Huawei Honor 5X review: Aiming High

Telephony

Making calls on the Honor 5X works much like any other Dual-SIM phone. You can call or text from either SIM, and you can choose which SIM is the default for data. The stock SMS app integrates the dual-SIM functionalities well and shows you which SIM is being used on which conversations.

Phone calls are loud and clear thanks to an active noise cancelation mic located at the top of the device, next to the headphone jack. When put in speaker mode, the Honor 5X uses this top microphone as its main source of audio.

The Honor 5X's stock dialer app is a trinity of apps bundled together. These three apps are Messaging, Dialer, and Contacts, all of which can be accessed directly through the dialer via three tabs at the top of the window.

The dialer looks like that of many Android phones • Contacts and Messaging

Dialing a number works just like on many Android dialers. You can dial a number, switch to the Contacts tab to search for a contact, or you can search for a contact using the number pad to input letters.

Dial a contact's name with the alpha-numeric buttons

Adding a contact is simple, and it's easy to switch between accounts to where the contact will be saved. You can associate the contact with a Gmail account, or you can save it to either SIM card which you have in the phone.

SMS

The stock messaging app does not have too many customizable features. The text bubbles are solid green, and there is no way to change it. You'd be better off with a third-party SMS app seeing as there is no quick-reply option in this stock SMS app.

SMS overview • Composing a message • SIM number appears next to the sent message

Loudspeaker

The loudspeaker on the bottom of the phone is just loud enough for ringtones and notifications but does not have great dynamic range. Mid tones are heard best, however, higher and lower treble and bass sounds are just barely discernable. Nothing out of the ordinary for a phone of this price range.

The Honor 5X scored "Average" in our loudspeaker test. It's just a touch louder than the iPhone 6s' loudspeaker test, though, nowhere near matched in audio quality.

This speaker is just loud enough for hearing phone calls; we don't think you'll be missing many calls with this phone.

Preinstalled apps and Storage

The Honor 5X comes with a considerable amount of preloaded applications. Thankfully these aren't sponsored apps or games, rather, they are either shortcuts to Honor's Huawei's online services or useful tools that are preloaded onto the OS.

Homescreen page 1 • Homescreen page 2 • Google folder contents

Top Apps folder contents • Tools folder contents

The Honor 5X has a Phone Manager built as an app which is like a second settings app with shortcuts to all kinds of utilities like battery saving, storage cleanup, blocked numbers and more. It feels a lot like a control panel or a hub.

Main screen on the Phone Manager App

Pre-allocated Storage

Before installing any applications, the Honor 5X offers about 9.6 GB of usable storage out of the 16GB internal memory so you might want to get a microSD card. Most of the apps cannot be moved to the microSD card, but some larger games like Asphalt 8 might have this ability.

Storage reading before installing any apps