The Honor Holly aims to deliver a premium mobile experience without the premium price tag.
Behind the generous 5″ screen sits 16GB of storage and a quad core 1.3 GHz processor, all powered by a 2000 mAH battery.
If you’ve used Android before you’ll be familiar with the interface, it’s generally simple enough to use even for beginners. However the Holly has a really nice feature who those looking for an even sparser interface: ‘Simple Home’. As you can see in the video this switches to a nice clear big button interface that’s reminiscent of Windows Phones but without all the live tiles.
It’s colourful, basic, and brilliant for anyone looking to get a modern phone but who isn’t interested in little icons and customising the home screen.
That’s not to say it can’t be customised, you can add and remove the large icons, and a really nice feature is the ability to add a person as an icon, you’ll see there name and a profile photo (if they have one) and clicking on the icon brings up a menu allowing you to call/email/text/visit a website etc depending on what information you have stored about them. If after trying Simple Home mode you’re not taking to it it’s easy to switch back.
There are a couple of cons to the Honor Holly, firstly the keys at the bottom of the screen are not backlit, a minor point but it can be frustrating to try and find them in the dark. Secondly is the camera, as although the Honor Holly features an 8MP camera the autofocus is a little temperamental and photos weren’t as good as I’d hoped.
A bonus is there is a flash on board and this can be used not only when taking pictures but also while recording videos.
What was really surprising was how well the Honor Holly handles gaming, the 5″ screen is a great size for games and it had no problem playing 3D games that normally tax budget phones.
It was also surprising to see two SIM card slots, useful for anyone who travels who wants to have both UK and local SIM card in at the same time (so you can get calls from your main number while getting data from the local SIM).
If moving from a higher end handset you might find the camera a little frustrating, but overall the Holly offers really great value for money, especially for those wanting a simple to use handset.
Available now from Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/1CaTSuH
