Honor 400 Pro - a Month or so later: Impressions/Thoughts and Images

1. 
   There was a Chinese-looking page in amongst setup pages (see image). It's more likely to be a rogue help page slipped through the net when making the software ready for English release is my guess.
2. Why, oh why, is the Lock Screen Signature left-aligned! (see image)
3. The Magic Capsule (Dynamic Island) works with multiple Media Players (unlike some that will only do so with Spotify)!
4. M3E changes are rolling out nicely.
5. I don't know why they have doubled-up on all the core Google apps. Having said that, their Calendar app, like Sammy’s is very good.
6. If you change the AoD to Full Screen instead of Partial, then back again, it defaults back to "Tap to show" instead of staying on "All day". So yes, if you have the AoD on "Full screen" in the settings, the AoD doesn't work. You have to have it on "Partial Screen"
7. All that lock/home/screen/theming/icons/AoD is a mess and confusing, frankly.
8. The AoD is inflexible for brightness and size of elements. Even when you go to the Theming and install 3rd party ones. Far too small and not bright enough. Still, at least it seems to stay on, unlike BBK Phones which turn off when they fancy even when 'always' is set!
9. MagicOS has a lot of maturing to do.
10. 
    The face recognition is good.
11. FPS good, even though only optical.
12. The Video from Image is bozo fun! Though really annoying that you have to copy everything you want to manipulate in there from Google Photos to their Gallery. Ditto Outpainting which got real-world use last month (here in the group).
13. Qi is great and Charging is fast, 5,300mAh battery performance is fab.
14. The speakers are great.
15. Settings have options buried under huge levels of layers but the search engine seems ok.
16. You can't get rid of the 'suggested apps' at the top of the App Drawer. The App Drawer option is not on by default too as it's set the Apple way, so they probably assume most will leave it like that and give the App Drawer no love. Can't get rid of the A-Z down the side either.
17. Why isn't the Music Player widget (for their own app) one of the 'cards' (part of the Widgets suite) which you could then put into a stacked group of cards?! It doesn't fit!
18. The control centre of course is pure apple - and unlike others, no option to merge it with notifications. Which is annoying. So Mr Tiny Brain has to remember left/right down-swiping!
19. Classic Widgets (i.e. not Honor ones) are buried under 4 screen taps/gestures and an area called 'cards' (as above) and you have have to pinch the home screen then start fishing around to find them. And they are in seemingly random non-alphabetical order! Really, really bad design idea Honor.
20. The icons in the Status bar are too small.
21. You can't get rid of the battery icon but you can put the % outside (but the icon stays) but then it pops itself back inside the icon if you use Magic Capsule. Mad.
22. The screen is very sharp, but it's not up to Moto's LG standard for brightness and colour. Apparently it's their own. To include their own Honor PWM Dimming tech. Ultra-high frequencies (3840Hz or higher) to reduce flicker and eye strain.
23. There’s no HDMI out support.
24. Phone Link (well, after a 30-minute fight with the phone and Microsoft, uninstalling, re-installing, rebooting, both on PC and phone), I eventually got connected and sure enough it does do the same as Samsung and BBK Group phones - with full suite of App control and pass-through audio etc. It’s just such a fight always which is probably Microsoft’s fault. Also appears on the Windows 11 Start Panel as it should. Not that I shall ever use it of course!
25. Deeper research (by me) seems to be strongly suggesting that the "6 years of updates" that are being offered here actually means 4 OS Updates (so Android 15-19) and 6 years of Security Updates (so to Spring 2031). The difference here (and confusion) is that it is not 6 Android updates. Further, it seems that this is for devices released in the EU (and also the UK?) as other areas are expecting only 3 OS/4 Security. Apparently.
26. The phone feels like a bit of a powerhouse frankly, but it’s just ruined by the software layer over the top of Android IMHO. Octopi Launcher helps to some degree, but not for all irritations.
27. (BTW inside Octopi you can actually throw a switch to turn off the Status Bar altogether then replace it with widgets and screen elements where they are actually useful and not so bleedin’ tiny you can’t see them!)
28. Image to Video and Google's Veo: I've been doing a bit more digging on this and it seems that the Image to Video function on the Honor 400 Pro is a temporary arrangement between Google and Honor which will expire 2 months after the device has been registered. (It's not clear if that means with Google i.e. one's Google account or signing into an Honor account or if, for example, a second-hand user gets that 2 months starting again.) Anyway, it looks like this version of Veo (without audio - if you want that, you have to cough up more cash to Google) was 'developed' between Honor/Google and this particular handset, a world exclusive. Even Pixel phones don't have this 'animation' function (rather, stuck with just the 3D Cinematic Background function at best). So I guess that it will run out eventually here - and who knows what will happen then? Maybe a software update will remove it from Honor's MagicOS9 Gallery app.
29. So far, so good though as I'm really enjoying the device (for a far-east phone). Lots to like for the (now) £550 price.