Also known as the Huawei honor 5x, the first thing you notice when you see the GR5 is that it is reminiscent of their high-end lineup such as the Mate and the P8. Indeed, the GR5 shares many of their characteristics such as a brushed metal champagne gold body, and a centre mounted fingerprint scanner. Measuring 151.3×76.3×8.2mm, the device weighs around 158g.
The top of the device houses the 3.5mm audio connector and the front houses the front 5mp camera, ear piece and ambient light sensor. The bottom consists of hardware navigation Back, Home, Recents, microphone and microUSB port. The power button and volume rocker are both housed on the right side of the device while the camera is located at the back of the devices towards the top left along with the flash. Packing a Full HD 1920*1080 IPS LCD display, the GR5 has a 72.2 screen-to-body ratio and has a pixel density of 401 ppi which does quite a good job of keeping things clear on screen. With regard to network and connectivity options, you get dual MicroSIM support with full LTE (4G) support.
As for storage, you are looking at 16GB of internal storage and 2GB of RAM for this model while its variants have 16GB of storage and 3GB of RAM. The device also supports upto 32GB via a microSD card. The GR5 comes with Android Lollipop 5.1.1 coupled with Huawei’s proprietary EmotionUI 3.1 to deliver a seemingly flawless user experience. Homescreen switching is butter smooth and animations are fluid.
Navigating within the app drawer is equally fast. As for multitasking, with 2GB of RAM, you can do almost anything your heart desires without breaking a sweat. Equipped with a 13MP camera and a built in LED flash, the GR5 takes some pretty clear photos. The UI looks very iOS-esque but nonetheless, is very intuitive and has a host of features such as a beauty mode for all you selfie enthusiasts, a video mode capable of recording at 720P and even a time lapse mode which is really cool. The camera has a HDR mode and also a Panorama and Watermark mode as well. For an average market price of Shs800,000 it is worth every penny.