Midrange phones are usually a Faustian bargain that attempts to cram in the least bang for the most buck though Huawei’s Honor 3C bucks tradition by putting in hardware you’d usually see in a top-end phone while keeping the price south of half a grand.
At its heart, the Honor 3C is still built on the framework of a midrange workhorse phone – the 1.3GHz quad-core is a sound choice while the built-in storage is a decent 8GB. The phone runs on Android Jelly Bean 4.2 overlaid with their in-house Emotion UI. The camera on the Honor 3C is an 8-MP snapper with an F/2.0 aperture and a 28mm wide angle lens. The front sports a 5-MP camera with an F/2.4 aperture and a 22mm lens for taking selfies.
Cracking the backplate open reveals a swappable 2,300mAh battery , two SIM card slots of which only one can support 3G with the other only GSM and a microSD card slot. Where it takes the cake is that it packs a large 5-inch 720P display with a crisp 294 ppi; an uncommon sight at this price range. Added to this is 2GB RAM; another pleasant anomaly in a midrange playing field replete with 1GB RAM toting phones.
When put through its paces, the Honor 3C put in, pun notwithstanding, an honour-worthy performance, helped in part by the generous 2GB RAM that kept gaming, apps and web browsing at a smooth pace. The screen itself is a delight, with vibrant hues and crisp text though the 720P resolution means that captured 1080p video from the rear 8-MP cam won’t appear at its best onscreen. Rear camera snaps proved rather tasty, with good detail and colour accuracy. The front served up decent selfies as well.
The only downers with the Honor 3C is the battery life as it needed a juicing with heavy use near the end of the day and the lack of LTE. That aside, the Honor 3C offers exceptional value and performance at a price that’s hard to beat.
