honor 8 review

KEY FEATURES

• 5.2in FHD display
• Octa-core Kirin 950
• 4GB RAM
• 12MP dual-sensor camera
• 32GB storage and microSD slot
• USB-C
• Manufacturer: Honor
• Review Price: £369.99

HANDS-ON WITH HONOR’S NEW FLAGSHIP PHONE, THE HONOR 8

While the Honor 8 has long been available in the Chinese and, more recently, US markets, it's only recently become available to European customers hungry for yet more options.

Honor is Huawei’s "e-brand", targeting a much younger demographic – whom the company insists on referring to as “millennials”. In fact, during its Paris launch event, if you were to turn references to “millennials” into a drinking game, it would have been possible to be in a comatose state in record time.

The eagle-eyed out there might think the Honor 8 bares a striking resemblance to the Huawei P9, rather than building upon the Honor 7 that came before it – and you'd be right.

Still, I was a fan of the Huawei P9 – I’ve been using it as my daily phone for the past few months – so in my opinion using it as a blueprint is no bad thing. Based on early impressions, the Honor 8 lives up to its heritage.

Viewed from the front, the Honor 8 is almost identical in size to the Huawei P9, just fractionally thicker and a touch heavier. The corners are slightly more rounded, but otherwise, stack the two devices and all the ports and antenna bands line up perfectly.

The main difference comes by way of the materials and feel. If the company wishes to extend its target market for the Honor 8 beyond millennials (drink!), it should consider cats – or anyone who favours particularly shiny things. This phone stands out.

The back of the phone is constructed from 15 layers of glass, which Honor says has 3D grating and lithography. It means the prism lines refract and disperse the light in an eye-catching way. Light shimmers and gleans off the back in an unpredictable manner, which is difficult to capture with still images.

It's quite a light show, but all that glass does leave you wondering how well it might cope with an accelerated meeting with concrete. A cracked rear might lead to a trippy kaleidoscopic effect at least. Compared to the metal back of the P9, the glass feels more slippery in your hand and it’s a fingerprint magnet, too. Within seconds of use, the rear of the phone was coated in smudges and greasy marks.

Another visual difference between the Honor 8 and Huawei P9 on the rear is the fingerprint sensor, which is circular rather than the square of the P9. It’s just as quick to register and unlock, which was one of my favourite aspects of the P9.

It’s been upgraded with a "Smart Key" function, too, which essentially sees the fingerprint sensor also become an extra button. You can program shortcuts to single- or double-presses and holds. I found using it to quickly fire up the Camera app particularly useful.

You have a choice of Sapphire Blue, Pearl White, Midnight Black and, for now only in certain markets, Sunrise Gold finishes. I opted to go hand-on with the Sapphire Blue unit, and it's my favourite of the bunch.

The dual-sensor camera returns – arguably the Huawei P9’s headline feature. Gone is the Leica branding of the lenses, however. Sony's 12-megapixel IMX286 sensors are used – one RGB, one monochrome – and they have 1.25um-sized pixels. Camera performance, then, is likely to be comparable but I’d need more time to say with certainty.

As before, the two sensors can combine to great effect to create punchier, more contrast-packed photos as a result of the secondary monochrome sensor, which can capture more light.

You can again adjust the aperture from f/0.95 to f/16 for enhanced depth-of-field effects and dive into "Pro" photo modes for greater control over shots. Unlike the Huawei P9, there hasn't been much fanfare around the Honor 8's monochrome shooting capabilities. Perhaps millennials (drink!) don't care too much for black-and-white photography.

A quick sample night photo taken with the Honor 8

Internally, the similarities continue. An octa-core Kirin 950 processor with i5 co-processor, and slightly more RAM at 4GB, should mean very similar performance to the Huawei P9. I haven't had enough time to run any benchmarks, but certainly the EMUI 4.1 skinned Android interface felt slick and responsive. This is built upon Android 6.0 Marshmallow, so those hoping for a first taste of Nougat will be disappointed.

