Huawei Honor 4X: A budget 4G smartphone stuffed with loads of utility
Huawei Honor 4X: A budget 4G smartphone stuffed with loads of utility
Phablets have become a fashion symbol today and like a branded piece of clothing, they typically come at a higher price tags, costing more than an average smartphone. However, that is not the case for the Huawei Honor 4X which was released in the end of 2014 but has recently made its place on the shelves of smartphone markets all over the world.
Huawei Honor 4X’s rich display, sharp design, superb battery life and most importantly the mediocre price tag make it something highly desirable but what else it can do to attract the potential buyers and is it enough to keep you from other top-notch phablets of the different brands or not, lets have a look at its detailed specifications.
Design
The Huawei Honor 4X’s hardware design is simply very smooth, allowing no mess. It’s a tall, rectangular device made of a white plastic rear which is also textured and there is an engraved the name ‘honor’ over it but it does not light up at all. At the top left of the rear, there resides a 13 mega pixels camera along with LED flash.
Opening up the rear can lead you towards two SIM card slots and both of them support 4G connectivity. There is also a Micro SD card that can expand the memory up to 32 GB. The battery is fixed and cannot be removed.
On the front of Honor 4X, you’ll find a small front facing camera of 5 mega pixels besides this, there is a black earpiece to receive calls. Just below it is a 5.5 inches big display screen and three traditional capacitive buttons at the bottom with simplistic silver icons.
The handset’s volume button on the right side blends seamlessly with the white rear which is extended to the edges and just beneath it there is a place for a black power button. The left side is free from any responsibility of buttons or ports and is totally plane. The headphone jack is at the top, a microUSB port and speaker phone is deployed at the bottom of Honor 4X.
Software & User interface
The 5.5-inch IPS display screen with 720 x 1280 resolution offered by Honor 4X is certainly bright and vibrant.
The colors and saturation are very decent and viewing angles are also great, chiefly due to the IPS technology embedded in the device.
The temperature of the display is perfectly nice, but you can also adjust it by going to the display settings.
Since the smartphone is powered by Android 4.4.2 KitKat with the Emotion UI 3.0 on top, there are a lot of utility apps for the users with the options to customize according to the requirements.
Interestingly, there are two home screen styles available for the Honor 4X users. The one is the standard mode which is just like the usual Android interface while the other one is more like a Windows phone with a simple layout and large icons.
One of the very handy thing that can be observed in Honor 4X is its lock screen which has a slider at the base. As soon as you pull it up, there comes quick access to calendar, calculator, torch and mirror. Moreover, you can also access the camera from here easily while the lock screen also displays a nice message every time you confront it.
From the active locked screen of Huawei Honor 4X, you can access the notifications and shortcuts as well and the icons from there can be adjusted according to a desired position.
Among the pre-installed features in Honor 4X, there is a Phone Manager which contains several options including phone accelerator, harassment filter, power saving, traffic manager, notification manager, permission manager, virus scanner and so on.
There is also an App Lock tool in the Phone Manager through which you can lock any of the apps and protect it with a password to ensure the privacy of your data.
The Tool folder in the user interface has some other utility apps such as Magnifier, Torch, Notepad, Recorder, FM radio, Backup etc.
The Themes app in this device allows the user to customize the font style, wallpaper, lock screen, home wallpaper from multiple themes readily available for download.
With tap and hold on the interface, you can add up to 9 home screens and access wallpapers, widgets, transitions, and layout.
Just like some hi-end devices like Samsung Note 4, Honor 4X has a very handy Suspend Button which is a virtual side key panel and has five icons that can perform some tasks very quickly including Back, Recent tasks, Home, Screen lock and one-touch optimization.
This suspend button can be activated from the ‘smart assistance’ option available in Settings and it can be dragged to left or right edges for easier access.
Processor & Performance
The Huawei Honor 4X packs 1.2GHz quad-core Cortex A53 processor, paired with 1GB of RAM and 4 GB internal memory Naturally this combination is capable of running a number of games, apps, and content from Google Play store.
The performance is pretty smooth and never found to be sluggish. The touch screen is super-responsive, and the apps installed in the handset run quickly and swiftly.
When it comes to benchmark tests, the Huawei Honor 4X scored 31478 on Antutu which is a proof of the sleek performance of this device.
The quality of video is very decent and the speakers are loud enough to watch movies or videos without handsfree.
Camera:
The autofocus rear camera of 13 megapixels takes some amazing shots in low lights as well which makes Honor 4X a value for money device.
There are some handful scene modes offered by Honor 4X along with Best photo mode to choose best photos out of multiple ones. You can add audio note and watermark to your photos which is very appealing. Below is the camera interface
In addition to this, both, the front and rear cameras offer beauty mode unlike most of the mid-range devices which only has beauty mode for selfies.
The 5 megapixels front camera works well in good light conditions though low lights results are also acceptable. Most of the features offered by front and rear cameras are common and capturing images with a 5.5 inches phablet and pretty sharp resolution is literally fun.
The Robust Battery:
Huawei has stuffed Honor 4X with a nice 3,000 mAh non-removable battery and surprisingly, this device is a monster in terms of battery life.
Throughout 4 continuous hours of extensive usage and exploring almost each and every feature of the device like capturing pictures, playing videos, listening to music, surfing the web, and gaming, the battery dropped to 43% only. However, most of the other devices even with same battery power can hardly sustain around 40% percent of charge under the same conditions.
Hence, in terms of battery, Honor 4X is pretty impressive and you will not be required to stay close to your charger all the time with this device.
Conclusion:
Surprisingly, Antutu Benchmark and Hardware info apps available on Google Play were unable to recognize the model name of Honor 4X and were displaying ‘unknown’ instead but this doesn’t really matter here.
What matters is that the Honor 4X packs an engaging interface and useful apps along with a sleek performance for a very reasonable price.
For sure, this device might not be the slimmest with some high-end tech devices around but if you want a powerful phone, big display, and pretty good camera without emptying your pocket, it’s a solid phone to go for.
The only sad part about Huawei’s Honor 4X is that it will not be launching in Pakistan, however, it is lately made available for the smartphone market of neighboring India.
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