An alternative phone to the iPhone or Samsung Galaxy, Huawei’s Honor – Honor 8X vs iPhone XS Max

This past month, my wife’s family came to visit us from Israel.  As typical when they visit, they are looking to upgrade their iPhones or iPads since it’s much cheaper to buy them in the United States than in Israel.  This year, instead of upgrading to the latest and greatest Apple device, Honor was the first thing mentioned.  What?  No Apple support universe any more?  I thought maybe it was a hebrew word I have yet to master.  Nope, it was the name of the latest Huawei line of phones.  I was further intrigued when hearing Huawei since Huawei is killing it overseas as a fierce competitor to Samsung and Apple.  Plus, I grew fond of Huawei when the released the Nexus 6P which in my opinion is much better than all previous Nexus phones.

So, what’s the deal with the Huawei Honor phone? 

In short, the Honor 8X has the same sized 6.5-inch screen as the iPhone XS Max, but will be a fraction of the cost.  Where the iPhone XS Max is over $1,000, the 8X will be around $250-300.  Not bad at all.

Key specs to compare against the iPhone XS Max:

Weight: The Honor weighs less, specifically 33 grams less.

Faster: Honor has 8 core processors and the iPhone has 6 core processors

Storage: The Honor allows you to upgrade your own storage.  Less money to upgrade when you want.  I like it when you can put your own tech support skills to work.

Camera: The Honor has a 20-megapixel rear camera versus the iPhone’s 12-megapixel camera.  Big difference.  And the selfie camera has the iPhone beat at 16 to 7 MP!

Operating system: The Honor comes with the Android 8.1 Oreo vs. the flagship iOS 12 for the iPHone.

Headphones: Prefer the 3.5mm jack for your headphones?  Yup, the Honor has this vs. the iPhone that decided to remove this.

A key miss is the face unlock for the Honor, but otherwise, it still has the fingerprint reader and environmentally, this may be safer for your retinas.

The Honor may be ordered from its Honor 8x order online site.  It’s definitely worth a good look if you’re okay with the Android operating system.  And if it means anything to you like it does to me, it’s definitely gets the Israeli seal of approval.