Honor 7x – The new best budget mobile (Review)
Last year Huawei Honor launched the Honor 6x which was a huge success for Honor. It was one of the most popular choices among customers looking to buy a budget smartphone. Following the 6x, Honor has now launched the Honor 7x at a very competitive price. I have been using the Honor 7x was over 2 weeks and here is my review.
Design
The Honor 7x has a metal unibody construction. It has a larger screen, but overall it has a footprint similar to 6x, which has a smaller screen. The reason is mainly the edge to edge display. The mobile has a flat design with camera nearly flush with the back. It has a nice feel when held in hands. It feels lightweight and yet robust. Honor is yet to shed the micro-USB port on their mobiles and its high time they do it. The speakers are mono but loud and clear. The fingerprint scanner is on the back. It is fast and accurate. Honor 7x is available in three colors: Red, Blue, and Black. Blue is my favorite. In my opinion, Honor 7x has nailed it on the design department. If only the device had any certified dust or water protection, it would have won many hearts. But with what we have in hand, the Honor 7x is a pleasing device to handle and flaunt.
Display
Honor 9i was the first mobile from Honor to sport edge-to-edge display. Honor 7x follows suit and it has a 5.93 inch IPS LCD panel that takes over 77% of the body. It is a full HD+ display. The display is bright and vivid. It has good viewing angles. The colors are accurate. Text and images are crisp and clear under all ambient light conditions. Under display settings, you would not only find the Eye Comfort mode but also must color temperature controls, which can be customized to suit your needs. I can say that Honor 7x has one of the best displays among all the phones in this price range.
Camera
Honor 7x has a dual camera arrangement, with a 16MP primary sensor and 2 MP depth sensor. The dual camera arrangement is to click portrait shots with background bokeh and to shoot wide-aperture shots for almost any object. The camera UI has a plethora of modes which can be a feast for anyone seeking to click creative shots. The shots out of the Rear camera have good sharpness and details. The exposure is perfect and the contrast levels are acceptable. Focusing is fast. Low light shots have good color reproduction but have some noise. This is because of the smaller pixel size compared to Honor 6x.
The front camera can click good selfies under most light conditions. Honor 7x can shoot 1080p videos, but it does not have any kind of image stabilization. Though the camera experience is good, I would not call it a huge step up from Honor 6x. Honor 7x and 6x is still one of the best camera mobiles in this price segment.
Hardware and Performance
Honor 7x is powered by HiSilicon Kirin 659 and it has 4 GB of RAM in both the 32 GB and 64 GB variant. There is also a 128 GB variant, but that is not for retail sale. During my usage, the mobile phone was smooth and lag free. Gameplay was smooth and no visible frame drops. Even after 30 minutes of gaming, the mobile did not heat up beyond 8 degrees. Sadly, it does not have Gyro sensor. But it has all the other required sensors. Even the resource-heavy applications did not have any issues running smoothly on this mobile. 4 GB RAM is good for most multi-tasking needs. Overall, the Honor 7X offers a good performance
Software
The mobile is running on Android 7.0 with EMUI 5.0 skinned on top. The UI is feature rich, but it does not have any bloatware. Honor has optimised the UI for the hardware and that is evident with the smooth lag-free experience on this mobile. EMUI also offers a whole bunch of customization options. Honor 7X guarantees a please user experience with its EMUI.
Battery
The mobile is powered by a 3340 mAh battery and the bundled charged is a 5V 2A fast charger. PC Mark tests gave me about 8 hours of screen time. In real life, I get an average of 6 hours screen on time under moderate usage. It gets charged from 0 to 100% in about 2 hours. Battery performance in Honor 7X is satisfactory.
Verdict
The mobile is priced very competitively. Maybe it is the same price as Honor 6x at launch, but for Rs 12999, Honor 7X gives 4 GB of RAM. But the 64 GB variant is about Rs 3k more than the 32 GB variant, which is quite steep. In my opinion, the 4+32 GB storage is very good value for money. For Rs 13k, you get a sleek design, robust construction, edge to edge display, good camera and a pleasant user experience. It does not offer any certified dust and water ingress protection and it does not have the gyro sensor. If this does not bother you, you can buy the Honor 7x and you would never regret. It moves on the GadgetDetail recommendation list and also it has booked a spot on Top 5 mobiles under Rs 15k in 2017.