The complaints levelled at Huawei’s EMUI skin resurface once again here. It isn't the most attractive Android customisation, with the treatment of the lockscreen and notifications panel likely to grate on many users. As is the lack of an app drawer.

There are some decent customisations, however. The slide-down gesture on the rear fingerprint sensor can still pull down the notifications pane. It’s something I miss whenever I move to another smartphone. There’s 32GB of storage, and this is expandable through a microSD slot by an additional 128GB.

The display is identical to the Huawei P9. At 5.2in it has a Full HD resolution, which is perfectly fine. Anything higher is likely to be overkill, and the 423ppi is plenty sharp. The display goes right up to the edges of the handset, leaving it with razor-thin, attractive bezels. In the short time I’ve used it, the Honor 8’s display looks as though it will go toe-to-toe with the Huawei P9's bright, vibrant display.

Battery capacity at 3,000mAh is also identical to the P9, so you can expect the same all-day battery life. It charges over USB Type-C and also supports fast charging, enabling you to top up the battery more rapidly.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

While its similarities make the Honor 8 a little uninspiring, at least it's the best Huawei phone to date that has formed its basis. If you were tempted by the Huawei P9 but decided to hold out, the Honor 8 is likely to be a tempting prospect. Not only is it cheaper, at £370, but it has practically all of the features of its forebear. I’ll need more time to confirm whether its performance matches up, though.

Samsung Galaxy S7 review

KEY FEATURES

• 5.1-inch, quad-HD display
• 3,000mAh battery
• 12MP camera
• Fast and wireless charging
• MicroSD
• Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow
• 4GB RAM
• 5MP selfie camera
• Exynos 8890 processor
• Manufacturer: Samsung
• Review Price: £569.00

WHAT IS THE SAMSUNG GALAXY S7?

2016 is the year that Samsung finally manages to bring everything together and create the near perfect phone. The Galaxy S7 isn’t as curvy as the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, nor as S-Pen toting as the Note 7, but it’s the phone most people should buy.

There is of course competition coming from the iPhone 7, but the rumoured headphone jack lacking device hasn’t got our blood whirling just yet.

With its ace camera, curvy body, water-resistance and stripped back software; the Galaxy S7 could be the phone of the year.

SAMSUNG GALAXY S7 – DESIGN

After the massive, and much needed, change in design direction Samsung took with the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge in 2015, all rumours pointed to things staying pretty much the same for the Galaxy S7.

Well, it’s not like Apple, HTC or Sony make drastic changes to their industrial design every year.

And that’s exactly the case here. Place the Galaxy S7 next to the S6 and you’d be hard pushed to instantly pick which one is which. Frankly, this doesn’t bother me in the slightest. The S6 was already one of the best-looking phones around, and the Galaxy S7 follows suit.

Both the front and back are covered in Gorilla Glass 4, while a metal rim snakes in between. Two volume buttons sit on one side, with a lock/standby switch on the other. It’s a clean look, with the back free from any markings aside from a Samsung logo.

The camera lens now sits just about flush with the glass body too. This might seem a small change, but it makes a big difference. I can now tap out an email with the phone flat on my desk without it jumping and rocking from side to side.

There is one notable design change on the back – the sides now curve ever so slightly, just like they did on the larger Galaxy Note 5, and it makes a huge change to how the Galaxy S7 feels. While the S6 felt harsh and rigid, the Galaxy S7 slips softly into my palm. It’s so much more ergonomic and makes picking it up off a flat surface much easier.

And the way the sides almost melt into the glass just looks damn cool. Good job, Samsung.

It’s an absolute fingerprint magnet, though. After a few minutes of use, the entire back becomes a grubby mess that needs wiping down with a microfibre cloth.

Along the top is the Nano SIM tray, which now holds a microSD slot, plus a microphone. The bottom houses the headphone socket, another microphone, a speaker and a micro USB port for charging.

