Head-To-Head: Apple iPhone 7 Plus Vs. Huawei Honor 6X

Apple's Next U.S. Rival?

Outside the U.S., Huawei and its Honor smartphone brand are increasingly becoming a big deal. In the U.S., not so much: Huawei's share of the U.S. market in the third quarter was a paltry 0.4 percent, according to Canalys. But the Chinese company is pushing to change that. Most recently, Huawei launched a smartphone during CES 2017 in Las Vegas, the Honor 6X, that is aimed at grabbing millennial customers away from Apple's iPhone brand. While touting customer satisfaction scores for the Honor brand on par with those of the iPhone, Huawei Honor President Ming Zhao said during CES: "We know that today's young people want to have everything. Today, Honor 6X gives them that."

But does it? In the following slides, the CRN Test Center breaks down how the Huawei's Honor 6X compares to the similar-sized Apple iPhone 7 Plus on specs and price.

Operating System

Apple's iPhone 7 Plus comes with iOS 10, and Apple's mobile operating system is, in fact, the inspiration behind the user interface on the Honor 6X -- known as EMUI (or Emotion UI). The EMUI adds customization to the underlying Android OS, and brings a similar design style and features to iOS -- such as a simple home screen without an app drawer, for instance.

It's worth noting, however, that Huawei isn't packaging the latest versions of either EMUI or Android with the Honor 6X; the phone comes with EMUI 4.1 (rather than 5.0) and Android 6.0 (rather than 7.0). Huawei has said that updates to the latest versions of EMUI and Android will come to the Honor 6X in the second quarter.

Display, Body And Overall Size

Both Apple’s iPhone 7 Plus and Huawei's Honor 6X feature a display that measures 5.5 inches diagonally. But the iPhone 7 Plus is a larger device overall because it has a slightly bigger bezel around the display. The iPhone 7 Plus measures 6.23 x 3.07 inches in size, compared to the 5.94 x 3 inches of the Honor 6X.

Both the Honor 6X and iPhone 7 Plus feature an all-aluminum body and curved edges on the back. The two phones are also in the same boat on display resolution, with both sporting 1,920 x 1,080-pixel displays.

Processor

The iPhone 7 Plus has the leg-up on horsepower, due to using Apple's recently introduced A10 Fusion chip. The A10 Fusion runs at 2.34GHz for its two high-performance cores. That's in contrast to the Honor 6X's processor, Huawei's Kirin 655, which has a clock speed of 2.1GHz.

Camera

During their recent phone launch events, both Huawei and Apple made much of the cameras included in their respective phones. Both devices feature a dual-camera setup on the rear-facing side. However, both cameras on the iPhone 7 Plus are 12-megapixel, while the Honor 6X setup consists of one 12-megapixel camera along with a 2-megapixel camera.

Both phones have wide-aperture cameras, which take decent photos in low light. The Honor 6X claims a fast focus time for its rear cameras, while the iPhone 7 Plus touts 2X optical zoom along with optical image stabilization via the dual-camera system.

Battery Life

One advantage that Huawei claims for the Honor 6X over the latest iPhones is stronger battery life – up to two days on a charge for average usage. That's thanks to the inclusion of a 3340 mAh battery. The iPhone 7 Plus includes a smaller battery, 2,900 mAh, and promises significantly less battery life on a charge – 13 hours on LTE and 15 hours on Wi-Fi.

Storage & RAM

Apple is offering three different options for internal storage on the iPhone 7 Plus – 32GB, 128GB and 256GB – and the device includes 3GB of RAM. Huawei has two models for the Honor 6X – one with 3GB RAM/32GB of storage, and the other with 4GB/64GB of storage.

Water Resistance

The iPhone 7 Plus comes out ahead here, with the phone sporting a IP67 rating – meaning it can survive a splash, or even submersion in 3.3 feet of water for 30 minutes. By comparison, the Honor 6X doesn't feature any promises around water resistance.

Connectors

Famously, Apple has removed the 3.5mm headphone jack from the iPhone 7 Plus, retaining the Lightning port as its only connector. Thus, users that want to plug in wired headphones have to use an adapter to connect to the Lightning port (which is also used for charging). The Honor 6X, meanwhile, retains the standard 3.5mm headphone jack, and includes a Micro USB port for charging.

Price & Carriers

Clearly, the biggest contrast between the Honor 6X and iPhone 7 Plus is on price. Huawei is offering the Honor 6X unlocked with a starting price of $249.99, for 3GB RAM and 32GB of storage. The starting price of the iPhone 7 Plus (with the same amount of storage) is more than triple that amount, at $769.

Honor 6X users, however, will have fewer options for their carrier -- the phone works only with GSM carriers such as AT&T and T-Mobile. The iPhone 7 Plus is available for all major carriers including those two, Verizon, Sprint and U.S. Cellular.