Honor 8X Long-Term Review (Part 2 - Design, Display)

Design, Build

Going for a mid-range smartphone gets you the best of both worlds where the smartphone doesn’t cost a bomb while not skimping on essential features. Nowadays, you can also expect the design language of flagship devices to trickle down into this very segment

The Honor 8X is just that with a stunning glass back that shows two distinctive visual effects with the intertwined grained texture to the left and a flagship-worthy pattern effect to the right which is bound to turn heads whenever you use it to make or pick up a call

Let’s be honest that some people actually don’t like the idea of using a case as it hinders the Honor 8X's beauty from being truly appreciated. Luckily, the provided transparent TPU casing gets the job done of protecting the phone while still showcasing its allure

The glass body with visual grating effect on the Honor 8X was such a hit that Honor decided to launch another color, Phantom Blue (a signature color made famous by Honor 10), to accompany the other 3 colors that are already in the market; namely Black, Blue & Red

As the aluminum frame doesn’t extend all the way to the back of the phone, handling is great as the phone doesn’t slip off easily from your palm. Build quality is also top-notch and it’s easy to mistake this phone as flagship device instead of another mid-ranger

The Blue color of my review unit is striking and the glass back is just mesmerizing. I can only imagine the Phantom Blue color to be even more psychedelic. The 8X's 2 visible buttons; the power on/off and volume rocker buttons, are very tactile and a joy to use

           
Weight and thickness-wise, the 8X clocks in at 175g and 7.8mm which’s 11g lighter and 0.2mm thinner than the 6.3" Redmi Note 7, a smaller build compared to 8X’s 6.5” size. A small multi-colored LED notification light can be found to the top-right of the selfie camera

The speaker is located to the bottom-right of the phone and the loudness is excellent but the sound quality isn’t on par with the likes of those from the Honor Play coming in at somewhat tolerable. For those that are still wondering, yes there’s still a headphone jack

                 
One-handed usage on a 6.5” phone is challenging but you can always enable the mini screen view to help you in reaching those pesky faraway corners. Overall the Honor 8X build quality and design is something you would fall in love the moment you set your eyes on it

Display

The Honor 8X has a 6.5” LTPS LCD screen, a tech that boosts the screen resolution while maintaining a low temperature, compared to its IPS LCD brother (used on the Redmi Note 7). Contrast is great and sunlight legibility is good as long as auto-brightness is turned on

                       
Bezels are nearly non-existent and it even has an incredible 91% screen-to-body ratio (compared to RN7’s 81%). The notch isn’t intrusive as those on the iPhone, which covers more than half of the notifications area, while 8X’s covers a quarter area at most

---> Honor 8X Long-Term Review (Part 3 - EMUI Explained)
<--- Honor 8X Long-Term Review (Part 1 - Introduction)