Huawei Honor 4X review: Multi-day battery life ahoy

Here’s a smartphone category that is right now molten--the enticing 10K price barrier. From the smartphone stalwarts to the young upstarts, its a maelstrom of products that are vying for attention.

Irrespective of your choice, the basic requirements for the overwhelming majority of cellphone users are fairly defined: a battery that lasts at least a full working day, a reasonably sharp screen, and a camera that takes decent photos. Anything else is icing. These days, the entry level has been unarguably set at Rs 7,000 (well, Rs 6,999 precisely)--both the Moto E and the Redmi 2 are at it tooth and nail here, with several other brands snapping at their heels. Then there’s Rs 10,000 price limit, which is where things get interesting: the variation in features of phones at this price is surprisingly wide. Some tilt the scales toward better gaming performance, some offer heightened battery life, while others manage to pack slightly larger and higher resolution screens. There’s something for everyone.

Which brings us to the Huawei (pronounced “who-ah-weigh”) Honor 4X that was launched last week along with its bigger sibling the Honor 6 Plus (of course the latter is cocking a snook at Apple’s flagship phone). The Honor 4X is priced at Rs 10,499 and is a 5.5-inch dual SIM LTE phone. Much like Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 4G--in fact they’re virtually identical in specification--this one is characterized by a hefty battery and is otherwise powered by mainstream-level hardware: an ideal formula for a device that offers prolonged battery life with decent performance for everyday tasks. Let’s step up and look closer.

At a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixel, this phone’s 5.5-inch screen is nowhere near retinal display: it packs about 267 pixels per inch, a level where an average person cannot discern individual pixels on screen. Also the visuals are surprisingly clean and crisp. Also unlike other brands that are wont to bump up color saturation to make images ‘pop’, this one was balanced, with excellent brightness and contrast and natural colors.

The core hardware is mainstream level--the phone’s Snapdragon 410 based platform makes no bones about this fact. But this new part is more power efficient compared to its predecessor while featuring improvements in processing efficiency, amply demonstrated as we used the phone. The phone’s Emotion UI, which is a skinned version of Android 4.4.4 (monthly updates are promised, though no word on Lollipop availability) packs neat features such as launching common apps from the lock screen using gestures and shortcut buttons, an on-screen button for quick access to common controls and more. While there is 8GB of specified built-in memory, only a shade over 4GB is available for use, which is a bit of a downer. There is a microSD card, but which can take only a 32 GB card.

 During extensive daily use consisting of always-on WiFi, 3G data, continuous Bluetooth connectivity to a smartwatch and using a range of web, productivity apps and gaming, the phone refused to drain even two days being unplugged (see screenshot). This is unprecedented stuff. Its 3,000 mAH battery coupled with its power-efficient Snapdragon 410 hardware platform along with software-based optimizations (like when the phone regularly notifies you of apps that are overly power-hungry) all clearly do a spectacular job in translating into real-world endurance.

On the photo front, its 13 MP rear camera performed reasonably well across scenarios, nothing to set it apart though. These days features like ‘beauty enhancers’ and the like are all the rage; unfortunately this phone succumbs and includes such gimmicks. I found them all but useless, but they’re great for getting a kick out of. It also has an ‘all-focus’ mode that lets you choose the focus point in your photo after taking the shot. I found this feature worked erratically--clearly it isn’t Lytro-level image processing, but appeared to be some type of pseudo blur-applying algorithm. The panorama and HDR modes did function as expected, and overall the camera was snappy to respond, but overall the primary camera is very middling. The secondary camera is 5MP, resulting in higher-resolution selfies, but is average so far as front cameras go.

This phone is clearly optimized for staying alive between charges, while delivering all the performance that general smartphone use mandates. There are a few downsides like the fact that the battery is fixed, so it isn’t user-changeable. But the ability to use a smartphone without worrying about it dying out over the course of the day is indeed refreshing. And when it lasts for over two days at this price? It’s quite a breakthrough. For the 10K price brigade, the Honor 4X is a first among equals.

What we liked: Truly stellar battery life, sharp screen, good UI optimization and features

What we didn’t: Average camera, non-removable battery, 4GB of available internal memory and only up to 32 GB microSD cards supported