Huawei has no plans to officially launch the Honor 5X in Canada
On the software side the 5X packs a familiar build of Android 5.1 Lollipop dressed in the app-drawerless EMUI (Emotion UI) 3.1, already extensively employed by both Honor and Huawei. The inclusion of a fingerprint scanner on the phone’s back is another nice differentiator at this price point. We caught our first glimpse of the phone at CES 2016, and since then there’s been a steady trickle of news and updates about the phone.
The speaker and microphone grilles are placed symmetrically on the base of the phone’s body, with Honor claiming that the enlarged speaker chamber inside the body of the 5X means that it’s up to 18 per cent louder than the competition, it’s hard to prove such a claim without knowing exactly what they’re pitting the 5X against though. Internal storage is a little disappointing at 16GB, but the Huawei-made smartphone lets you expand that to up to 128GB via microSD card. Now, we’ve reviewed a few Honor phones and there’s something that they all have in common: good performance, smart design and value for money. The company says that it’s air-brushed with a ceramic coating.
Oh, and there’s also a fingerprint reader on the rear, which is a first on a phone costing less than £200, and another feature that sets it apart from the Moto G and the OnePlus X. Honor didn’t settle for just adding the ability to unlock your phone with the sensor, however – you can also launch your favourite apps with your – um – favourite finger.
The camera sticks out a little bit with the fingerprint scanner sitting below it and the buttons and ports are where you’d normally find them.
But with that said, the Honor 5X unfortunately is not officially coming to Canada.
Fortunately, smartphone owners can install a third-party launcher, like Nova, Apex or Google Now, to help strip back the worst of the EMUI 3.1 interface.
Volume keys and off are well positioned in the right side. If you like stock Android, this is not for you. The smartphone has more pros than cons and in certain ways, it is as good as the flagship devices from mainstream brands. It breezed through all sorts of multimedia and gaming (with not much heating). It’s rare for a phone to offer all three at the same time.
A couple of quirks: it records 1080p video instead of 4k, there’s no NFC and it’s a single SIM device.
Its design riffs heavily off the Honor 7, as its square camera, rounded fingerprint sensor and fake material dimple pattern at the top and bottom of the handset look nearly identical. There’s no fast-charging functionality like other handsets of late have started to include, but it’s omission from the 5X that doesn’t surprise us considering its affordable focus. All of these are cheaper than the Honor 7 too. When placing the two next to one another, though, the OPX’s glass makeup and aluminum band feels far superior to the Honor 5X.