Honor 8 unboxing and first impressions

I was lucky enough to have gotten what is most probably the very first Honor 8 in Malaysia in a lucky draw at the Honor 8 launch event yesterday. Thank you Honor Malaysia! I actually thought I would not unbox it until I settle off my other commitments. But yeah, who could resist opening a brand new phone? So here goes, our unboxing and first impressions of the Pearl White variant of the Honor 8.

Unboxing

The Honor 8 comes in a very slim packaging, and reminds me of the Huawei P8‘s packaging. Instead of the usual blue color box that Honor’s more affordable devices come in, the Honor 8 comes in a white box with embossed lines running across it from the top to the sides.

Over on the back of the packaging, we see the usual certification labels, as well as the IMEI numbers and variant you are getting. This is the Pearl White variant, which features 4GB RAM and 32GB of storage.

The phone and other contents of the package are housed in an inner tray that slides out easily once you break the seal holding it in the outer cover. The phone is slotted vertically into the cardboard structure, allowing for a slimmer packaging. It also offers a unique unboxing experience as you get to pull out the Honor 8 from the box with that little plastic tab. The rest of the contents are also accessible via the little tab. Pull it and the entire inner compartment comes out to reveal two more smaller boxes.

Here are all the contents of the packaging. Some usual documentation, the USB charger, USB Type-A to Type-C charger and also the SIM tray ejector pin that is secured on its own piece of card. Usually Honor devices come with the pin on one of the inner boxes, and with this arrangement you actually risk losing the card along with the SIM tray ejector pin.

The Honor 8 comes with a fast charging 18W charger which has a USB Type-A port. This is great as it allowed Honor to bundle a single USB Type-A to Type-C cable to work with the fast charger as well as any powerbank or PC with a standard USB port.

The wrapper that protected the Honor 8 in the packaging is essentially all you need to read to get started.

First impressions

The front of the device is pretty blank except for the logo on the lower edge and the usual call speaker at the top flanked by the front camera and proximity sensor. No hole is needed for the notification light as it is nicely integrated into the speaker grille. It feels great in the hand, but people coming from larger devices may find the 5.2″ screen size a little small for them. It really is shocking what we consider “small” for smartphones nowadays.

Over on the back we have the dual camera system, the laser autofocus system and dual LED flash at the top right corner. The fingerprint sensor is also on the back, my all-time favorite location for fingerprint sensors. Another Honor emblem marks the lower back of the device. The rear “Aurora” glass panel reflects light very uniquely due to it featuring 15 layers of glass stacked upon one another. Each incident ray of light can make the back of the Honor 8 look different, which according to Honor represents the dynamic nature of young digital natives.

Starting from the top, this is one of the most interesting edges where the Honor 8 features a nice IR blaster for controlling your usual electrical appliances. Powered by Smart Control 4.0, the Honor 8 supposedly supports up to 232,740 products from 5810 brands. I just want to control the TV at my local mamak. The secondary microphone hole is also here.

The volume button and power button are located on the right side, with the power button featuring a different texture to allow you to easily distinguish the two buttons by touch. The buttons are tactile but aren’t clicky. The power button will most probably not see much use with the fingerprint sensor on the back though.

Over on the bottom we have the 3.5mm jack, USB Type-C port and the mono speaker grille. I wish Honor had designed the Honor 8 to feature grilles on both sides of the USB port like on most of the other Huawei and Honor devices, but I am sure they had their reasons to change their usual design.

The left edge is only home to the single SIM tray.

With that, we wrap up the unboxing and first impressions of the Honor 8. The full review of the Honor 8 will be coming really soon, so do stay tuned!