After an absence of one year on the market, Honor has released their mid-range phone – simply named Honor 50 – which features an eye-catching curved display but struggles to stand out in today’s fiercely competitive marketplace.

Honor’s Magic UI runs over Android, making this phone familiar to anyone who has used Honor phones previously. Furthermore, Google Apps are supported in full so this phone should please Android fans alike!

Display

The Honor 50 features an attractive 6.57-inch OLED display with high maximum brightness. This screen boasts an acceptable response rate that makes games and streaming videos look fantastic, yet suffers from distracting discolouration when viewing from an angle.

This phone uses a 108-megapixel quad camera for recording photos and videos, featuring wide-angle, macro and depth sensors. Additionally, its camera app offers various modes including beauty mode panorama mode story mode; recorded videos have high quality while photos may look digital or artificial in appearance.

The Honor 50 is an admirable smartphone, though not quite exceptional in its category. Competing at upper mid-range prices but with some flaws that limit its competitive edge. A good option for users looking to connect through GSM, LTE or 5G networks.

Camera

Tom Bedford rose through the ranks at TechRadar to become deputy phones editor, having begun as staff writer. Today he covers an array of mobile devices such as electric scooters, smartwatches, fitness trackers and more.

The Honor 50 is a mid-range phone with a premium design, featuring a nice screen and modern camera configuration. Unfortunately, however, it lacks an IP rating for water and dust resistance and no wireless charging or 3.5mm headphone jack – two features which would help make this phone ideal.

The device features a powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G chipset with up to 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, performing well in our tests although larger mobile games sometimes present issues. The camera was excellent with vibrant and accurate colors. Low light photos could also be taken, though focus might take some time when taking group shots. In addition, both main and ultra-wide cameras could record videos simultaneously for photo and video recordings as well as picture-in-picture mode videos recording videos using ultra-wide cameras for added video recording capacity.

Battery

Honor’s inaugural phone since its separation from Huawei has an almost identical design to Huawei Nova 9, making it hard for us to believe they have truly parted ways. That may not necessarily be bad news; both phones look fantastic and are affordable enough for most people to consider purchasing them.

Honor has also included a 4G modem in their latest phone, providing peace of mind to future-proof their investment. Artificial benchmarking tests performed well, and its CPU score matched that of some flagship Snapdragon 888 devices we’ve tested.

Display. The display is gorgeous, boasting a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz for silky smooth scrolling and swiping, plus it comes equipped with a central punch-hole selfie camera which will no doubt please TikTok fans and vloggers alike. However, audiophiles will likely miss its lack of 3.5mm headphone jack as well as its poor always-on display during our tests.

Performance

Honor has provided their 50 device with a 6.57inch OLED display that exceeds all expectations at its price point, featuring up to 1.07 billion colors for vibrant and clear images.

This Android phone is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 778G 5G processor and can handle most tasks easily. A 4,300mAh battery supports fast 66W charging for reliable powering.

Honor’s phone boasts some impressive features, such as its four-lens camera that takes bokeh shots and 32MP front-facing camera, plus an always-on 120Hz display that adjusts automatically according to tasks at hand. Unfortunately, many of its new features lack enough extras that set it apart from competing smartphones.