That speaker is one of the few missteps on this phone. It’s downward-facing, gets easily blocked by my hands when playing a game and it sounds tinny and distorted at high volume. I guess front-facing speakers weren’t included so the screen surround could be kept minimal, but it’s still a disappointment when a speaker sounds this bad.

It had been suggested that Samsung would make a big switch to the new, reversible USB-C connector that’s already being used on the Nexus 6P, OnePlus 2 and LG G5, but it hasn’t.

To be honest, USB–C is more of a hindrance than a help at the minute. You can’t use any of the cables you’ve picked up over the years and it doesn’t necessarily mean faster charging. It does mean the S7 isn’t quite so future proof, though.

The front again has a clean look about it. The elongated home button still sits under the display, and it still juts out ever so slightly, rather than being concave like the iPhone’s. For me, this is a plus – it feels better pressing the Galaxy S7’s home button than the iPhone 6S’s – but a couple of the TrustedReviews team think otherwise. They’re wrong, of course, but it’s interesting how such a small design choice can split people.

Housed inside the home button is a really fast and accurate fingerprint sensor that matches the iPhone 6S’s for speed, but it’s marginally slower than the Nexus 6P’s. That difference is minimal, though, and something you would only notice if you had the two side by side.

It’s clear from the Galaxy S7 that Samsung is listening to customer feedback and bringing back favoured features from the Galaxy back catalogue. MicroSD expansion is one, and IP68 water resistance is another.

The latter is by no means a vital feature, yet it’s impressive that it’s been added without any forced changes to the design. There are no flaps, there’s no added thickness and no extra space between the display and glass.

What does an IP68 rating mean? Well, you’ll be able to dunk the Galaxy S7 into 1m of water for up to 30 minutes without damaging the phone. Or, if you’re like Lil’ Wayne, you can douse it in multiple bottles of champagne. Obviously.

It’s become a cliche that phones get thinner and thinner each year, but that isn’t the case with the S7. It’s marginally thicker than its predecessor and has a nice weight to it. It feels dense and expensive, though not as delicate as you’d expect from a phone with glass on the front and back. I dropped it about four foot onto a hard floor and it survived without any problems.

Samsung has stuck with the same 5.1-inch display, there’s the Galaxy S7 Edge if you want something bigger, and it’s refreshing to have a flagship phone that feels this compact and easy to hold. It’s roughly the same size as the iPhone 6S, which only has a 4.7-inch screen, and much smaller than top-end devices from LG, Huawei and Google.

Coming from using the S7 Edge, I was initially a little underwhelmed by the Galaxy S7. It didn’t quite have that wow factor its curvier sibling does. But after a while it became my favourite phone to use on a daily basis. It feels great, is the perfect size and doesn’t make any sacrifices – aside from maybe the speakers – to get there.

SAMSUNG GALAXY S7 – DISPLAY

Close to perfection. That’s the best way to describe the display on Samsung’s Galaxy S7.

Not much has really changed from the outgoing S6, but this still holds up as the best screen on a smartphone.

It’s still a 5.1-inch QHD panel with a 2560 x 1440 resolution, and just like every Galaxy flagship so far, it uses Samsung’s Super AMOLED tech, rather than the more common LCD.

AMOLED displays are a lot better at showing off blacks than LCDs. Instead of looking slightly grey and washed out, the blacks here are inky deep. Some say AMOLED screens produce colours that are too oversaturated, so reds will look way brighter than they should, but that isn’t much of an issue here. And if you really prefer things toned down, there’s a picture setting for that.

Having so many pixels jammed into a relatively small space means you can’t really spot one pixel from another, and that sharpness makes everything from gaming to watching YouTube an absolute pleasure. Play a round of Alto’s Adventure or Monument Valley on this display and you’ll instantly be drawn in by the crisp details and vivid colour reproduction.

I wouldn’t normally watch a film on a screen this size, but the panel here is so gorgeous that I can’t help getting lost in it.

