Honor 5X

Like the Honor 4X, the 5X features a 5.5-inch display. That’s where the similarities end. The resolution has received a major upgrade from HD to full HD, bumping up the pixel density to 401ppi. The display settings lets you adjust the colour temperature between warm and cold, and there’s also a sunlight legibility option which increases the brightness under harsh lighting. The screen performs well under sunlight, and offers good viewing angles too. Text is sharp and icons look crisp, making any form of media consumption a delight to use.

The Honor 5X’s primary camera is a 13MP unit with an f/2.0 aperture and 28mm wide-angle lens. The front camera features a 5MP sensor with f/2.4 aperture and a 22mm lens. The camera app features a simple interface with the ability to swipe through the viewfinder to toggle modes like Good Food, Beauty, Photo, Video and Timelapse. There are a range of filters you can apply in real time, and additional modes like All-focus, Slow-mo, HDR, Watermark, Panorama, Best photo and Audio note. The front camera features Beauty, Photo, Video and Timelapse recording modes. It also features a Perfect Selfie option which lets you set adjustments that automatically apply to your selfies taken in the Beauty mode. Among the manual control options, you'll be able to adjust ISO, white balance, exposure, saturation, contrast and brightness. 

The Honor 5X runs EMUI 3.1 atop Android 5.1.1 Lollipop. We’ve covered EMUI extensively in our previous Honor reviews, most recently with the Honor 7 (review). You’ll find the usual EMUI features on the handset, including Magazine Unlock, various lockscreen shortcuts, modified icons and interface, and no app drawer. The Themes app gives you access to a few local themes, plus a large selection of downloadable ones. You can customise each theme further by choosing animations, wallpapers, icons and font.

Powering the Honor 5X is an octa-core Snapdragon 616 processor clocked at 1.5GHz. There has been some confusion regarding the processor, since most CPU identifier apps we’ve used detect the chipset as Snapdragon 615. This is likely because the model numbers are essentially the same (MSM8939 vs MSM8939v2). We reached out to Honor regarding this, and have been assured that the processor is indeed the Snapdragon 616. The SoC consists of two Cortex-A53 quad-core clusters (1.5GHz + 1.2GHz), plus an Adreno 405 GPU. In China, the Honor 5X was launched in two configurations – one with 2GB of RAM and the other with 3GB of RAM, but in India we’re only getting the former. On paper, that combination seems to be just fine. Real life usage though tells a different story.