Earlier we had updated our readers, about the upcoming Honor 7X, which is set to launch in Indi on 7th December. The Honor 7X is an upgrade to the Honor 6X for sure, with improvements visible everywhere, and Honor is expected to price it aggressively just like the Honor 6X and recently launched Honor 9i. As it has been quite some time, since I have been using the phone, so I guess it’s the time when I share my thoughts about the phone in this Honor 7X Review, so that in case you’re planning to buy it, it’s a must-read, to know whether it meets all your needs or not.
Honor 7X Review
Design and Display
The Honor 7X has a full-metal uni-body design, that is as per the latest trends and due to the all-metal body, the phone feels really premium in hand. The edges are curved, and these make the Honor 7X very comfortable to hold. The aluminum chassis provides protection and adds rigidity.
On the bottom edge, there is the micro USB port along with a 3.5mm jack- A mix of old and new. Honor has not opted for USB-C yet, but it’s good that they provided a headphone jack on the Honor 7X. The speaker is also at the bottom edge, and the sound output seems to be loud enough.
The dual camera module, along with the LED flash is on the top left corner on the rear of the Honor 7X and the fingerprint sensor is placed below the sensor, at the center to maintain the symmetrical design.
The display of the Honor 7X is the first upgrade when compared to the Honor 6X, the display is bigger and better, with a size of massive 5.93-inch. And by minimizing the bezels, Honor put this kind of huge, almost 6-inch display into the phone while maintaining the footprint of a 5.5-inch phone.
The bezel-less display provides a great experience while watching videos or playing games. And, the 18:9 aspect ratio display with full HD+ resolution (2160 x 1080) is vibrant, the colors are well saturated and the display is probably the best we have seen mid-ranger at such a price, considering the fact that the Honor 7X is priced for only Rs 12,999 in India. The viewing angles of the display are good, and it is well lit, even in outdoor conditions under direct sunlight everything on the screen is crystal clear and not a pain in the eyes.
Performance
The Honor 7X is powered by a Kirin 659 processor Octa-core processor (4×2.36 GHz Cortex-A53 & 4×1.7 GHz Cortex-A53), coupled with 4GB of RAM. The Honor 7X is absolutely smooth and doesn’t lag at all. As a multitasker, I was enjoying YouTube videos, while switching between email, replying to texts, browsing the web and between multitasking, there were no lags at all.
I never expected that it will be so responsive and fluid, but well it is kinda comparable to flagships out there with 30K range, if we consider the multitasking and doing daily tasks. Now, many of you are probably addicted to some mobile games and would ask about gaming performance, well the Mali-T830 MP2 inside the Honor 7X handles casual games perfectly, there are no lags or frame drops.
I mostly play Clash Royale, 8 Ball Pool, Daddy was a thief and Asphalt 8, and among them, gaming experience was totally fluid. There were no lags at all and we hardly got to see any frame drops as well in the gameplay. Huawei has done a lot of work to make sure applications and game take full advantage of the 18:9 display. Huawei tested Honor 7X with over 200 top games and 1500 applications for compatibility and the apps which don’t support the display ratio yet, will automatically expand to take up the full screen without ruining the user experience.
There’s 32GB/64GB of storage onboard, which is enough for most users I guess and well, you can also pop in a microSD card having a capacity up to 256GB, given that you will be able to use only one SIM card as it comes with a hybrid SIM slot on the Honor 7X.
There is a 3340 mAh non-removable battery inside the Honor 7X which is good for regular usage. During the phase of amount two weeks while using the phone, the daily routine was checking emails, using social media and messaging apps, watching some YouTube videos and playing some casual games mostly, but with the 3340mAh battery, it needs to be plugged in sometimes in the evening if you panic about low battery.
Camera
When Honor 6X was launched, it impressed many, including us with the camera. The camera was the killer factor on the Honor 6X, it’s ancestor and it was one of the first mid-range phones to have dual camera setup which could provide great bokeh effect, and now the Honor 7X has an even better camera setup.
There is a 16 MP rear camera, along with a 2 MP depth sensing sensor to provide shallow depth of field and add bokeh to macro shots and portraits. The rear camera of the Honor 7X takes impressive shots, with a good amount of detail, perfect saturation levels, and natural bokeh effect. The good thing about Honor 7X is that the phone doesn’t make your portraits look artificial at all, with the bokeh.
The rear camera includes modes like night-shot, panorama, HDR, portrait mode, pro-photo, capture smiles, light painting, time-lapse, slow-mo and watermark. In low lighting conditions as well, the Honor 7X performs quite good.
The 8 MP front camera on the Honor 7X captures selfies with a good amount of detail, in good lighting conditions and the best thing is that Honor didn’t just concentrate on the rear camera, and the front camera is particularly good for video calling as it is capable of shooting at 1080p at 30fps.
Like rear, the front camera is also capable to shoot bokeh selfies/portrait images which uses software to blur the background of the person. It works in a good lit area and indoors which is more than enough for a device at this price range. Although that reminds me of Honor 9i, which has dual camera setup at the front and the portraits clicked using that are more refined.
Software: Nice Custom UI with fluid interface
The Honor 7X runs Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box with company’s EMUI 5.1. Though Honor uses a custom skin, the EMUI 5.1 is pretty lightweight and doesn’t gulp all the free memory. EMUI 5.1 lets you choose between standard layout with all apps on the home screen or an App Drawer, there is the option to interchange positions of navigation keys, a floating dock with some controls can be added and there are features like motion control, one-handed UI, voice control and more.
There are a bunch of other useful features like App Cloner and second space, but EMUI 5.1 is pretty much bug-free and as Honor is consistent in case of software updates, I guess new features, bug fixes will be provided regularly, so overall the software experience is fluid and smooth.
Split screen experience is better on 7X as if automatically resizes the window you’re working on when you need to type in it and it automatically accumulates the space required for it. First introduced in Honor 8, you can use gestures on the fingerprint scanner to perform various tasks like pulling down notifications, taking pictures, answering calls and many more.
Final Verdict
The Honor 7X keeps the promises of Honor’s great camera performance, along with providing raw power to do multitask seamlessly and have a great user experience. Priced at Rs 12,999 for 32 GB storage and 64 GB storage variant for Rs 15,999, Honor 7X is a perfectly priced smartphone and is available in 3 colors i.e. Aurora Blue, Gold and Black. Honor 7X was the best selling smartphone in world’s biggest 11.11 Alibaba sale and is a global best-seller budget smartphone.
