The Huawei Honor may be available stateside as the Huawei Mercury for Cricket Wireless, but you can get a sense of the phone here in its unlocked state.
Jessica Dolcourt
Jessica is a passionate content strategist and team leader across the CNET family of brands. She leads a number of teams, including commerce, performance optimization and the copy desk. Her CNET career began in 2006, testing desktop and mobile software for Download.com and CNET, including the first iPhone and Android apps and operating systems. She continued to review, report on and write a wide range of commentary and analysis on all things phones, with an emphasis on the iPhone and Samsung devices. Jessica was one of the first people in the world to test, review and report on foldable phones and 5G wireless speeds.
Jessica began her leadership role managing CNET's How To section for tips and FAQs in 2019, guiding coverage of topics ranging from personal finance to phones to home. She holds an MA with Distinction from the University of Warwick in the UK.
Huawei's Honor is a midrange Android 2.3 Gingerbread phone. While this is the unlocked, global version, it'll also be coming to Cricket Wireless as the Huawei Mercury.
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Lock screen
Huawei added some useful customizations on top of Android, including this lock screen, which lets you open the phone on the home screen, the camera, the call log, or the texting inbox.
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Six colors
The Honor comes in six colors. I reviewed the white one here, which looks pretty classy to me.
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Camera
The Honor has two cameras: an 8-megapixel lens on the back (with LED flash and autofocus) and a 2-megapixel camera on the front.
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Side view
It's fairly slim, even though it has a sizable 1,900mAh battery inside.
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All together now
A view of the Honor's back side.
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Custom keyboard
TouchPal is the name of the custom virtual keyboard. One of the best innovations is being able to slide your finger up to capitalize a letter, and slide it down to insert a number instead.
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Studio shot
The 8-megapixel camera cast a blue hue on the standard studio scene.
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Flowers
The following photos were taken indoors and outdoors using the 8-megapixel camera's automatic settings. Photos have been resized, but are otherwise untouched. These flowers were taken outdoors in the shade.
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Car
I shot this Subaru outdoors in direct morning sunlight.
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Lady Liberty
I got in close to shoot this indoor, well-lit miniature.
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Gum bar
This indoor photos of our editors' gum collection didn't turn out so well.
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Self-portrait
Look closely at this indoor self-portrait and you can see large areas of pixelation, and some blue areas in my hair and at my shoulders.
