Huawei Honor U8860
The article will provide a user with information on Huawei Honor U8860.
The mid-range smartphone segment is always an exciting place to be in. Here we have phones that offer the perfect compromise between features, performance and value and every once in a while, we’ll get a high-end phone that drops in to make way for new offerings in the upper segments. In India, this sweet spot for phones is typically in the 18K to 22K price range. Today we’ll be looking at a new entrant from Huawei, and when I say new, I mean in the Indian market. Huawei launched the Honor U8860, back in December of 2011 and it only recently hit our streets. Let’s see if it has what it takes to find a place in this crowded group.
Design and Build
The Honor U8860 is a perfectly presentable phone, something a user won’t be ashamed of flaunting among his/her friends. From the front, it’s reminiscent of the iPhone 4 with an all black bezel and rounded edges. Up top, we have the earpiece and the front-facing VGA camera. Down at the bottom are the usual set of capacitive buttons. There’s no mention of any anti-scratch glass or coating on the screen, but it does manage to hold up well with everyday use. Fingerprints are a big problem and since the brightness levels of the LCD aren’t great, using it in direct sunlight is a real challenge. The Honor measures 11mm in depth and weighs around 140g, so it’s not the slimmest, but it’s far from bulky. The reason for this extra heft is the chunky battery in the phone.
For connectivity, we have a microUSB port at the bottom, besides the microphone, while the volume rocker and power/sleep buttons take up their usual spots. Around the back, we have a textured rear panel with the Huawei logo and speaker grill. The memory card slot does not support hot-swap, though. The camera is an 8MP sensor and a user will also get an LED flash. In the box, a user can get a charger, data cable and a headset. Overall, the Honor doesn’t really come across as a phone that costs 20K, as it feels more like a 15K and below phone. Having said that, the build quality is pretty good and we didn’t find any creaking parts or weak spots – it feels rugged and durable.
Interface
The Huawei Honor U8860 comes with Gingerbread, along with their own skin. They say that it is possible to upgrade it to ICS, although nothing has happened yet, so don’t hold breath. The skin is a mash up between a bunch of other skins and has the look and feel of LG’s UI, along with similar icons from Samsung’s TouchWiz and topped off with a sprinkle of iOS. I like what they’ve done with the lock screen, which gives a user with a quick access to phone features or to unlock the phone. The interface is pretty quick overall, thanks to the 1.4GHz Qualcomm MSM8255T SoC, along with the Adreno 205 GPU.
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