Huawei U8860 Honor review: Way of the Dragon

Huawei music on board

The music app on the Honor U8860 is really nice to work with. You get the usual array of tabs you'll find in most music player out there - albums, songs, playlists but you also get to choose folders, artists, composers and genres.

Huawei music main screen

Album art is available and where you're songs don't have one the player displays compact disks with different colors. While you're playing a track the player presents a very nice swooshy scrollable cover flow-typed animation. Swiping between song covers changes the currently playing song.

Cover art • Album songs • Lyrics pane

If you want you can also add lyrics to your songs and have them displayed while you're listening to a track. The now playing screen is also present in the notification area but not in the lockscreen.

Camera is decent

The camera on board the Huawei Honor is an 8 MP unit capable of 3264x2448 resolution photos. It has autofocus, a single LED flash, geo-tagging and HDR.

The camera interface is stock Gingerbread which we particularly dislike. Almost every big Android-using household name out there has made their own interface that's superior to the stock one. It's just that the imaginary bezel around the actual viewfinder is pretty huge and takes a lot of room.

Camera app interface

The offered settings are okay but not really that abundant. You get exposure, HDR, Flash settings and more but ISO, white balance, etc. are not included.

In terms of actual camera performance and picture quality we're pleased with the Honor. It produces good images with plenty of detail, nice color reproduction and a relatively low amount of noise. However competing devices like the Galaxy S II and iPhone 4S offer more detail with more fine-tuned white balance, colors and the likes.

Another dent in the stills armor is the aggressive noise reduction algorithm which smears a lot of fine detail to compensate for noise. This isn't the approach most people prefer as photos tend to look grainy and color painted.

The Honor isn't the best cameraphone out there by a longshot but it's also above average for the Android class.

Here are the samples from the Huawei Honor U8860.

Huawei U8860 Honor camera samples

We also did a macro test and got great results. Here they are.

Macro stills

Photo quality comparison

The Huawei Honor's camera enters our Photo quality comparison tool to spar with the likes of the Meizu MX and the iPhone 4S. As you can see it's no match for Apple's prime toy but is able to edge out the Meizu in all three charts.

The tool's page will give you all the information on what to look out for.

Huawei U8860 Honor in our Photo Compare Tool

Video camera

The Huawei Honor captures 720p video at 30 fps, which is still a great achievement. Even in the face of FullHD-capable smartphones many would still prefer the less storage-towing HD format.

The camcorder UI is the same as the camera one - stock Gingerbread. And we dislike that one too, for instance video quality isn't simply 720p, VGA, QVGA but Large, Medium and Small. The software bezel around the viewfinder is also very annoyingly huge.

Camcorder app interface

The Honor produces smooth videos but we cannot help wishing for more detail. Just like with the stills fine detail gets smeared probably due to some strong noise reduction algorithm.

Here's a 720p video sample for your viewing pleasure.

If you want to look closer at the video quality, you can download this untouched sample 720p@30fps, taken straight off the device.

Video quality comparison

Being a 720p capable device the Huawei Honor enters our video comparison tool. It produces smooth videos but we're disappointed by the amount of captured detail and the lack of real resolution.

Check out the tool page's information if you have any questions.

Huawei U8860 Honor in the Video Compare Tool