.
Unlike the Honor 8, the Honor 8 Lite comes with a standard micro USB for charging and data tranfer. The Honor 8 had a USB type-C and had support for fast charging. On the Honor 8 Lite there is a 3000 mAh battery that lasts a day, but does not offer fast charging. This is where the Lite version of Honor 8 has had cost cutting. It takes a good amount f time to charge this device.
The Honor 8 Lite is also made by a Chinese tech giant, and shows that if they want they can make a good quality product that looks upmarket and is durable. The Honor 8 Lite is a refreshing phone interms of looks, where most of the sub Rs 20,000 smartphones have started to look like clones of each other. The specs on offer on the Honor 8 Lite are decent for a phone in this price range, but what makes this phone stand of of the crowd is the design and look.
Honor 8 Lite is a premium quality product that crafted beautifully and for those who want a practical phone with a good premium feel to it, this makes perfect sense.
