Last month Huawei announced the successor of Honor 4C, the all new Honor 5C in India and it is priced Rs 10,999 and available on Flipkart. The new Honor 5C comes with 5.2 inch Full HD display and is powered by Hisilicon Kirin 650 Octa Core processor coupled with 2GB RAM and 16GB internal storage.
Honor 5C is competing in the sub 15k segment which is already flooded with phones having great hardware. So will the Honor 5C be able to compete, let’s find out in this detailed review.
Here is the video review of the phone.
Design and Build:
Honor devices already have had good quality and so is the case with Honor 5C as well. The Honor 5C has lot of similarities with the Honor 5X in terms of the design. The phone also comes with brushed metallic finish on the rear panel. But the Honor 5C has a more redefined design and feels much better in hands. The edges are curved and the top and bottom panel has a textured design which actually looks good.
Another major change with respect to the design is that the 5C is smaller in size with a 5.2 inch display compared to 5.5 on Honor 5X. This makes the Honor 5C even more compact in hand. The edges are curved and we have the power button and volume rocker buttons on the right, the audio jack is placed on the top, a hybrid SIM tray on the left and the micro USB port and speaker grills at the bottom. It is available in three colors – Silver, gold and grey.
The rear panel has the 13MP camera which has a slight projection and also there is a fingerprint scanner along with LED flash. Overall, we would say the Honor 5C is one of the better looking and better built devices in this segment.
Display:
Honor 5C comes with a 5.2 inch Full HD (1920 X 1080P) display with 424PPI. While most of the phones in this segment comes with 5.5 inch display, Honor 5C has gone with a smaller one and it is quite compact to use. The display looks decent with good colors and sharpness. The brightness levels could have been a tad better especially when using it outdoors. The viewing angles are really good, but the display is a fingerprint magnet and attracts a lot of dirt. You might have to clean the display quite often. Similar to Honor 5X, there is no protection offered on the display, instead the company has a screen guard in place.
Software:
Honor 5C comes with Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow and a custom UI on top of it. The EMUI is version 4.1 on the Honor 5C. The EMUI 4.1 looks similar to the one on Honor 5X, but there has been some tweaks to the notification area and also the settings and it now feels a bit more polished. Under the settings, you can see a plethora of options to customize the device.
The phone comes with themes support and once you have inserted the SIM card in the device you have the option to download themes from the store. You can also customize the themes to create your own theme with ringtones, icons, lock screen etc. The phone also comes with Magazine unlock option which serves a new wallpaper every time you switch on the display.
Honor has also implemented additional options like one-handed UI, motion control and also dual windows. The phone also has apps like Mirror, magnifiers, flashlight, recorder,FM radio and more.
Honor 5C has fingerprint scanner located on the rear panel and you can configure it from the settings. Other than unlocking the device, you can also use the fingerprints to open apps. This can be configured in the fingerprint settings.
There is also a phone manager app which provides with options like phone accelerator, storage cleaner, call blocked, power saver, traffic manager, do not disturb, app lock and more. Finally, you can also customize the three on screen buttons but adding a new button or changing the position. Overall, the EMUI is a feature rich UI offering lots of additional options and it feels more refined with 4.1 and Android 6.0.
Performance:
Honor 5C is powered by the in house processor, the HiSilicon Kirin 650 Octa core processor which is a 16nm processor and is coupled with 2GB RAM. The performance of the device in day to day usage was very good and we hardly felt any lag. This wasn’t the case with Honor 5X. The company has taken time to optimize the EMUI with 4.1 and it is really smooth experience.
It might not have the most powerful chipset of high capacity RAM, but it does the job well and is hassle free. The gaming experience of the device is also quite good and we didnt have any major issues playing high graphic rich games. The speaker performance was just average and it is best when you listen with earphones.
The call quality on the device was quite good and we did not have any issues with dropped calls. The phone also comes with 4G LTE support and dual SIM cards. Since it is a hybrid SIM card, you can use dual SIMs or a micro SD Card to expand the storage. The fingerprint scanner is also quite quick to unlock the device and is more or less accurate.
Camera:
The Honor 5C comes with a 13MP rear camera with f/2.0 auto focus and LED flash. There is also an 8MP front camera with f/2.0 for selfies. The camera interface on the Honor 5C has been revamped and now comes with plethora of options and modes. There is even manual mode for images and videos as well.
There is also modes like light painting; food mode; and all-focus. The interface is one of the best in terms of features offered on a smartphone in this price segment. Talking about the camera performance, the photo quality is similar to what we have seen on Honor 5x, but slightly better. The color quality looks great and is natural with good sharpness levels. The overall clarity of the photos is excellent and one of the best we have seen in this price point. The low light photography was also quite good for a device priced around 11k. Noise levels have been kept to minimum making them look good. The front facing camera has also been bumped up to 8MP and works very well. Overall, Honor 5C has one of the best cameras for a phone in this segment. Here are some of the samples taken with the device.
Battery Life:
Honor 5C comes with a 3000mAh battery similar to 5X, but does not feature quick charging. We tested the battery performance on a day to day usage and found that the battery performance is very good on the phone nad you can easily get through a day of battery life even with heavy usage. With moderate usage, you can even get more than a day. Overall, similar to 5X, the 5C also comes with good battery performance.
Verdict:
Honor 5C is probably the best all round budget offering from Huawei right now with a mixture of good software, performance, camera and battery life. There aren’t too many areas where you can find fault with the Honor 5C, a few of them could be lack of fast charging, hybrid SIM card and also no protection offered on the display.
Overall, we feel the Honor 5C is a good buy at Rs 10,999.
