Honor 50 review

Magic UI 4.2 and Android 11

Although Honor's current state of Magic UI 4.2 looks and feels like Huawei's EMUI 12 we've tested on the nova 9, it's actually far from it. The same aesthetics, icons, themes, always-on display presets, etc. might be enough to fool you, but the visual similarities are the only common ground. Sadly, the Magic UI 4.2 skips pretty much all of the major EMUI features. At least we can confirm for sure that the Honor 50 runs on Android 11.

Speaking of Android 11, the Honor 50 has all the intrinsic features from Google's OS, such as one-time app permissions, notification Bubbles, integrated media controls into the notification shade and the Conversations grouping of your notifications from messaging apps. Other than that, it's straight-up stock-ish Android minus the vanilla aesthetics.

Almost all of the default apps, however, aren't Google's stock ones. They are proprietary. We are talking Gallery, Phone, Weather, Calculator, Files, Notepad, etc. There are also a couple of pre-installed ones that can be removed at your wish.

Home screen, recent apps, notification shade, settings menu

Unlike EMUI 12, the notification shade isn't separated into two parts, but it's instead of the usual design with re-arrangeable quick toggles and notifications. Unfortunately, you can't get to it with the usual swipe-down gesture on the Home screen. Some finger gymnastics require you to reach for the status bar to pull it down. We also couldn't find the toggle for automatic brightness control - you have to dig deep into the general Settings menu to switch it on or off. Tapping and holding on an app shows only the "Uninstall" button in the context menu, so once again, you are forced to open the Settings menu to clear the cache, force stop a misbehaving app, adjust the background usage, etc.

Customization options and Always-on display

We would go as far as saying that the current state of the software feels rather unfinished. Basic features are missing along the ones that make Magic UI unique in a way. Gone are the multi-tasking features with the floating windows.

The good news is that the Honor Share feature is here to stay as long as you have an eligible Honor MagicBook to use it with. And we still have the screen-off gestures for waking the screen, for example, or the raise-to-answer gesture.

Gestures

And to finish this section on a high note, we would like to point out that the Magic UI feels snappy, responsive, and animations don't really get in the way. Mostly clutter-free experience that may appeal to many Android users that are not necessarily after the high feature count.

Performance

The Snapdragon 778G used inside the Honor 50 is based on the TSMC's 6nm N6 manufacturing process and employs an octa-core CPU and an Adreno 642L GPU for graphically intensive tasks. The CPU consists of three clusters 1x 2.4 GHz Kryo 670 Prime (Cortex-A78), 3x 2.4 GHz Kryo 670 Gold (Cortex-A78) and 4x 1.8 GHz Kryo 670 Silver (Cortex-A55).

Despite the Honor 50 and nova 9 sharing the same SoC, their storage variants differ slightly. The former comes in more flavors - 6GB/128GB, 8GB/128GB, 8GB/256GB, 12GB/256GB as opposed to nova 9's two available memory variations, with the base one being 8GB/128GB.

Of course, we ran the usual set of synthetic benchmarks to see how it ranks against competitors and if there are any significant deviations from the already tested Snapdragon 778G-powered devices in our database.

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 11i
  3641
• Realme GT 5G
  3555
• Huawei nova 9
  2973
• Honor 50
  2971
• Xiaomi 11T
  2834
• Samsung Galaxy A72
  1627

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Realme GT 5G
  1139
• Xiaomi Mi 11i
  1114
• Honor 50
  787
• Huawei nova 9
  784
• Xiaomi 11T
  742
• Samsung Galaxy A72
  537

AnTuTu 9

Higher is better

• Realme GT 5G
  810433
• Xiaomi Mi 11i
  779481
• Xiaomi 11T
  590837
• Honor 50
  470348
• Huawei nova 9
  469798
• Samsung Galaxy A72
  333668

GFX Manhattan ES 3.1 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• Realme GT 5G
  112
• Xiaomi 11T
  77
• Honor 50
  56
• Huawei nova 9
  56
• Samsung Galaxy A72
  29

GFX Manhattan ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi 11T
  72
• Realme GT 5G
  60
• Honor 50
  48
• Huawei nova 9
  48
• Samsung Galaxy A72
  26

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• Realme GT 5G
  65
• Xiaomi 11T
  47
• Honor 50
  33
• Huawei nova 9
  33
• Samsung Galaxy A72
  17

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Realme GT 5G
  55
• Xiaomi 11T
  40
• Huawei nova 9
  28
• Honor 50
  27
• Samsung Galaxy A72
  15

3DMark Wild Life Vulkan 1.1 (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Realme GT 5G
  5872
• Xiaomi 11T
  4172
• Honor 50
  2503
• Huawei nova 9
  2503
• Samsung Galaxy A72
  1031

As expected, there are no major differences between other Snapdragon 778G handsets but the phone struggles against the majority of the competition. In this price range, it's rather easy to find phones running Dimensity 1200 SoC or a Snapdragon 888/870, and as you can see, the Snapdragon 778G is no match for those. As is the case with the nova 9, essentially but given the higher base price of the Honor 50, you get an even lower price/performance ratio.

We also ran а CPU-bound stress test to see how the phone handles high loads over time. The app showed two significant drops in performance, down to 74% of the CPU's maximum performance, to be exact, but it then ramped up again. This might not be ideal if you are planning to run the phone for longer as this would inevitably lead to an unstable frame rate.

CPU stress test

Ideally, you'd want a gradual decrease in performance so there are no sudden spikes and drops in frames during gaming.