The world's third biggest smartphone maker, Chinese company Huawei, saw huge growth in 2015 but it remains practically a nonentity in the U.S. market. It's hoping to change that with a combination of high-end models under the Huawei name, as well as budget smartphones under the "Honor" sub-brand, the first of which we're reviewing here.
Huawei launched the Honor brand in the U.S. at CES earlier this year without much fuss, and without any mention of the Chinese company at its press conference. For anyone who didn't know, it would be difficult to tell that Huawei is the company behind the Honor brand. The reason for different branding is to separate the premium devices like the Mate 8 from cheaper devices like the Honor 5X, but also feeds into the fact that Huawei's brand in the U.S. is still tarnished due its ties to the Chinese government, which have prevented it from selling networking equipment here.
So, is the Honor 5X Any Good?
The first phone in the Honor range to hit the U.S. is priced at $199 and is on sale now directly through the online Honor store.
The sales pitch for the Honor 5X is that for under $200 customers get a lot of smartphone – and that is certainly true. The phone is big, with a large 5.5-inch Full HD screen, a metallic rear cover, a fingerprint sensor, 3GB of RAM and a 13 megapixel camera. These are all features customers typically don't expect to find on a sub-$200 smartphone.
The design of the smartphone is OK, but there is a reason the phone's website only shows you the brushed aluminum rear cover of the smartphone, as the white plastic front surround of the silver model is pretty ugly – though the gold and grey models do look nicer.
The Honor 5X is a big phone and it can be hard to use one-handed, though for those looking for a big screen on a budget, this is likely your best option. It's 5.5-inch screen can't compete with the likes of the iPhone 6S Plus or Galaxy Note 5 in terms of clarity and sharpness, but it doesn't have to. The screen is perfectly good and whether watching videos, playing games or browsing the web, it is hard to fault.
The fingerprint sensor – again an option missing from almost almost all smartphones at this price – is fast and reliable. It is not as fast as the sensor on Huawei's Mate S but it is not far behind and is much better than the fingerprint readers on some so-called premium models. It allows you unlock the phone, cancel an alarm, take a selfie by tapping or pulling up notifications by swiping.
The other sensor on the rear, the 13 megapixel camera sensor, is also a step up from typical budget fare. While it struggles in low light conditions, it is still a perfectly serviceable camera for most situations. You even get slow motion and time lapse video options. Battery life is also a positive with the Honor 5X typically giving you well over one day's usage.
The phone comes with just 16GB of storage but it includes a microSD card slot for adding up to 128GB of extra storage. The Snapdragon 615 chip from Qualcomm powering the device is decent and while the interface and apps were not as snappy as the more powerful phones on the market, they rarely caused any major frustrations.
What did cause some frustrations however was the software. The Honor 5X comes with software called EMUI which is a heavy skin of the Android operating system. All the typical Android elements are there, they are just hidden behind what appears to be an attempt to look more like iOS.
The result is a clunky and often frustrating interface where is it difficult to navigate and apps are so over-designed it is sometimes hard to remember what they are for. Some reviews of the phone suggest the software alone means you should not consider the Honor 5X but that would be a mistake. There are ways of getting around the problem.
The easiest is to download the Google Now Launcher. This app replaces Honor's interface with one which looks like stock Android. It means that while all of the EMUI apps are still there, they are at least now hidden in the app drawer and navigation feels much more natural.
EMUI is clearly something Huawei believes adds value to its smartphones, but in fact it does the opposite, by alienating people picking the phone up for the first time and simply not knowing what to do. "While I can understand that trying to offer an iOS like experience might make it easier for consumers to consider the device it also sets itself up for failing on the comparison so quite a risk," Carolina Milanesi, research director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech told International Business Times.
Overall the Honor 5X is an absolute bargain at $200. While the software is a bit flaky, customers will be able to work around that problem and considering the fingerprint sensor, metallic frame, decent camera and big screen, you are not going to get much better options at this price.
So Can Honor Help Huawei Crack the U.S. Market?
Huawei is the world's third biggest smartphone manufacturer and in 2015 it saw smartphone shipments soar to over 100 million units according to figures from market research firm Gfk. It grew smartphone sales by 44 percent at a time when the smartphone market globally grew by just 10.4 percent in the same period.
Huawei's success in 2015 was not just measured by increased sales, the company has also grown its brand awareness globally from under 3 percent in 2011 to 76 percent today. Its Net Promoter Score, a measure of the loyalty of a brand's customer relationships, has risen dramatically from –24 in 2013 to +47 today.
However there remains one glaring gap in Huawei's bid for global domination and that is the U.S. market where the Chinese company has virtually no presence with its market share still under 1 percent according to figures from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. Huawei has said it will continue to push its premium models under its own brand in the U.S. while trying to win market share with the cheaper Honor brand.
The company would not expand on how it plans to position and market the Honor brand in the U.S. in 2016 but some investment will be necessary. "Without further marketing investment, Huawei risks creating consumer perception that the Honor brand is merely a good value for money, limiting the value of their efforts to the lower end of their product portfolio," Milanesi said in a blog on how Chinese companies could make an impact in the U.S.
Unlike other brands, Honor has the ability to produce a sub-$200 featuring premium hardware thanks to the scale and resources provided by Huawei. This will give it an advantage over many other other manufacturers looking to capture U.S. customers who are moving away from subsidized handsets and don't want to pay a lot of money for a new smartphone.
The question remains, can Huawei convince Americans that Honor is a brand to trust?
Source: Honor 5X Review: Can Huawei's Budget Smartphone Really Help It Crack US Market?
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