After a quite long absence in the smartphone market, Honor is back after being separated from HUAWEI to be an independent brand and presenting us with the new Honor 50 series.

So in this article, I will be giving you the unboxing and my first impressions of the Honor 50, and yes it does have Google Play Services!

Unboxing

Starting from the unboxing, the box comes in white, with the 5G logo on top and Honor 50 in the middle. Then below at the side of the box, you will find the specs and the color variant over there. Opening the box, you will immediately find the phone inside.

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Below that, there is a smaller white box, which has the SIM ejector on the outside and the clear phone case on the inside. Underneath, there’s the USB-C headphones, a USB-A to USB-C cable and a 66-watts Honor SuperCharge brick.

 

Build

Now looking at the build of the phone, my first impression was how premium and solidly built the phone was.

While I have been getting my hands on a lot of flatscreen and more squared-off design smartphones to review, it is indeed a refreshing feeling holding a phone that is more of a very curved side.

And although I prefer a more matte finish for a smartphone, the glossy finish is what Honor calls it the dual texture, dual film and dual coating technology.

Also, maybe it is just me, holding the phone reminded me of the HUAWEI Mate series. Not this orange colored one, but the previous glossy one, which is HUAWEI’s flagship anyways, so it is indeed a phone that has a lot of premium design and builds put into it.

In terms of the color options, the one which I have is called Emerald Green which had a very unique color finish

It is also available in Frost Crystal, Midnight Black, and also the limited edition Honor Code, which had some very distinctive Honor letters around the phone which was very reminiscent of an LV design. So if you are into that kind of design, you will surely find it appealing.

As usual, Honor never fails to put in a newly refreshed design to their camera arrays, as the phone had a very unique eye-catching dual ring camera design with a medium to large-sized camera bump, so expect it to wobble a bit if you type the phone on a surface.

The sides are also in a glossy finish, so if you have butterfingers, I would recommend using the clear phone case that comes inside of the box to give you a firmer grip.

The camera hole punch is in the middle and as seen, the screen curves all the way to the sides as well.

Then looking at the ports and buttons, other than the USB-C down below, there is the SIM ejector slot which supports up to 2 SIM cards.

Then you will find one of the two dual speaker grills over there as the other speaker is at the earpiece area, where there is a proximity sensor and speaking of which, the phone has face unlock which does unlock pretty quickly.

Then on the right, there are the volume rockers and the power button.

So overall, I’d give the phone an A for the phone’s build, because of how the phone felt very close to a high-level flagship and that is something that I really appreciate.

 

Display

Now looking at the display, the phone has a 6.57 inch OLED display, with a resolution of 1080 x 2340 pixels, with 1.07 billion colors, and covers 100% of DCI-P3 color gamut.

And upon turning on the phone’s screen, the screen’s quality was definitely something that was most appealing, as it was very bright, vibrant, and sharp.

Since it is an OLED display, you will find an Always-On Display option on the phone with an in-display fingerprint sensor, which unlocks really quickly.

Another unique feature that the phone had was the different types of options for the screen’s refresh rate, which Honor calls it the Intelligent Dynamic Refresh Rate, while it can go up to 120 hertz but there are options to change between Dynamic, for a nice balance of smoothness and battery life where it can go up to a maximum 120 Hz refresh rate. Then there is High, which goes to 120 Hz all the way which uses more power, and then there’s Standard by going down to 60 Hz.

And compared to other smartphones that have up to 240 Hz touch sampling rate, this Honor 50 has a touch sampling rate up to 300 Hz, nice!

Now for you all spec nerds out there, one thing to note is that the playback specifications on Netflix were at Widevine L3 and it has up to SD playback resolution, so keep that in mind.

But during my first impressions, watching Netflix looked really nice still and of course the video playback on YouTube was equally as good.

So here is another A for the phone’s screen, it was very close to getting A+ in my humble opinion, because if the playback specifications were at L1 and if it had Dolby Vision, it would have been perfect, but considering its price, I think that’s totally fine.

 

Cameras

Now in terms of the cameras, there is a total of 4 camera lenses:

• the main rear camera is a massive 108-Megapixel f 1.9 aperture, with a 1/1.52” sensor
• an 8-megapixel f 2.2 120-degrees ultra-wide lens
• a 2-megapixel f 2.4 bokeh or depth camera, and
• a 2-megapixel f 2.4 macro lens

Then the front camera comes with a 32-megapixel f 2.2 camera.

Based on my quick test shots, Honor phones have never disappointed me, where the phone’s dynamic range was great, even during a cloudy day when I took these shots.

The front camera’s pictures were great too both for the regular and the portrait selfie as well, with really nice subject to background blur, especially when the light is shining towards you, which of course I am looking to test the camera out further during my full review, so in case you haven’t done so.

As for the video, the rear camera maxes out at 4k 30 frames per second and the front camera can only record up to 1080p but up to a higher frame rate of 60 fps.

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(Left: Rear Camera, Right: Front Camera) 

Image Stabilization for the front and the rear was really good, and the video quality for the rear lens was excellent as well.

 

Specs

Next, looking at the specs of the device, it comes with the Snapdragon 778G 5G 6nm Chipset, with the Adreno 642L GPU. And the variant that I have is the 8 gigabytes of RAM and 256 gigabytes of storage.

Then as for battery, the phone has 4300 milliamps of battery, which I shall see how it performs during my further daily usage.

And the phone has fast charging up to a high 66-watts where the charger comes inside of the box as seen earlier, where the 66-watts charger can apparently charge the phone from 0 till 70% in just 20 minutes, so I shall test that out and see if it’s really true.

In terms of software, the phone comes pre-installed with Honor’s Magic UI 4.2, on top of Android 11, and yes with Google Play Services. I shall see how the software performs, as so far it has been great during my first impressions.

As for the phone’s price here in Malaysia, Honor Malaysia has just launched this phone officially where the preorder has JUST started and retails at RM1999 for the 8 gigabytes of RAM and 256 gigabytes of storage

There is a promotion of getting free gifts worth RM550, like the Honor Earbuds 2 Lite, the Honor 50 Hand Strap Case and a 1+1 Year Extended warranty and I will leave a link below for you to get yourself one.

Get the Honor 50 At The Link Below:-
https://invol.co/cl6sqhy

So guys, with this, do let me know what you guys would like to know specifically about the Honor 50 in the comment section below, and either I will reply to your comments directly down there or I might be answering them when I do a full video review on the phone.