[rwp-review id=”0″]
Huawei’s latest venture into the smartphone market is the Honor 7 which was released locally on the 18th of October and is set to become Honor’s best-selling device, with it aiming to achieve 10% of the market share in the local region according to the Chinese phone manufacturer. So what exactly is the reason for its fame? The answer: high end specs without the high end price. Disregarding the American spelling, I delved into the Honor 7 to find out if this was true.
Design
The Honor 7 is slightly larger than its predecessor, the Honor 6, 0.2 inches larger infact, measuring at 5.2 inches across. Much like the Huawei Ascend Mate 7, the Honor 7 has an all-metal casing with the improvement of having a polished frame encasing the display glass. The Honor 7 isn’t the slimmest of smartphones; it’s 8.5 mm thick, 0.9 mm thicker than the Galaxy Note 5 and 1.6 mm thicker than the iPhone 6s, but the beveled edges on the Honor 7 and the curved corners ensures that it remains comfortable in your hand despite its extra thickness. It weighs in at 157 grams making it a touch heavy compared to most smartphones out there.
The Honor 7 I’m reviewing has a “mystery grey” colour coating the aluminium casing. The back of the Honor 7 has a large, square shaped 20 megapixels camera with a dual LED flash flanking it. Directly below the camera lens is the fingerprint scanner. At the top and bottom of the back of the phone is some metal-looking plastic strips protecting the antennas.
The bottom part of the chassis houses a micro USB port in addition to the to a series of holes on either side of it; no they are not stereo speakers, the speaker emits sound from one set of holes while the other holds the microphone. Both the power button and volume rocker are situated on the right side of the phone, something that makes taking screenshots awkward as you’ll probably either have to comfortably hold down the power button with your thumb and the lower volume button with your index finger, or use your other hand. However, luckily there’s a quick fix for that which I’ll go into detail further below. On the left hand side of the phone is another button, similar to the power button, that acts as a configurable button.
Above the configurable button is the SIM card slot which can either host two nano Sim cards, or one nano SIM and one microSD card, which is a let down if you have the 16 GB version of the phone since you will have to trade off the second sim slot for a microSD card.
Just above the display sits the front facing, 8 megapixels camera as well as a front facing LED flash, something you don’t see on phones often. The 3.5 mm audio jack is located at the top of the phone.
Display
The Huawei Honor 7 has a 5.2 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixels Full HD display, with a pixel density of 424 ppi. These specifications may seem similar as they are the same as those of the Huawei P8. The clarity as a result is great and so are the viewing angles, though I caution against viewing it at angles less than 30 degrees in incidence; else you’ll be able to take a sneak peek at what your neighbour is doing. Colours are vibrant on the Honor 7 though you can adjust the colour temperature slightly in the phone’s settings if you wish to.
Special Features
One of the best features on the Honor 7 isn’t even knew when it comes to the world of smartphones; a fingerprint scanner. It’s located on the back of the phone, just below the camera and the setup for the fingerprint scanner is incredibly simple, you can register up to 5 digits and program the scanner to do a number of tasks when you swipe your finger on it. For instance, swiping down on the fingerprint scanner pulls down the notifications bar which is easier than awkwardly reaching for it at the top of the screen. Swiping up dismisses the notifications menu. Other programmable features of the fingerprint scanner include using it to accept or decline calls, record videos or take pictures.
Another feature the Honor 7 has is the programmable Quick Start button on the left-hand side of the phone. By default it is set up to launch HiVoice, but you can change the button’s function to whatever you prefer in the settings menu. I assigned the Quick Start button to take a screenshot whenever I press it, which is far more easier than holding down the volume rocker button and the power button.
Software
The Honor 7 uses Android Lollipop with the EMUI 3.1 skin on top. The base apps themselves aren’t great and I found myself quickly installing the Google Now launcher, giving it a more Nexus-like interface. To do so you’ll have to go to the default app settings in the standard apps settings to enable a third-party launcher. One thing I did notice however is that third party messaging apps, such as hangouts or Messenger by Google do not seem to work properly on the Honor 7, numerous messages were not received by me when I used those apps; the default messaging app however worked flawlessly.
Performance
As a subsidiary of Huawei, the Honor 7 specs center around the Kirin processor. The Honor 7 packs a Hisilicon Kirin 935 octa-core processor with four cores clocked at 2.2 GHz and four at 1.5 GHz. These clock speeds are basically what you find in comparable chips built by Qualcomm, for example the Snapdragon 810 (when it hasn’t been under-clocked to avoid thermal throttling and overheating).
The Honor 7 specs also include 3 GB of RAM and either 16 GB or 64 GB of internal storage.
In everyday life, the hardware does a good job. Apps launch quickly and the general speed of the interface is very responsive. From time to time I witnessed some slight stuttering, but these occurrences were rare and hardly noticeable. The only time I actually witnessed a massive drop in response from the system was when I was syncing my Google accounts to the phone. On the graphics front, intensive games such as Asphalt 8 ran smoothly, without any performance problems.
If you’re into raw numbers, I benchmarked the Honor 7 with a respectable score of around 46, 698 in the AnTuTu Benchmark 64-Bit app.
Powering the Honor 7 is a 3100 mAh non-removable Li-Po battery that is good enough for up to 8 and a half hours of talk time and over 350 hours of standby time. I did a battery test using the ANTuTu Battery Tester and it got a score just over 9700, ranking higher than the Lenovo S920, the Nexus 5 and other such smartphones. During my tenure with the Honor 7 I found that I could go for about 18 hours before needing to charge it, though I could stretch this number considerably by activating the ultra battery mode.
Camera
The Honor 7 has an impressive and magnificent 20 MP rear facing camera with a modest 8 MP camera on the front of the phone, along with a front facing flash. For the rear facing camera, the auto-focus system is of the phase-detection variety, rather than the slower contrast system, so you’re solid on two fronts. To add the cherry on top, the Honor 7 is also equipped with optical image stabilization. There are also a few notable shooting modes beyond the ordinary, including a food mode, so you can perfectly capture that plate of sushi and upload it to Instagram, and a light painting mode. Light painting is a long-exposure setting that allows you to paint in the air with light. You know the type of photo: the ones where the brake lights of cars blur into long lines. You’ll need to practice to get good results and a tripod or stable base for the phone is recommended, because camera shake tends to ruin light paintings. You’ve also got Full HD video capabilities in the Honor 7. However, low light tends to be where the camera on the Honor 7 struggles.
Final Verdict
The Honor 7 is a fantastic upgrade to the Honor 6, packing some great features that puts it on par with high end smartphones such as the fingerprint scanner, metal chassis and the Quick Start button. The camera is great, the 20 MP really delivering spectacular pictures, though it does struggle in low light. With a spectacularly low price (retailing at around AED 1,300), this phone delivers in all the key areas: looks, camera, battery and performance.
