And here comes another honor device. Hot on the heels of the excellent honor 5X, the more budget-friendly honor 5C makes its debut in Malaysia. Forget the plastics of yesterday, because this baby’s got metal and some killers specs to boot.
There has been an onslaught of great phones in the sub-MYR1,000 bracket. As a consumer, you’re really spoilt for choice. You’ll be looking at the top dog Xiaomi Redmi Note 3, Huawei P8 Lite, ZTE Blade V7 Lite, Wiko Fever, Acer Liquid Z630s, Lenovo Vibe K4 Note, just to name a few. The segment continues to be redefined by better, and better phones, offering plenty of go for the money. Well, here comes another contender, and it’s not going to disappoint.
Metal goodness
First of all, the honor 5C looks great. No longer the polycarbonate finish of the old Cs—the segment defining honor 3C or the honor 4C. It isn’t all metal like the honor 5X, instead it has a plastic housing and frame, with a metal back. Regardless, it looks and feels good and certainly looks a whole lot more premium than it costs.
Bang-for-buck
Under the hood it runs the latest 16nm HiSilicon Kirin 650 processor, which is similar to the Huawei P9 Lite. It gets 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage, with the option of further expansion via microSD.
It packs a 5.2-inch Full HD display that looks bright and sharp at first impressions. It’s a dual-SIM, 4G LTE device and comes built-in with a large 3,000mAh battery. Thanks to the new Kirin processor and big battery, honor claims all-day battery life.
On the back, there’s a 13MP f/2.0 main shooter with LED flash. During the media preview, I found the honor 5C camera snappy, even in low light, capturing good details and colour. It focuses noticeably faster than the Redmi Note 3. In terms of camera software, the honor 5C gets the whole shebang from the honor/Huawei stable—object tracking, light painting, HDR and even manual mode.
Below it is a superfast fingerprint sensor that unlocks in less than a second.
I was impressed with the fingerprint sensor, consistently quicker than the Redmi Note 3 and Lenovo Vibe X3 at testing.
Over on the front, there’s an 8MP f/2.0 front camera with the usual plethora of beautification options.
The honor 5C runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow with EMUI 4.1 on top. No app drawer as usual, but that was expected wasn’t it?
Pricing and availability
The honor 5C is open for pre-orders starting 20 June at 10:08AM. Head over to Vmall.my or Lazada to place your orders. The Silver and Grey variants retails for MYR799 (incl. GST), while the Gold option goes for MYR849.
Looking for a budget phone? This should be high on your list.
Gallery
