Honor 7 - EMUI 4.0 update with marshmallow

Ok, we might be ahead of our self here because we are writing a post based on a BETA release of EMUI 4.0. The main reason for this post is that Honor 7 would start to receive the official EMUI 4.0 update in the first quarter of 2016 and we should be staying relevant and given justice to the phone. Early December, Honor 7 opened their BETA testing registration for Europe and we were lucky to be able to install to BETA version on our Honor 7 before our loan is up.

EMUI 4.0 is based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow and that would mean features of Android 6.0 would be incorporated into the latest EMUI 4.0. Given that EMUI itself are full of features, the additional API available from Android enhanced it more than any stock android 6.0 able to give. Lets look at the native EMUI feature first and then we will look at what is new on Honor 7 with EMUI 4.0.

The UI Design

There is not much different from the home screen from other EMUI version, the app drawer is still missing as the earlier version and users are required to create their own folder just as what you would do on iOS. The Settings option are now different with the introduction of EMUI 4.0 as we found that options are group together properly than the earlier EMUI 3.1

Feature such as Hidden application drawer are well integrated by using gesture and it also support multiple gesture for other controls

Below is the video screenshot of the latest EMUI 4.0 user interface

Additional Marshmallow feature

We notice that at least four of the new feature in Marsmallow are incorporated in to the latest EMUI 4.0 that is Doze, Fingerprint, app permission control and SD Card as internal storage. With this newly added feature, EMUI 4.0 is actually one of the most featured android available in the current market to date.

The biggest change since Lollipop is the ability to utilize SD card as additional storage for installing app, that was an issue with most users on Lollipop. App that was moved to SD Card would stay in SD Card even if updated thus giving additional storage space not just for media and data. Seems like our initial test was wrong, the SD Card in EMUI 4.0 still behave exactly like Lollipop and it is still registered as external storage thus not all app could be moved there. This for us is a big drawback as implementing additional SD Card as internal would made EMUI 4.0 a more complete solution. What we can assume is that Huawei might see this as an issue for non technical user that could lead to system corruption if it isn't dealt properly. We hope that in the near future, Huawei would made this optional so that it could be a viable option moving forward for users. 

All in all, the Marshmallow EMUI 4.0 update is a major improvement to say the least and in short making Honor 7 a better phone.

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