The one thing that has changed this time around is the addition of a new ‘Always-on’ display.

Due to the way AMOLED screens work, they don’t need to light up the whole display all of the time. They can select individual pixels and just show them, keeping everything else off. So, when the Galaxy S7 is locked it can still show the time, date and a couple of bits of other information on the screen without eating through too much battery.

It’s a nice touch, and great for quickly checking the time when the phone is resting on your desk or a bedside table. But it’s a good software update or two short of being really useful.

First off, it’ll only show notifications from a few apps – it’s currently limited to Samsung’s own Messages, Email and Phone. If you, like me, regularly use WhatsApp, Gmail and Facebook Messenger, none of these will appear. That’s a shame, and makes the notification side of things a lot less useful.

I’d also like a lot more control over the mode. There’s no setting to alter the brightness, which causes some problems when you’re in a darker room, and aside from choosing whether or not you want a calendar showing, there’s no customisation allowed.

It uses extra battery too.About 1-2% per hour, so 15% or so per day. It’s just about worth it, but it could be so much better.

My only gripe with the display on the Samsung Galaxy S7 is that, in sunny conditions, it can be quite hard to read – certainly more so than the LCD panel on the iPhone 6S. Even with the brightness jacked all the way up, you’ll have to tilt the screen or find some shade to stop yourself squinting at it.

Thankfully, unlike the Galaxy S7 Edge, it has great viewing angles and doesn’t suffer from white backgrounds getting tinged with blue

MSI GS60 GHOST PRO REVIEW

MSI’s GS60 is an old standby in the gaming laptop world. The system receives periodic refreshes – a new GPU here, some extra SSD options there – but never really sees a complete refresh. That’s not always a bad thing. Why mess with success?

And in that respect, the GS60 stays the course. It has a new Skylake processor, and a GTX 970M with 3GB of memory. Apart from that, not much has changed, for better or worse. Our review unit also packs in 16GB of RAM, a 128GB M.2 drive and a 1TB mechanical data drive, with a 15.6-inch 1080p display.

The upshot is that, at just $1,700, the GS60 has a chance to shine in a market where other laptops makers will charge you an arm and a leg for premium performance. But is MSI’s evergreen gaming laptop due for a new lease on life, or will gradual updates satisfy a new generation of mobile gamer?

Same as it ever was

MSI’s traditional black plastic won’t stand out amongst the more colorful and exciting options to recently hit the gaming laptop market. The flat black also doesn’t do anything to dissuade fingerprints and general grossness from accumulating, and it starts looking worse for wear quickly.

It’s an uninspired design to say the least, so one would hope the tradeoff would be sturdy construction. But alas, the outer material bends easily while typing or carrying the system. Worse yet, the screen twists disturbingly at the bottom center and the top corners if any sort of pressure is applied.

A PLETHORA OF PLUGS

Around the right side of the system users will find an SD card reader, HDMI 1.4, Mini-DisplayPort, Ethernet, and what MSI refers to as a “USB Super Port.” While the brand claims the port is of its own design, with Thunderbolt 3 over USB Type-C, it’s hard to find a discernible difference between the USB Super Port and any other Thunderbolt 3 port. It’s still valuable, however, offering three amps of juice, high-speed data transfer, and the ability to daisy-chain a pair of 4K monitors

It’s also worth noting that the GS60 has a slight overbite. The keyboard platform of the lower part of the case hangs just over the edge of the bottom piece, leaving a slight lip all the way around. Apart from that, none of the panels have gaps or are misaligned, and the hinge holds sturdy without wobbling during gaming.

Moving to the left side of the system, the headphone and microphone are two separate 3.5mm plugs, and are accompanied by a pair of USB 3.0 ports, AC power, and a slot for a lock.

There’s not much to complain about here, and the GS60’s experience in the marketplace has clearly led to a variety of applicable ports. USB Type-C is a nice addition, and one that still isn’t found on a lot of gaming systems.

