honor‘s 5X has been doing rather well, racking up a total of 8 million units sold globally. So, for this device’s incredible milestone, the Chinese company unveils their latest smartphone, the honor 5A, which is more powerful and more affordable than the honor 5X.
The honor 5X was a pretty good device, packing a nice build with some decent specs for the price. It’s really no surprise that the smartphone has sold 8 million units worldwide, but, we’ve always felt that the smartphone was a touch sluggish.
Seeing as honor focused a lot of effort on making the 5X very pretty, it seems likely that compromises were made elsewhere to keep the device’s cost low. In any case, honor looks to have reversed that strategy with their new honor 5A.
The new device ditches the all-metal build of its more expensive brother in favour of a textured back. As a result, its insides get an upgrade, going from a Snapdragon 615/616 to the more powerful Snapdragon 617 processor mated to 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage (expandable via microUSB). The 5A also gets a larger 3,100 mAh battery and support for VoLTE (voice over LTE)
Camera-wise, the 5A gets a 13-megapixel primary camera with an 8MP front-facing selfie shooter. Both cameras also sport fast f/2.0 aperture lenses. The 5A will also come running Android 6.0 Marshmallow with the EMUI 4.1 skin on top.
While the new 5A’s 5.5-inch display gets bumped down to a 720p HD panel, having fewer pixels to push should mean that the smartphone will run smoother than the more demanding Full HD display on the 5X.
One other notable feature that’s missing from honor 5A is a fingerprint scanner. But thanks to the trimming of features, honor has managed to keep the device’s price at a very reasonable CNY699 which translates to about RM434 in today’s exchange rate. That’s about half the price of the honor 5X’s CNY1,399 price in China or RM899 here in Malaysia.
To me, it seems like a pretty decent deal. You get an upper midrange processor with a reasonable amount of RAM instead of a fancy metal body plus fingerprint sensor. If you can live with a lower-resolution display, the honor 5A seems like an awfully good deal. In fact, on paper, it looks like an even better deal than the 5X.
The honor 5A will go on sale in China from the 17th of June onwards.
What do you guys think of the honor 5A? Do you prefer form or function? Let me know in the comments below! I’d love to hear your thoughts.
