We check out Honor’s latest budget offering!

Honor follows up last year’s entry-level Honor 7S with the Honor 8S. Bearing the same SRP as its predecessor, Honor made several internal and external updates with the Honor 8S that include a trendier waterdrop notch, dual-textured polycarbonate back, and a newer processor.

 

Packaging and contents

You get the same teal-colored box like last year’s Honor 7S. This time around, you have the photo of the phone itself in addition to the Honor 8S branding.

Inside the box, you have a 5W charger, MicroUSB cable, headset, documentation, SIM ejector tool, and the phone itself.

Trendier design

Compared to last year’s Honor 7S, the Honor 8S gets a visual upgrade starting with the back panel. While you get the same unibody polycarbonate build, Honor added visual flair by using a dual texture design. You get a mix of smooth and ribbed textures on the Honor 8S’ back panel— the smooth part being home to the 13-megapixel camera, LED flash, and updated Honor branding.

We like this finish as it is not a smudge magnet and is generally more scratch-resistant. We also like the fact that the camera bump is very small, making it easy to place the phone flat without worrying about scratching the camera lens.

The Honor 8S retains the compact and easy-to-grip size of its predecessor, along with the same port and button layout.

Aside from the dual-texture back panel, the Honor 8S gets a bigger and trendier 5.7-inch HD+ display. Honor trimmed down the top bezel and implemented a waterdrop notch housing the 5-megapixel camera. The earpiece is on top of the camera, while the LED notification light is tucked on the top right side.

More capable internals

Powering the Honor 8S is MediaTek’s Helio A22 processor. The processor comes with higher clock speed and a more power-efficient 12nm process compared to the MT6739 found on the Honor 7S. On our initial benchmark tests, the Honor 8S’ Helio A22 performed better than the Honor 7S’ MT6739, scoring a little over 64k in AnTuTu.

We will still have to do our battery of tests to determine if the new processor translates to improved performance in real life.

While you get the same 2GB RAM, the Honor 8S has double the internal storage at 32GB along with Android 9 and EMUI 9.0.1 out of the box. Battery capacity remains the same at 3020mAh, but the newer processor should make the Honor 8S more power-efficient than its predecessor.

Slight camera upgrade

Honor made small tweaks to the Honor 8S camera by giving its 13-megapixel rear snapper a brighter f/1.8 aperture (compared to f/2.2 on the Honor 7S). On paper, this should make the Honor 8S shoot better photos in low light. Check out some of the photos we took:

While the Honor 8S’ camera features are pedestrian—you only have photo, video, HDR, Pro, and beauty—the processor upgrade gives it the ability to shoot 1080P video.

That’s it for our quick review of the Honor 8S. The Honor 8S retails for Php 5,490.

Honor 8S specs

• MediaTek Helio A22 quad-core processor
• 2GB RAM
• 5.71-inch HD+ IPS display, 1520 x 720 resolution
• 32GB internal storage, expandable via microSD up to 256GB
• 13-megapixel f/1.8 rear camera with PDAF, LED flash
• 5-megapixel f/2.0 front camera
• Dual-SIM
• 3G, HSPA+, LTE
• WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, A-GPS
• Face unlock, USB OTG
• 3020mAh battery
• Android 9.0 Pie with EMUI 9.0