We interviewed Honor to find out more about their latest smartphone, the Honor 8 Pro

“Pro” by name and “pro” by nature, in almost every way Honor’s latest upgrade to its smartphone series intends to provide the hardcore mobile gamer with all the features they could ever need to maximize their fun. Not only is it packing much more power thanks to the addition of a 4,000mAh high density battery, but it also ups the display resolution of an already striking 5.7 inch display screen. Both allow the Honor Pro 8 to cater for longer play sessions on the go, however intense a game’s graphics may be.

The clever chaps over at Honor have even designed their latest device while keeping the future of gaming in mind. The Pro’s VR integration means that those who prefer to experience their worlds from the inside as well as out can look forward to being fully immersed without it ever feeling weighty, a handy side-effect of such a sleek yet comfortable outer case design.

Talking with the fine folk over at Honor, we recently discussed the Honor Pro 8’s various new systems and features which seem determined to remedy some of mobile gaming’s biggest drawbacks.

What key differences separate the Honor 8 Pro from the previous Honor 8 model?

• The three products under Honor 8 series are equipped with different features and made available to meet users’ evolving needs and different preferences.

• The Honor 8 Pro is our super flagship product in 2017, it is the highest qualified and best performing smartphone ever created by Honor. It boasts the most outstanding features that a premium phone carries at only EUR500 price range: ultra-thin 6.97mm body with flush 12MP dual-lens camera, Kirin 960 and 6GB RAM, EMUI5.1, 4,000mAh high density battery and so on.

• The Honor 8 is our 2016 flagship product which boasts a futuristic design with 2.5D glass-made body with a 3D grate design on the back, carrying powerful features such as 12MP dual-lens camera, Kirin 950 and 4GB RAM, 3,000mAh battery.

What aspects of the phone make it ideal for gamers?

Users of the Honor 8 Pro could enjoy remarkable gaming experience even with the most demanding games, because:

• Games look better than ever on the Honor 8 Pro’s stunning display
The Honor 8 Pro’s 5.7-inch Quad HD display boasts the highest levels of color accuracy and detail, featuring a high resolution of 515ppi and support for 94.5% of the NTSC color gamut, displaying 16700K colors. Professional calibration brings the best out of the display, with color enhancement technology, sharpness enhancement in the display engine and a 2D image detail enhancer.

• Maximum performance with industry-leading hardware and software
The Honor 8 Pro is the best performing Honor smartphone ever, ready for the most demanding games and applications. Its octa-core Kirin 960 chipset boosts single-core and multi-core performance by 10% and 18% respectively, while the Mali-G71 GPU exceeds its predecessor in graphic rendering by 180%.
The industry leading Vulkan API delivers significant improvements to the Honor 8 Pro over its predecessor Open GL by relieving the CPU’s strain processing image gallery and UI effects, raising the device’s graphical and data processing capabilities. All-round graphic performance is enhanced up to 400%. The device also ships with 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.

• Gaming Performance Cruise, an exclusive industry-first feature pioneered by Honor
Game performance is often not primarily hindered by raw processing power, but by heat-related issues. When the processor begins to overheat, the CPU will run at a lower clock rate, impacting performance. Honor’s engineers have developed Gaming Performance Cruise in EMUI 5.1, the first feature to ship on any smartphone that intelligently maintains consistent performance, while reducing power consumption and thus heat issues – all to deliver a smoother gaming experience.

Gaming Performance Cruise reduces performance loss and power consumption by 20–30% during gaming and extends smooth playing time by 25–42%*.

Can you tell us a little more about the dual camera system. What are the benefits of this over a single camera lens?

• The Honor 8 Pro is packed with two 12-megapixel lenses, one monochrome and one RGB, which capture images simultaneously. The monochrome lens captures a black-and-white image with impressive details, while the RGB lens focuses on capturing color, leading to great color reproduction.

• The Honor 8 Pro blends in cutting-edge hardware and software. With data processed by the Prime image signal processor (ISP) and merged by a proprietary algorithm, the phone allows you to capture shots with superior detail, depth and color.

One of the big talking points of the Honor Pro 8 is the battery. Could you share some details on it?

• Long Battery Life: The 4000mAh high density (710 Wh/L) battery working alongside the advanced power saving features of the 16nm Kirin 960 chipset brings ultra-long battery life. Honor 8 Pro’s battery life can last 2 full days of regular use, almost 1.44 days of heavy use, enough for 108 hours for music streaming, 18 hours of video streaming, 10 hours of video playing on Youtube, and 7 hours of VR streaming on Jaunt.*

• SmartPower 5.0: The intelligent power saving technology can optimize power consumption of front office applications while ensuring their smooth operation; with its intelligent management of back office applications, SmartPower 5.0 can automatically identify and terminate processes with exceptionally high power consumption, preventing back office applications from activating the entire system too frequently, hence reducing the overall back office power consumption. In the meantime, it manages alerts to optimize power consumption when the phone is on standby.

*Data based on Honor lab tests. Battery life may vary based on usage patterns and network conditions.

This article is sponsored as part of Steel Media Preferred Partners.