Here’s my HONOR X8d Review which is now on pre-order online with SRP of Php15,999, featuring a 108MP main camera, and a 7,000mAh battery. Let’s talk about why this is the perfect phone for students and young professionals on a tight budget.

HONOR X8d Unboxing

Design and Display

The HONOR X8d comes with the standard Android design, with some elements being borrowed from other high-end units from HONOR, particularly the camera design at the back, which is interestingly very similar to the HONOR 400 from last year.

The back and the frame are made of plastic, but you could have easily been fooled into thinking it was metal. However, yeah, it’s plastic. But the finish on the back was greatly designed to avoid smudges and those annoying fingerprints that stick to the phone’s back, and that’s partly because of the actual color. This product, by the way, comes in three colors, namely Light Blue, Velvet Gray, and Velvet Black. Side note, if you’re not particular about the colors, go and pick up the blue version because it’s surprisingly a lot cleaner and needs less maintenance and constant polishing or “punas”.

The device is light and slim and is easy to grasp.

There’s also the AI button on the right side that’s really part of their selling point.

The display is pretty good even for the price point, as it comes with a 6.77-inch AMOLED display with a 1080x 2392 pixel resolution. It’s good to cover all the ground for streaming videos, going through social media feed and even some light editing and content creation.

I definitely enjoyed this phone during the review period as I streamed an entire season (8 episodes) of a recently released Netflix show on this one, plus I didn’t need to charge after all that, so it’s a big plus for me and this HONOR X8d review!

The refresh rate has some flexibility too, where users can go for the standard at 60Hz or set it to higher with 120Hz for ultra-smooth flow and visuals. Personally, I would just stick it to High settings for the rest of the day and move it to dynamic when the battery goes below 50%.

Camera

The HONOR X8d comes with a 108MP main camera together with a 5MP ultrawide lens that covers everything that the target market, i.e., students, would need in their daily lives. They will be getting decent to great quality images using the main camera and even the front selfie camera. For its price point, the HONOR X8d camera also delivers some good contrast, especially when shooting subjects up close, like in this instance, food.

You also get solid performance for the front camera with great images shot with just a 16MP camera. If you aren’t picky or you’re not keen on the details, you’d say this could be borderline flagship level. Although you will see the limitations eventually but again, as far as usability and output is concerned, this smartphone has your back.

Check out some of the photos using the HONOR X8d’s main camera…

For videos, vloggers, and content creators, the HONOR X8d is also decent. For both the front and main camera, users can shoot videos from 720p/30fps to 1080p/30fps. You can also use the ultrawide lens to shoot videos but the quality needs a little bit more polishing.

Performance, UX and UI

The HONOR X8d comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 6s 4G Gen 2, a decent processor in today’s market that’s reliable and suitable for work or leisure. During the review phase, I haven’t encountered any hiccups or lag on the phone, even for gaming, which is a really good indicator. Android users won’t complain too as its been built to work on Android 16 with MagicOS version 10.

There are some slight bummers, though: there’s no way to expand the phone’s memory. The unit is simply stuck at the storage you got; in my case, it was 8GB RAM/256GB ROM. It’s also not a 5G-ready unit, so it could have been better for the price.

Here are some screenshots from benchmark tests I did with the HONOR X8d:

Battery

Another big “W” for the HONOR X8d is its battery capacity. Unlike other smartphones released in the previous quarter, the X8d comes with a massive 7000mAh battery that promises to not only carry you through the day for students and professionals alike but also have some juice to spare in the evening. So no matter what they do throughout the day, whether it’s an entire day of talking to friends on social media or duking it out in the gaming world, you can be sure that the HONOR X8d has you covered. You also get 45W fast charging, so our students can get back in the game as quickly as possible!

Gaming

For gamers, the HONOR X8d is a good choice. I tried the smartphone on several popular games such as HONOR OF KINGS, MOBILE LEGENDS BANG BANG and CALL OF DUTY MOBILE. Gaming is decent but you should expect a little hiccup when you try to set the game settings to the highest possible setting. So chill out and enjoy your games at middle or moderate settings and I promise it will work quite well.

Overall, the HONOR X8d is good to go for young professionals and students who are shopping for a phone with good quality, solid battery life and a great display at a very affordable price. The bonus water resistance and dust resistance is also another W for those that are still on the fence about getting this.

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