On your mark, get set, go! That’s the sound everywhere of Huawei Honor 6 owners turning on their phones and clicking that shiny update button as Huawei rolls out the Emotion UI 3.0 update today. The Honor 6 has been rocking Emotion UI 2.3 for a few months now while some other Huawei phones had already been updated to version 3.0. Thankfully those days of a less-than-modern looking OS are behind Honor 6 owners today as the Emotion UI 3.0 update includes not only some serious new features but a completely refreshed user interface as well. We’ve seen this kind of refresh happen with Meizu’s Flyme 4.0, Xiaomi’s MIUI 6, and previous with the initial Emotion UI launch with the Huawei Ascend Mate 7.
I just received the update on my Honor 6 not 30 minutes ago while finishing up some last minute Christmas shopping, and was pleasantly surprised by an early Christmas gift from Huawei! Likely your phone will automatically let you know that there’s an update so you can go ahead and download it, but just in case it hasn’t yet head on over to the Updater app and perform a quick check for updates. It’s about a 450MB download for the new version of Huawei’s latest user interface update and well worth the wait, just make sure you do that over WiFi so as to avoid carrier data overage fees if your carrier charges them.
There’s a considerable amount of changes here, the most obvious being the visual change. Once you turn on your phone for the first time you’ll be greeted by a similar, yet refined lockscreen that takes with the “magazine” theme that Huawei has been using for its lockscreens. This changes the background every time you turn on your phone, depending on the subscriptions you set of course. Past that you’ll find a completely overhauled notification shade that now includes the time and of the notification along a persistent timeline on the left side, a rather ingenious design by Huawei. There’s a lot more quick toggles on the shortcuts section of the notification shade now including a one-hand UI which moves the navigation buttons on the bottom of the screen to the right side so your thumb doesn’t have to reach. There’s an absolute boatload of changes to all the system apps and the settings too, so why not check them out for yourself? We’ll have a full review of Emotion UI 3.0 on the Honor 6 soon, so check that out in a few days!