MobileTechTalk Honor have just launched their new budget friendly device, the Honor 5c, to the UK market and it really is a doozy.
The 5c is one of those devices that punches above it’s weight and it really succeeds. Honor are really playing up a few things here, the Kirin 650 SoC which is an octa-core SoC built upon TSMC’s new 16nm FF+ process, the 5.2″ 1080p IPS display and the 13mp BSI camera.
The Honor 5c is just amazing value for money. Before I even had hands 
on with the device I could have told you that. Specs don’t make a device great, but a lot of the time it helps, and honestly, I’m glad they made this device as packed to the gills as they could. Everything about this device screams awesome, whether it be the no-nonsense display, which looks fantastic in the press briefing we had. The unit we had was a dark grey which, no matter the angle we looked at there didn’t seem to be colour inversion or degradation which is nice to see on a device of this cost.
Next up I want to talk about the SoC choice. This is probably the best thing that Honor could have done and it makes 
me a little sad that they could have put it in the Honor 5X earlier this year. The Kirin 650 is an Octa-Core Chipset, comprised of 8 Cortex A53’s clocked anywhere between 480Mhz and 2Ghz. The CPU choice is great as adding in a few Cortex A72’s would have dramatically increased cost, and removing 4 and clocking them higher wouldn’t have given much more performance, in fact, it would have decreased it. TSMC’s new 16nm FinFET+ process node was used to make the Kirin 650 and this was another great choice the guys at Honor made, whilst it is cheaper to use the tried and true 28nm process, Honor/Huawei made the choice to use the newer and more advanced nodes for lower power consumption, lower heat output and higher clock speeds to their advantage, I honestly can’t overstate how important it was that they used this, and it really is something they’ve used to their advantage. Lastly the Kirin 650 uses one of the newer Mali T830 GPUs, a capable and powerful GPU that is the icing on the cake of making this device roar.
Honor also decided to use a 13mp BSI sensor with the brand new SLR quality ISP (Image Signal Processor) to great effect, the Camera (which I can’t decide if it’s Samsung or Sony made) produces fantastic shots, is fast with incredibly low shutter lag and fast exposure, It’s hard to judge a camera on a half hour demo, and I will be able to elaborate more once I get one in for review. I Have also been informed that the Honor 5c fully adheres to the Camera2 API from Google which is why the camera app is so full featured, a good find on flagship devices, a cracker on a budget one!.
Selfies are another of the main focuses of the 5c and for good reason, the 5c is being aimed at students and as is obvious with the lower cost. The sensor is another BSI module this time at 8mp with an F2.0 aperture and one of the great ISPs from the back. snapping a few selfies with people around the Honor Office I was able to get decently exposed, quickly snapped that looked good enough for Instagram.
Battery is a 3000mAh non-removable unit. I can’t say what the battery is like from this quick hands-on, but with a 1080p screen, large battery and an efficient 16nm processor, it should easily last you through a day, and Honor say 1.34 days.