Colorful keyboard, bland touchpad

The keyboard on the GS60 supports many pretty colors, but it didn’t impress us. That’s mostly because the SteelSeries keyboard is far too cramped for the 15.6-inch laptop. A numpad is squeezed into the frame, and many keys must be shortened to fit it. Key travel feels robust, at least. The GS60 cuts a fairly trim figure for a gaming laptop, yet the keys on the Steelseries keyboard snap quickly, with a light touch and solid tactile feedback.

Normally the payoff for uninspired design is sturdiness, but that’s not the case here.

Strangely, the left-side Windows key has been removed. We can see the rationale behind it for a gaming laptop, where an accidental key press can send you abruptly to the desktop. That being said, the GS60 already includes a game mode to shut the key off, and its absence from the left side becomes an issue in everyday computing.

While most gamers will ignore the touchpad, the GS60’s is particularly forgettable. There’s no dividing line between the body of the touchpad and the buttons, and clicking often results in the mouse moving. It offers up a noncommittal thunk when pressed, and tends to stick, so a tactile click isn’t always registered.

A thin but decent display

The MSI’s panel may be flimsy, but it achieves decent scores across the board, while managing to shine in a few key areas. At just 200 lux, its maximum brightness falls behind almost every laptop we’ve ever tested. It’s not the absolute lowest, but you can count on one hand the systems that fall below 200. The Asus G501, for instance, hits an amazing 448 lux, but most fall in the 250-350 range.

Excellent black levels and decent contrast help to soften the blow. In fact, contrast rivals the levels found in the XPS 15’s display, and it’s one of our favorite laptop panels to date. Lower is better when it comes to color accuracy, and ratings below one are generally considered undetectable. The MSI’s 1.88 average is very satisfying, and beats out the Asus G501 and Alienware 15 by a considerable margin.

While the test results sound reasonable, we saw some problems in day-to-day use. Color banding is a common issue, especially when rendering bright white or dark greys. In games, this flaw results in patchy sky boxes, and poor display of water effects. Shadows appear blotchy, and carefully setting gamma in-game to compensate is a necessity.

The speakers are mixed. The bar that runs in front of the screen is satisfyingly loud at max volume, but provides no bass, even with the bass boost turned up and the mode set to “music” in the sound manager.

Skylake upgrade

The GS60’s move to the Skylake platform is an expected, but welcome change. The 6700HQ used in this particular model is quad-core chip with a 2.6GHz base clock, 3.5GHz Turbo Boost, and Hyper-Threading. This is the processor we most frequently see in mid-range to high-end gaming laptops.

The upgrade pushes the GS60 past laptops like the Acer Predator 17, which includes 32GB of RAM, and Dell XPS 15, both of which boast the same processor. The MSI does fall behind in terms of multi-core performance, and GeekBench points to the RAM as the cause. It’s 2133MHz DDR4, which isn’t the fastest, but should have no trouble keeping up in real world tasks.

If there is a problem with the RAM, it doesn’t affect the 7-Zip and Handbrake tests. The GS60 comes in right alongside comparable systems like the Acer Predator 17 and Dell XPS 15 in 7-Zip. It also manages to beat out both of those systems in the Handbrake test, encoding a 4K trailer in H.265 almost a full minute faster.

The move to M.2

It isn’t hard to see why M.2 SSDs with PCIe support are quickly becoming the norm in gaming machines. Apart from speeds that are often triple the rate of eSATA SSDs, the M.2 drives are much more compact.

Even the GS60’s comparatively mediocre SSD performance destroys its own mechanical hard drive’s pace. It comes up short of the highest tier of PCIe SSDs, but those tend to reside only in heavy gaming desktops. The MSI’s SSD performance makes a noticeable difference in everything from everyday computing to serious gaming.

