Honor 5C Review

Weight: 120g | Dimensions: 142.6 x 71.8 x 7.1mm | OS: Android 6.0 | Screen size: 5-inch | Resolution: 720 x 1280 | CPU: Quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A53 | RAM: 2GB | Storage: 16GB | Battery: 2300mAh | Rear camera: 13MP | Front camera: 8MP

- Great value

- Solid performance

- Part metal frame

- Scatty camera

Honor used to be a specialist in low priced phones but most recent releases from the company have skewed a little more on the expensive end of the market.  That's except for the Honor 5C though.

The Honor 5C is a strong choice for your low cost mobile upgrade. It comes with a 5.2-inch Full HD screen, Android 6 Marshmalllow software and a powerful Kirin 650 processor.

There's also a powerful 13MP rear camera and an 8MP selfie shooter to capture your gorgeous face and send it to your friends and family.

Design and display

The first area in which Honor tries to get an edge over the Motorola Moto G is with the 5C's design. Rather than using an all-plastic shell, like a lot of cheaper phones, the Honor 5C's backplate is brushed aluminum.

Its sides are plastic, and the border between the metal and plastic parts very clear, but when it catches the light you can tell in an instant its back is the real deal. While the phone isn't all that pretty as a whole, at this price a hint of metallic glamour is a nice win.

Until fairly recently, a 5-inch phone under 250$/2500MAD would almost certainly have a 720p screen. 

The Honor 5C has a 5.2-inch 1080p IPS LCD that is among the best screens available for the price. It's sharp, and the colors are vivid, with only small sacrifices in terms of accuracy.

Interface and reliability

Many people turn their noses up at the software Honor puts on its phones; like parent company Huawei's phones and tablets, they use the Emotion UI interface. To be specific, the Honor 5C uses Emotion UI 4.1 on top of Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

Specs and benchmark performance

The Honor 5C has an 'in-house' processor. It's a HiSilicon Kirin 650, and HiSilicon is a subsidiary of Huawei, just like Honor. This is paired with 2GB RAM, which is the minimum you'd want to see in a mid-range phone running Android 6.0.

While the Kirin 650 is an octa-core processor, it's actually the least we'd expect for a 1080p phone. It's roughly the equivalent of a Qualcomm Snapdragon 617/615, using eight Cortex-A53 cores of which four are clocked at 2GHz, and four at 1.7GHz.

Battery

Like previous Honor phones such as the Honor 6 Plus, the 5C's battery life strategy is to use a big, high-mAh count unit. It's rated at 3000mAh, which is large for a phone with a 5.2-inch screen.

Camera

The Honor 5C's camera can take some really striking images for a budget phone. It's all down to the series of really quite good 13-megapixel sensors that started being used in cheap phones a couple of years ago.

This phone has a 13-megapixel f/2 rear camera, with most likely either a Sony or Samsung sensor. Much like the screen, it offers the sort of experience you would have had to pay top dollar for a couple of years ago.

In daylight, colors are vivid and largely natural-looking, the level of detail is excellent, and a mix of good dynamic range and sensible metering deliver shots that generally look good, and at times look quite terrific. 

Its selfie camera is good too. Honor is actually keener to boast about this front camera, an 8MP Sony/Hynix sensor. It too has an f/2 lens, can capture quite a lot of detail, and renders colors naturally.