We go hands-on with the Honor 4C!

Back in December we were fortunate enough to get an early look at the Honor 4X, Hauwei’s bang-for-the-buck device meant to compete with the likes of the Meizu M1 Note and Xiaomi’s other offerings. Today we’ll be taking a look at the LTE-less version of that device, the 4C. The 4C has a lot in common with the 4X, and have been stripped of the former’s LTE capabilities to get it down to a very competitive price point. Let’s take a look at the specs:

Huawei Honor 4C specs:

• 1.2GHz Kirin 620 octa-core 64-bit processor
• 2GB of RAM
• 5-inch HD IPS display, 720 x 1280 resolution
• 8GB of storage, expandable via microSD
• 13-megapixel rear camera
• 5-megapixel front camera
• Dual-SIM
• 3G, HSPA+
• WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, A-GPS
• Android 4.4 KitKat with Emotion UI
• 2550mAh battery

Initial Impressions: Another very solid phone from Huawei

Huawei’s Honor brand in China was created by the company to go up against juggernauts like Xiaomi and Meizu in the affordable, internet sales-only market. It’s no surprise then that the spec sheet of the 4C is very good for the price segment it’s trying to play in (more on that in a moment). The phone is kind of like a thicker, chunkier version of the Honor 4X, though obviously it’s smaller in overall size since it only has a 5-inch display compared to the 5.5-inch one on the 4X.

The body is made out of plastic, and uses the same textured, back case setup as the 4X. Looking at the 4C it’s obvious that Huawei used most of the design language that they utilized when they made the 4X on the 4C. Everything down to the button placement and shell scallops are the same on both devices.

 

Like the 4X, you can take the textured back cover of the 4C out to reveal the dual SIM slots plus the microSD slot that allows you to bump up the 8GB of storage on board.

Just below the 5-inch display is the Android capacitive keys and just like the Mate7 and the Honor 4X it’s patterned after the ones in Android Lollipop. And just like those devices, the 4C still runs Android 4.4 KitKat, on top of which is Huawei’s own EMUI.

Just like the 4X, the 4C is powered by the company’s own, homegrown Kirin 620 processor, which is paired with 2GB of RAM. As far as benchmarks go the Kirin 620 is capable of producing good numbers in AnTuTu, and overall the phone feels really fast and responsive, even though it only sports Android 4.4 KitKat. Since the 620 is a 64-bit processor, we’re fairly certain that Huawei will be producing a Lollipop update for the 4C especially since they’ve already announced their upgrade plans for a couple of their other phones.

The Huawei Honor 4C is priced at Php 6990, which tells us that Huawei wants to take on ASUS and their Zenfone 5 at the sub 7K market. It’s not yet clear if ASUS will be continuing the Zenfone 5 after the official launch of the different Zenfone 2 SKUs, but there’s a good chance that the Zenfone 2 550CL will retail higher than the original Zenfone 5, which may also mean that the Zenfone 5 will be retained in the Php 6,995 price category.

If that’s true, then the 4C may give the ZF5 a fair bit of competition. While the ZF5 has more overall storage compared to the 4C, the latter’s octa-core Kirin SoC doesn’t have the same overheating issues as the Intel Z2560 SoC of the former. The 4C is also more powerful than the ZF5 (on paper) so it’ll be interesting to see how both phones stack up against one another.

The Huawei Honor 4C will be going on sale in a few weeks.