It’s been two years since Honor made the last phone, and this year the brand has made a comeback globally with the Honor 50 Series of smartphones. The Honor 50 is a stylish but a little underwhelming phone that looks good. Now that Honor is a separate brand from Huawei, it’s using Google Services and its users can download Android apps from the PlayStore and use Google’s core services without any issues.
Besides making it easier to sell, this means that Honor can get back into the market and compete with the best camera phones again. For that, we have to wait a bit since the band went through many changes.
HONOR 50 Rear Look
Let’s keep the brand’s comeback aside…. How’s Honor 50 performing as a smartphone? Will it take great pictures? Will it satisfy my needs? I hope, all your questions will be answered shortly in this full review of the Honor 50.
HONOR 50 Unboxing Clicks:
HONOR 50 Review: Design and Display
HONOR 50 Display
The design of the Honor 50 is what makes it stand out. It looks a lot like the Huawei Nova 9 and the Huawei P50 Pro, so it might not be all that unique. It feels lite and gives me a good in-hand feel overall. The curved edges give a vivid display experience.
The look of the phone is very stylish. It comes in Emerald Green, Midnight Black, Frost Crystal, and Honor code. The back cameras are mounted on an oval, rose gold plate with the main camera on top and three secondary cameras, and a flash below. The main camera is on top. An old-fashioned look is mixed with a very modern look. This is based on a Rollei Twin Reflex camera’s look.
Because the Honor 50 is less than 8mm thick and weighs less than 175g, it can be put in any pocket even with a pop grip or a big case. However, I will recommend you to check the phone physically by going to stores near you so that you might take a wholehearted decision. It’s good to see that Honor is providing a rubber case. It’s very useful, but it doesn’t seem to protect the case very well if you drop it.
The 6.75-inch, curved OLED screen of the Honor 50 has a high-resolution screen (2340 x 1080) that is great for watching videos on the go or looking at photos on social media. As mentioned earlier, Curved screens give a high-end feel to this mid-range phone, which is good because it’s so cheap. It’s a 10-bit OLED panel that can produce 1 billion colors. Overall the display produces good deeper blacks, the contrast is excellent and I enjoyed using it.
It has an Always-on Display feature that shows you things like the time, date, and battery level, but it didn’t work all the time.
If you’re a big gamer on your phone, you’ll find it very responsive. The refresh rate is 120Hz and the touch sampling rate is 300 Hz, so if you play a lot of games on your phone, this one will be very responsive. You can enjoy all OTT apps in fullest quality as this display is Widevine L1 Certified.
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There is only one USB-C port. It can be used to charge or plug in the USB-C headphones that come with the phone. If you’re an audiophile, you’ll need to buy a 3.5mm USB adapter or find some wireless earbuds that you like because there is no headphone jack.
HONOR 50: Cameras
Getting my hands on the Honor 50 was very exciting for me because of the 108MP main back camera. An 8MP wide-angle camera with a 112-degree lens is also included. A 2MP macro camera, 2MP bokeh camera, and a 32MP front-facing camera also come with the phone
Having never used a phone with such a high-resolution main camera, I was a little let down by the quality of the images it took. It doesn’t seem like the camera is very sharp from corner to corner, but the colors it shows are very different from what the eye sees. Even in low light, the camera is still able to produce high-quality images without a lot of noise, and the colors are still strong. The autofocus is pretty quick, as well.
There is a mode called “Pro” where you can change things like shutter speed, ISO, and aperture. Even when you use the widest aperture, the blurred areas look very natural. Even though the focus fall-off isn’t as gradual as you’d expect from a DSLR, the in-focus area is very clear.
This is the second-best camera, and the colors seem to be a lot more true. You should look for a phone with a good selfie camera if you want to use it for vlogging, video calls, or social media because it’s important. It’s also possible to shoot in “beauty mode,” which automatically smooths the skin and gets rid of eye bags.
For when you need a little more room to see, the 8MP wide-angle camera is a good choice. But the colors and quality aren’t as vibrant or as good as with the 108MP. Both of the 2MP cameras on the phone aren’t very good and don’t add much value to it. The super macro mode doesn’t work as well as it does on other phones with macro cameras, and you have to be very precise when you take a picture from 4cm away. Show your friends, but don’t use it.
