Reviews
Honor 3C
Huawei’s follow up to the well received
Honor 6 is the new, low cost, 3C. Does
cheaper still remain desirable?
Bold display
The Honor 3C has a
5” 720P display. It’s a
LTPS panel, which
means it’s bright,
sharp and has good
colour reproduction.
The phone has a 69%
screen to body ratio
which is reasonable
for its class,
particularly with
capacitive buttonsDual sim
One of the Honor
3C’s key rivals is the
2nd Generation Moto
G, which features
dual SIM slots. The
3C does too,
accepting a pair of
microSIM cards, one
to run in 3G and the
other in 2G modeUpgrade?
The Honor 3C
includes Emotion UI
2.0 on top of Android
4.2 Jelly Bean.
Unfortunately, both
of these versions lag
behind the latest
releases (3.0 and 5.0
respectively) with no
indication when or if
an upgrade will
become availableP
raise was heaped on Huawei’s campaign to
win over the West, the Honor 6. Low- and
mid-range phones in particular are a delicate
balancing act between cost, features and design
flair and the Honor 6 got it virtually spot on. On the
back of this success Honor, a Huawei sub-brand,
have launched the 3C at less than half the price of
its sibling. Strangely, the £100-£150 price bracket
is becoming a very competitive space in the
Android market, with no less than three versions of
the Moto G available and a growing number of
budget devices from the heavyweights of
Samsung, Sony, LG and HTC. It seems companies
have realised that the real profits are to be made
not from the flagship devices, but from the mass
market. Flagships are still important for their ‘halo
effect’ but they have to be complemented by a
solid mid-range lineup.
No review of a phone in this lower tier of
Android can be complete without comparing the
device to the Motorola Moto G, which is the
undisputed king of this segment. So how does
the Honor 3C measure up to its competitors?
Holding the Honor 3C in your hand, the family
resemblance to the Honor 6 is sadly undetectable
and some of the inevitable cost-saving measures
are immediately obvious. The device feels cheaper
by virtue of it’s plastic back and its oversized
buttons feel old-fashioned. Thankfully, things
improve when you turn the device on – the 5-inch
720P LTPS screen really is excellent.
The phone runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean with a
skin called Emotion UI 2.0 that can be found on
a whole host of Huawei devices and as before,
its somewhat polarising – feeling like a hybrid of
iOS of yesteryear with Android. At least it can be
largely disabled by installing a custom launcher
and the stock Google apps. Huawei upgrade
track record gives cause for concern. It is
borderline unacceptable for a device to be
shipping in 2015 running such an old version of
Android and we don’t hold out much hope for an
update. Custom ROMs might be the best chance
for an upgrade to the latest Android OS but as a
fairly niche device, developer support is far from
guaranteed.
Performance of the Honor 3C is acceptable
and while the Mediatek processor isn’t exactly
cutting edge, its inadequacies are well disguised
by the generous 2GB RAM, provided you don’t try
and tax it too much graphically with demanding
games. The 8GB internal storage fills quickly
(only 6GB is actually available for use on a box
fresh device), but it is expandable using a
microSD card up to 64GB in size.
The 8 megapixel rear-facing camera on theDual access
If you have a work and a personal phone or
for... travel a lot, the dual SIM is useful to have.