Cyanogen Belfast Meetup

A couple of weeks ago I attended the Cyanogen Meetup in Belfast.

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The event was organised by the good folks at Droid Horizon. A bunch of mobile-tech enthusiasts, Cyanogen users, bloggers and assorted friends and family had a few drinks, good chat and craic.

I also wrote a piece on the meetup on the Skyscanner Medium, you can check it out here: Geeks, Cyanogen & The Next Billion

Thanks to Ste for organising, and for everyone to have come along. Some attendees and hosts travelled from afar as Israel and Portugal. These sort of community events are another reason Android, Cyanogen and the rest of the mobile industry a pleasure to be involved in.

Google I/O 2015 post on Medium

I recently wrote a post for the Skyscanner Medium here:  https://medium.com/@Skyscanner/missed-the-google-i-o-2015-keynote-here-s-the-biggest-news-e71318f6e5f7

Coolsmartphone.com Podcast 141 - Honor for the brave!

Yesterday evening I was a special guest on the Coolsmarphone.com podcast. Wilkin Lee of Honor (Huawei) and I were hosted by James Pearce.

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As well as discussing Honor, Huawei and a few other smartphone related topics, we even managed to mention mockodile... I had great fun and look forward to the next time I'm on the show. Thanks to James for having me back!

Head over to Coolsmartphone.com to get the full podcast, as well as links to other sources of the audio only show.

Honor Holly Review

Budget Android smartphones are a favourite category of mine. In the last few years the devices under £100 have been getting better and better to the point where they now reach the subjective "good enough" place. This is my review of the Honor Holly, the 5" budget device which is part of the Huawei sub-brand Honor portfolio.

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Spec Sheet

5" 1280x720 IPS LCD Display

Mediatek MT6582 1.3 GHz Quad-core processor with 1GB RAM and Mali 400MP GPU

8MP autofocus camera with LED flash / 2MP selfie camera

Dual-standby Micro SIM support. HSPA (3.5G)

16GB internal storage / MicroSD slot for up to 32GB cards

Android 4.4.2 KitKat with Huawei/Honor launcher (and minor modifications) based on AOSP.

Removable 2000 mAh battery.

Impressions

Honor is a sub-brand of Huawei. Think of the Honor/Huawei as Mini/BMW. The Honor Holly is a budget device which offers incredible value for money in the current smartphone market. At time of writing, the Honor Holly is priced at £89.99 on Amazon.

GoatZ being demoed on All About Android 213

I really enjoy using my Honor Holly. The HD screen is just the right size at 5", typing on it is easy without having to be too accurate with screen taps and swipes. The screen is more than adequate for regular smartphone use, even for watching HD video.

Under the screen you have the back button, home button and menu button which are capacitive buttons on the front panel.

The MediaTek system on a chip performs very well for the device class. Battery life in the same daily use as my Samsung Galaxy S5 actually lasts longer. Social networking apps, news reading and podcast listening run smoothly with very few slowdowns if any. Call quality with the SIMs I tested on (Vodafone UK and Tesco Mobile) was excellent, as was overall reception even in Edinburgh's Old Town.

Honor Holly back

The 8MP camera performs reasonably well, but to manage to offer the device at its price it was one of the corners that had to go. Not great, but still a reasonable camera in good lighting conditions and it produces decent cat pictures...

Sample cat picture taken with the Honor Holly

The front facing 2MP camera is great for social media use and takes good pictures in ideal lighting conditions but suffers in low light.

Humble bubble brag. #HonorThree

"Humble bubble brag. #HonorThree"

The software on the Honor Holly is a mixed bag. Using this device feels more like using a reference MediaTek device with an incomplete attempt from Huawei to give it some EMUI love. The EMUI version here is 2.3 running on Android 4.4.2. Most of the apps are AOSP ones, such as the camera, but some of them are Huawei's own product, like the launcher and some skeumorphic leftovers. The end result is an inconsistent icon set with an iOS-like launcher with no drawer. For the average end user this will be something easy to get used to and something they will live with blissfully unaware.

I struggled to live with the Huawei launcher offering, and ended up installing Action Launcher 3 and the Moonshine icon pack, just to stay in the comfort zone of my most used setup. Once the device was as I wanted it I was much happier.

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Action Launcher 3 with Moonshine icon pack. That's better!

Conclusion

The Honor Holly offers amazing value for money and is a great piece of hardware for the price. The screen is clear and crisp, the battery life is excellent and the dual-SIM and storage options are best in class.

As you may have surmised from my personal impressions I am not a fan of the software offering, but with a small effort it is easy to overcome this.

I would thoroughly recommend this device to anyone looking for a good value for money smartphone under £100. If 4G is not super important (it isn't), in my view this is better value than a Moto E 4G.

What endears the device to me particularly is the pleather soft back which has no fake stitching. I'm still looking for a mockodile back...

Review(s) coming up!

The first review which will go up on matteodoni.com will be the one on the Honor Holly.

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I've had the Honor Holly since mid March and I have been thoroughly enjoying using it.

The 5" Android device has a 1280x720 screen, runs on a quad-core Mediatek chipset and takes two micro SIM cards. The 8 megapixel autofocus camera on the back has flash and the front facing selfie camera is a 2 megapixel unit.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. #ForTheBrave #Honor #mockodile #mobile

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. #ForTheBrave #Honor #mockodile #mobile"

The next review will be the Honor 6 Plus one. I've had the 6 Plus for less than a month and have been blown away by the dual camera setup.

I'm really enjoying using Squarespace to create posts, this may increase the frequency of my blogging.