The bokeh mode also seems a little pointless, since the main camera can go down to f/1.9 and has a much better sensor than the bokeh mode. I think Honor added these cameras so it could say there are multiple cameras, but in reality, they add very little to the way it works.
In terms of video specs, the Honor 50 can record in 1080p at 30 frames per second using the front camera and up to 4K at 30 frames per second using its rear camera.
As if that wasn’t enough, there are six different ways to shoot multi-camera videos. You can use up to three cameras in one shot. People can record from front to back, dual-view recording (front and back), and picture in picture. There are a lot of options in the menus that make it hard to find fast and slow-motion settings again. They’re all put together confusingly.
HONOR 50 Performance:
The Honor 50 has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G 5G chipset, which is a lot of power even for a mid-range phone like this one. The Snapdragon 778G Plus 6nm SoC is an improved version of the Snapdragon 778G that features improved GPU and CPU performance. This sports a Qualcomm Kryo 670 CPU, which offers a faster clock speed of 2.5 GHz than the 778G’s 2.4 GHz. According to the business, the Adreno 642L GPU would give up to 20% quicker graphics rendering than the previous version. The rest of the parameters are the same.
I tried a few games, and the performances were impressive. This SoC can push the Call Of Duty Mobile game at its maximum settings (Very High Graphics Quality and Very High Frame rates), though I felt some warmth while playing. Later, I switched to moderate-level graphics (High Graphics Quality and High Frame rates), and the gaming experience was smooth and I didn’t feel any heat. This processor will be enough for most consumers who use their phones for daily tasks and a moderate level of gaming. If you’re an intense gamer, I would suggest you move to the Snapdragon 8 Series of chipsets
HONOR 50 Software:
In terms of software Honor, 50 runs MagicUI 4.2, basically the same as HUAWEI’S EMUI 11. This software is a bit let down overall at least for me. I mean it’s not about bugs, since I didn’t face any critical bugs. The similarity in software between EMUI and Magic UI is a bit boring as I used many Huawei phones with EMUI. At the same time, some important features like twin apps, slow motion, and light painting in the camera app are missing which is a big blow. Apart from these missing features the experience of using this Magic UI 4.2 is good and has nothing much to complain about.
Some more specs
If you don’t want to carry a charger or power bank with you all the time, the Honor 50 has a 4,300mAh battery that can last for a full day of use even if you don’t use it all at once. It doesn’t matter if you need to charge it during the day. Honor claims that its 66W SuperCharge technology can charge the battery to 70% in just 20 minutes if you are using the charger it comes with.
For an upper mid-range phone, 66W charging is pretty fast. Even though we used the charger that came with the phone, we didn’t get the same charge speed. When we had to use an adapter for a plug from another country, this might be why.
People who want to record, edit, and upload videos will want to get the Honor 50 with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. There are two versions of the Honor 50: one has 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, while the other has 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
When it comes to calling quality and connectivity of this device, I had no issues with call quality and for connectivity, it sports Wi-Fi 802.11ax (wifi 6) (2.4GHz/5GHz) MIMO, Bluetooth 5.2, GPS, and a USB Type-C port. But the biggest blow I found in this department is the lack of VoLTE support which is very annoying for myself and most of the other users too. This phone also lacks Wifi Calling Support which is very common on even entry-level devices nowadays. These two misses can be fixed with an OTA update but it is sad to see till now there isn’t a fix for those.
HONOR 50: My Conclusion
In the Middle East, this phone retails for 1669 AED along with freebies. For the price, this phone is a very good option since it gives a good overall premium feel. I feel the display of the device is a stand-out reason along with a capable Snapdragon chipset. The camera could be better but at the same time, it’s not disappointing much at the moment. If you’re a casual daily user, this phone will be a very good option without any doubt. Also, we should keep in mind that this phone also suits casual and intense gaming for a while. So here are the pros and cons I noticed with this device.
HONOR 50 Pros and Cons:
Pros:
- Brilliant Display with a higher refresh rate.
- Snappy Performance
Cons:
- Missing some software features like twin apps, slow motion in the camera app, etc
- Lack of VoLTE and VoWifi Support as of now.