Lenovo P2 vs Honor 6X: Honor wins?
29th August 2017
On paper, these two devices are very similar: both have 4GB RAM, both are upgradable to Android 7, both have octacore CPUs.
It seems as if the only differences are:
- camera: Honor has an extra low-res “depth” camera, while Lenovo doesn’t
- frame/body: Lenovo has a metal unibody design and performed ok in the scratch/burn/bend test, while Honor has a plastic body, easy to scratch screen, and did not perform as good as Lenovo in the test
- Lenovo has a bigger battery
For about the same price (Lenovo P2 being a bit more expensive) one can buy a 4GB/32GB Lenovo P2 or a 4GB/64GB Honor 6X.
After using both phones for a while, I feel that Honor is a much better value overall.
Here’s a brief comparison, based on my use.
Lenovo P2 vs Honor 6X: practical use impressions
Lenovo P2 | Honor 6X | |
|---|---|---|
| Upgrade to Android 7 | Updating is possible only after going through the initial configuration. | Feels streamlined: the phone actually checks for updates before allowing to configure it. As a result, there is absolutely no need/reason to factory-reset after updates. |
| Kernel | version 3.18 | version 4.something |
| Regional settings | Usual, free selection of region and language. | Language is defined by your region. If you select Germany, then phone's language is set to German. |
| RAM | After updating, had ~2GB free without any programs running. The highest value seen was ~2.3GB. However, the phone already had a few dozen apps installed. Some system pages show that 3.5GB RAM is available to the system. There is a single unconfirmed mention in the internet which claims that 0.5GB is reserved for the GPU. | Usually about 2.6-2.7GB are reported as free. Compared per-program RAM use between Honor and Lenovo, Lenovo core (android, ui, etc) are reported consuming more RAM than their Honor counterparts. |
| Screen | Yes, AMOLED, but that honestly doesn't look like a lot of an advantage anymore... Maybe except for glorious black/dark themes combined with potential energy savings that they bring. | Great screen. |
| Battery life | Yes, big battery. Subjectively, it feels like sometimes the phone is losing charge without much reason. But at the same time it also lasts very long under load. The side "ultra power savings" switch is good, but does not seem strictly necessary, a soft switch would work as good as a hardware switch - but there is no soft switch. | Very good battery life, I'd even say comparable to Lenovo's. Ultra power savings possible with a soft switch. |
| Camera | Images are fine, sometimes a little dark. Yes, there is a problem with focusing/sharpness, but it's not too bad. Some people say that other camera apps (such as Open Camera) help get better results. However, what I could not find a solution for, is the problem of video recordings visibly re-focusing every once in a while - no matter which app is used... The native camera app looks simpler than Honor's, but does have a smart composition assistant. | There's a lot of praise for Honor's camera, but I personally do not quite like it: it overexposes almost all the images taken. On the software side, the camera app is great. |
Honestly, regarding cameras, I feel that LG G2 mini and Samsung S4 mini had better cameras…
Fewer megapixels, no 4K video recording – but great photos, and no problems with videos.
This is probably a single major disappointment.