The heart of a gamer

Of course, the GS60 is above all a gaming laptop, and performance isn’t just important at the CPU level. Thankfully, the GS60 is well equipped. It has a GTX 970M with 3GB of GDDR5 RAM. We’ll kick off our tests in the controlled graphical environment of Futuremark’s 3DMark suite.

The MSI zooms past the Asus G501J’s 960M and 4720HQ, and stands closer to the significantly more expensive Razer Blade.

That being said, a test in a lab only means so much. What’s more significant is how well the GS60 performs in real-world gaming tests.

The GS60 crushes our most basic gaming tests, Heroes of the Storm and Counter Strike: Global Offensive, even with the settings cranked up. They’re popular games, but no match for the 970M and sixth-generation i7 CPU. The performance is closer to dipping below the ideal 60 FPS mark for Battlefield 4, but still manages to stay above the line, even when barrels start exploding.

Most notably, the GS60 cranks out just under 60 frames per second in Fallout 4. This latest game from Bethesda is one of the most popular titles on Steam, ever, and serves as a great standard for gaming performance in a mid-to-high-end system.

Of course, the system struggles with Crysis 3, but that’s not surprising. It’s easily the most demanding game in our suite. The GS60 actually manages an average framerate over 60 FPS at medium settings. That’s an achievement typically reserved for mid-range desktops, and slightly better than the 17-inch Asus ROG G752.

Bring the power cable

The GS60 is somewhat svelte for a gaming laptop. At just .78 inches thick, it shouldn’t have any issue fitting into most 15-inch laptops sleeves, something that can’t be said for the thick custom cases of competitors like Asus’ ROG and Acer’s Predator line.

But the MSI has a power management issue. In order to prevent the battery from overcharging, the system refuses to charge if plugged in and above 90 percent full. Instead, the icon in the bottom right corner simply states “Plugged in, not charging.” For the sake of our sanity while testing, we ran our tests from 90 percent of full, instead of maximum capacity.

From 90 percent charged, the system ran the PeaceKeeper browser benchmark for just two hours. An extra ten percent wouldn’t save it from such an abysmal score.

In our second battery test, we were able to convince the system to take a full charge, although why it charged to 100 percent on this occasion, and not the others, eludes us. Our second test is an activity and idle loop that flips through a series of Web pages and waits at each for 40 seconds before proceeding. The system fell just short of three hours, still a poor rating.

Cool and quiet

The bottom of the system near the screen is usually the hottest point on a laptop, and the GS60 is no exception. Even under load, however, it only reached about 106 degrees Fahrenheit, which isn’t comfortable, but also isn’t unbearably hot. There’s often a problem between the keyboard and screen, but even when gaming the whole upper side stays nice and cool.

It manages to keep its cool demeanor despite its slim size and lazy fans. They tend to only kick on when gaming as at its most demanding, and shut back down quickly after launching. Those little bursts don’t usually break about 46 decibels. Not whisper quiet, but easy enough to tune out with headphones.

Bloated installation

On first launch the MSI GS60 will recommend using Chrome instead of the default Edge browsers. As a devout Chrome user, installing it is the first thing I do with any machine, and I appreciate MSI taking the time to do it for me.

The GS60 can manage just under 60 frames per second average in Fallout 4.

Unfortunately, the trend of MSI knowing what’s best permeates the other pre-installed software on the GS60. From the over-zealous virus tracker to the multitude of system setting panels, I can’t remember the last time a system came out of the box with so many applications already installed.

There are multiple system setting panels, all of which manage basic functionality like screen brightness, power settings, and gaming or streaming modes. They work together as well as three teenagers trying to drive the same car. Simple tasks, like setting power plan brightness, take multiple trips to different panels, as a decision made in one will often be reversed by the others. This can lead to a headache inducing loop of adjusting settings time and time again until finally, for no obvious reason, they work as desired.

The GS60 includes a one-year subscription to XSplit Gamecaster. Only streamers will be interested, but the paid trial subscription offers 60 FPS HD streaming, with no Xsplit watermark, and advanced functionality only available to paid users.