Huawei Honor 6 Review
by Andrei Frumusanu & Joshua Ho on September 12, 2014 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Huawei
- Android
- Mobile
- Honor 6
WiFi Performance
Out of all the benchmarks that we’ve ran on the Honor 6, there is one that really stands out more than anything else. The phone has one of the worst performing WiFI systems that we’ve ever tested. Coming at a top speed of 52mbps on our test bench, the device lags far behind not only other flagships, but other smartphones period.
What really is happening here is a mystery to both me and Josh. We find a BCM4334 chipset in charge of the connectivity and it is, similarly to Samsung’s Exynos series interfaced via an SDIO bus. My first suspicion was that maybe the bus bandwidth to the DWMMC controller was misconfigured, but I have no evidence of this without the kernel sources being available. This leaves the possibility that the antenna is just badly designed and has unfavorable RF characteristics such as significant impedance mismatch/high SWR. In fact this can be more or less observed as the phone has a bit of a death-grip issue regarding WiFi strength when you cover up the top part of the device. Reception is so bad that I’ve found myself losing connectivity to my router when walking around the house. Whatever the cause may be, this is easily such a negative aspect of the device that it may very well be the deciding factor for many buyers.
NAND Performance
The internal eMMC NAND storage of a phone can be a crucial factor in a device's performance. Inside the Huawei we find a Toshiba 16GB NAND chip with the system and data partitions running on an ext4 filesystem.
The performance is one of the lowest ones we find in the current-generation phones as Huawei skimped on the eMMC chip as it is outperformed by a factor of two or three by other smartphones. This is the same class model that you could find in some Galaxy S3 variants and other phones over 2.5 years ago. Only Huawei's own Ascend P7 performs worse.
The Honor 6 offers also a microSD card slot in case you want to expand your storage. The OS offers full exFat compatibility and I had no issues with my Samsung Pro 64GB card. I was however disappointed to see that the HiSilicon chip suffers from the same limitation that plagues other SoCs for no good reason: the DWMMC controller in charge of the SD-card is limited to SDR50 speeds, meaning that you won't be able to exceed ~35mB/s transfer speeds on your microSD, no matter how fast it actually is. It still baffles me that OEMs refuse to address this even almost 2 years after the first UHS-1 cards have been made widely available.
Next, let's look at the camera system of the Honor 6.
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semo - Friday, September 12, 2014 - link
Why no user replaceable battery? I've heard all the reasons why I shouldn't care but I still want one and wonder if planned obsolescence is the only reason for not including it.Also, is Qi an option for this phone?
Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, September 12, 2014 - link
There is no Qi charging option.semo - Friday, September 12, 2014 - link
Thanks Andrei. I think it is worthwhile pointing out this missing feature in the article just like you did with the non-removable battery. It is important for some!marcokatz - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
Well said. Also it's important to point at that this is an Apple-wannabe that no way can match up to some of the really highly rated phones out there. /Marco from http://www.consumertop.com/best-phone-guide/Excerpt - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
Yeah bro, you tell em. And Andrea why U no learn Chinese man? I wanna know what that extra stuff does. I'm going to China in like, a minute, like everyone else. What, you don't care about me bro? I love you man.And does it have haptic feed-back for goodness snakes? I want them good vibes in me fingas.
What about a sit test? Most of us reading here have fat arses, do you know sit (test)? I don't know sit (test) but I wanna hear your experience with sitting, maybe try with a heavy object like a cow, yeah a bull sit test.
That'd be great keep up the good work. <3
Murloc - Saturday, September 13, 2014 - link
1. takes up space2. makes the phone structurally weaker
2. planned obsolence/forced service you have to pay a lot for are good ways to make money
Alexey291 - Saturday, September 13, 2014 - link
Takes up literally no space seeing how Samsung S4 and S5 are both smaller and thinner than HTC One (M7 and M8 respectively)Arguably the back that's able to pop off makes the phone LESS prone to breaking as it allows the force to dissipate somewhat better than in the case of a rigid structure which simply breaks.
And lastly I am going to play the world's smallest violin for the POOR POOR manufacturers trying to make a quick buck from planned obsolescence or paid-for battery replacement.
I mean I know anandtech is all about manufacturer interests but I'll care about their concerns and problems the moment they stop earning millions upon millions in profits.
Intervenator - Saturday, September 13, 2014 - link
Are you really saying that the S4 and S5 are thinner than the HTC One because of the replaceable battery? And that it takes up "literally no space"? Really?arsjum - Saturday, September 13, 2014 - link
Not because of, in spite of.Alexey291 - Saturday, September 13, 2014 - link
Thank you sir. That's precisely what I meant. Its thinner and yet it has a replaceable battery. Impossiburu /o\To me personally all that "the replaceable battery is inefficient" nonsense is just that - nonsense. Some companies are just better at making thinner phones and some try to cut corners (and costs) at every possible stage.
And yes Anandtech has historically supported nothing but the manufacturer interests. They have been walking on these eggshells for a long time and that's precisely why they never directly criticise any dubious or greedy decision made by their sponsors :) In fact they sometimes go a step further and tell consumers (like myself) that we are wrong in wanting things like replaceable batteries and microsd slots because they are so "inefficient"
/sigh