With dual cameras again, can Honor V8 lead the brand to charge into the high-end market?

When talking about Huawei and Honor, the word that comes to mind must be business. Perhaps the P9 launch event in London last year will add a touch of "dual camera" to this impression. The 1200W pixel dual rear camera lens co-created with the German old camera brand Leica has made "dual camera" a term with rich color in the development of mobile phone cameras.

Perhaps because of this, when the news came out that Honor V8 will use dual cameras, the onlookers in the industry and outsiders were probably not too surprised. Instead, they were more curious and speculative: when the dual cameras lose Leica, based on the understanding of Honor 7, what kind of phone will Honor V8 become?

With the same feeling, I carefully unboxed the Honor V8 phone I bought. It is said that the outer packaging of the Honor V8 is also a VR glasses box. This small design is quite interesting. Products are like life, which should be interesting to be comfortable, right?

Looks like the P9's twin brother?

I bought a champagne gold Honor V8. I know that the front of Honor and Huawei phones are very similar, so I quickly turned to the back to take a look. The Honor V8 camera is different from the P9. The two lenses are placed in a waist-shaped frame. This is probably the most obvious difference.

The Smart Key and Power Key are all on the right side of the phone, below the volume key, and the headphone jack is on the top left of the phone.

The back has a waist-shaped dual camera, the logo is located at the bottom of the back, and the infrared camera is on the right side of the camera, centered

Looking at the details more closely, in addition to the position of the smart key on the side and the headphone jack on the top, which are the same as Honor 7, the lens and flash have been completely moved to the top area, the Honor logo has been moved to the bottom of the phone, and the Honor logo has also been added to the bottom of the front. The appearance design of Honor V8 does not look like the successor of Honor 7, but rather like the twin brother of Huawei P9.

Of course, the metal body and large screen-to-body ratio are the consistent styles of Honor. The curved design on the back of the Honor V8 is a pleasant surprise. The Honor series uses fingerprint recognition function more frequently, so the curved design of the Honor V8 will make the grip more comfortable when using fingerprint recognition.

In general, the Honor V8 continues the main features of most Honor products in appearance, but in terms of specific details, it is more like Huawei products rather than its own Honor 7. Perhaps it is an illusion brought to the author by the dual cameras.

After booting up, the metal-textured icons of EMUI4.1, combined with the traditional Android layout, have long been labeled as business-style by the Huawei brand, but Honor V8 does not seem to have made any "youthful" adjustments to the details. It seems that Honor has not put much effort into creating a youth-themed phone in terms of appearance.

What is gratifying is that Huawei Honor V8 finally narrowed the black borders that were difficult to look at in previous Honor series phones. However, the home button, back button, and menu button are still integrated into the black function area below the screen, without physical buttons. Users have mixed opinions about the feature of virtual function keys, but I believe that the Honor series will continue to maintain its own characteristics.

A changing fashion interior

The Honor V8 uses HiSilicon Kirin 955 octa-core CPU, Mali-T880 GPU, and 4GB RAM. At the same time, the Honor V8 announced that it will use a 2K screen with mature technology for the first time, which directly enables the Honor V8 to dare to challenge VR applications based on mobile phone platforms.

Judging from the processor data alone, Honor V8's non-graphics processing capabilities should be at the same level as Xiaomi MAX released at the same time, that is, the CPU capabilities are roughly equivalent to those of mobile phones equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 820. However, the graphics processing capabilities of Mali-T880 are quite ordinary and cannot really meet the needs of the younger generation for large-scale games.

I originally wanted to download a large mobile game to test the performance, but I didn't expect that many common large games are not compatible with the Android 6.0 system, and naturally the EMUI 4.1 customized based on Android 6.0 is also not compatible. So I had to use "Hearthstone" to test it. Of course, this game, which is quite challenging for Android phones, may not be convincing enough. As expected, Hearthstone had obvious lag on the Honor V8, and the program had a certain chance of freezing. It seems that the Honor V8 still has a long way to go if it wants to truly challenge high-end products.

The 2K screen experience is quite good, and the screen is much more delicate than non-2K screen phones. The Honor V8 also comes with a 1080P mode for power saving, which can be switched to reduce screen power consumption. The only drawback is that the Honor V8 screen backlight is relatively soft, which may be related to its latest version of intelligent eye protection technology, which sometimes makes the delicate texture of the 2K screen a bit gloomy.

Honor V8 inherits the intelligent services of the Honor series, which cannot be fully demonstrated in this mobile phone experience. At this stage, the author does not have the conditions to test whether Skylink can roam for free in multiple countries, and whether it can automatically switch to the most suitable network in a complex network environment. Although the author used a mobile phone card that often receives fake base station text messages for testing, he did not receive any fake base station text messages during the test. But it is not certain whether what Honor V8 said about blocking fake base stations from the bottom is really reliable. Is there a certain probability that real text messages will be blocked together, and is it possible to be easily cracked by fake base stations? These doubts must be left to the future.

However, Honor V8 integrates many common intelligent services that mobile phone users may need, and this idea is quite in line with youth elements. For example, one of the designs I like very much is the multi-screen function, which is a timely help for me who needs to use two programs at the same time and compare them in real time. This function is integrated in the virtual menu key on the lower row, which is very convenient to press and hold.

Background blur

Foreground blur

Speaking of functions, we naturally have to mention the dual-camera photography function. The 1200W pixel rear dual-camera and 800W pixel front-facing camera are quite impressive. Although the Honor V8's lens does not seem to use Leica this time, the images taken are still acceptable. The black and white and color dual sensors, F/2.2 aperture, dual-color temperature flash, hybrid focus and other functions are the same as the P9 with the same dual camera, but it is rumored that there are differences in technical details.

If Honor doesn’t follow the “youth path”, its future is uncertain

Nowadays, developing youth-version products with excellent cost-effectiveness for young user groups has become a favorite strategy of major smart electronic product manufacturers. It has to be said that for most user groups with limited economic conditions, high cost-effectiveness is often the first reference condition for choosing a brand.

Since its inception, Honor has hoped to be a distinctive brand that is different from Huawei series and more youthful and fashionable. Unlike the assimilation of appearance, Honor V8 is remarkable in its content. Perhaps Honor hopes that users will pay more attention to the difference in internal experience rather than the similarity in appearance, which is in line with the innovation principle that Honor insists on.

As for the price, the 64GB all-network version with NFC function is 2799 RMB, which is aimed at users with certain financial strength and eager to experience new functions. The Honor V8, with a configuration that is not too different from the Huawei P9, is rapidly approaching the Huawei P9 in all aspects. Will it cause mutual suppression of the two markets, or is it actually a forward-looking strategic adjustment of the Honor brand? The market has yet to witness it.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.