Huawei Honor 7 smartphone review: not enough honor

Smartphones are expected from Honor in the near future to replace the excellent budget devices Honor 7X and Honor 9 Lite. Until this happens, Honor 7A is being released instead of last year's Honor 6A.

Like its predecessor, the new model has a price that is not much different from other devices from this manufacturer. True, the difference is twofold, but in any case these are budget smartphones.

The question is, can the Chinese manufacturer provide the required level of performance and functionality in this competitive price segment?

Honor 7A equipment

Specifications

Our honest video review of the Huawei Honor 7A smartphone:

Design

The Honor 7A doesn't have a truly edge-to-edge screen, but it takes up more real estate here than on most other budget phones. The frames at the top and bottom of the screen have become noticeably smaller compared to Honor 6A.

As a result, the Honor 7A is quite comfortable to hold in your hand, despite the screen size of 5.45 inches. This is achieved in the same way as other manufacturers, namely with a narrower body. The screen has become longer, thanks to which, with a width of 73 mm, the device fits comfortably in the palm of your hand. If you have long and flexible fingers, you will be able to reach the opposite edge of the device.

In Honor 6A, the developers experimented with a metal back cover. This year they decided to return to the plastic version of the case. This is not to say that this is bad, but the smartphone lacks a sense of exclusivity.

Despite this omission, the Honor 7A has two different textures on the back and side. The back side has a matte finish, while the outer rim is made of sparkling plastic. Matte plastic looks much better.

Having lost the metal, the back side gained a fingerprint scanner. Its absence was the main disadvantage of the Honor 6A, so it's nice to see it this time. It's not the fastest or most reliable, but it's good enough.

You won't get a USB-C port, so you'll have to make do with an old microUSB for charging and data transfer. But there is a 3.5 mm headphone jack, which is located on the top edge of the case.

⇡#Appearance, ergonomics, fingerprint scanner

Huawei engineers have finally made the body of the next Honor series smartphone metal. And this, in general, is a significant event - previously the cases of gadgets of this family were plastic. This is where the good news regarding appearance probably ends and the ordinary news begins. The fact is that Honor 7 looks, to put it more precisely, mediocre - it can easily get lost among other Android smartphones. This is probably what the creators originally intended, because for the sake of image, there are P-series devices. Nevertheless, the appearance of the “seven” is rather boring – there is literally nothing for the eye to catch on to.

Huawei Honor 7 – front panel

The dimensions of the gadget are also quite standard, as is the weight - 157 grams. Your hands don’t get tired of it, even if you hold the device suspended for a long time. The thickness of the case is 8.5 millimeters. Most competitors are thinner. On the one hand, this does not seem to be very good for our test subject, but on the other hand, a fairly capacious battery of 11.78 Wh (3100 mAh, 3.8 V) fits in its body, so this thickness is justified .

Huawei Honor 7 – front panel

There are no hardware keys on the front panel - the operating system navigation buttons are virtual. At the top of the panel there is a slot for the earpiece, the sensitive area of ​​the light sensor and the lens of the front eight-megapixel camera.

Huawei Honor 7 – front panel

Another interesting feature in the exterior of Honor 7 is the “smart” key. This is a hardware button located on the left side, under the middle finger of the right hand. The key is programmable; the user can assign an action to it (activate the camera, turn on the flash, launch the voice recorder, etc.) or launch an application. It is noteworthy that on this one key you can “hang” three tasks at once - single press, double press and hold. A very convenient feature, I must say.

Next to this very “smart” key there is a slot for installing two cards – Nano-SIM and a combined slot for Nano-SIM/microSD. Unfortunately, the smartphone, like many other Huawei devices, does not have a separate slot for a memory card.

Huawei Honor 7 – left side

The layout of the controls and connectors on the smartphone is standard. The power and volume keys are located on the right side. On the top edge there is an IR port and a 3.5 mm audio jack, and on the bottom there is a Micro-USB interface and an external speaker. The latter is not blocked by your hand, even if you hold the gadget horizontally.

Another little surprise awaits on the back panel. Under the lens of the main 20-megapixel camera there is a biometric sensor, which was not previously available in Honor. But something similar was in the Huawei Ascend Mate 7 smartphone, released a year ago.

Huawei Honor 7 – fingerprint scanner

It is noteworthy that with its help you can not only unlock the device, but also answer calls, turn off the alarm, view the list of open applications (to do this, you need to swipe up on the sensor), open the notification panel (swipe down) and erase notifications (double tap on sensor). Moreover, the user can create a protected area for storing confidential information and classified applications, which will be accessed using a fingerprint - through a special section in the built-in file manager. The fingerprint sensor works quite quickly and, most importantly, accurately - on the official Huawei website it says 0.5 seconds for recognition, and this seems to be true. During testing, it unmistakably recognized the owner’s finger and did not react to “strangers.” In total, you can save up to five prints in the device memory.

The main camera lens protrudes somewhat from the body, which is aesthetically not very pleasant. However, this does not cause any inconvenience: it will not be scratched, even if the device is lying on the table with its back down - there is a metal edging around the protective glass. Next to the camera is a two-section LED flash. We had no complaints about the assembly - the device does not creak or bend, although it does not leave the feeling of an expensive thing either.

Huawei Honor 7 – back panel

Screen

The screen has grown to a diagonal of 5.45 inches, but has grown only in one direction. Naturally, we are talking about length. This means you can watch videos more comfortably, but the resolution is only 1440 x 720. Of course, this is a cheap smartphone, but recently there have been many similar devices with 1080p screens. For example, back in 2016 this was the Moto G4.

As a result, we can say that the Honor 7A's screen may disappoint even with low expectations. Navigating the home screen and various menus is fine, but browsing through images, the browser, videos, and games shows the limitations of such a low resolution.

Color accuracy is good, Huawei Color mode allows you to change the shades on the screen at your discretion. The maximum brightness here is not particularly high. On a sunny day, looking at the screen will be problematic.

Performance

There are disappointments in this aspect as well. Processor 4-core MediaTek MT6739, 1500 MHz. Already a year ago he was at the lower level and has not gotten any younger since then.

To make matters worse, the developers decided to keep only 2 GB of RAM. At the moment, this is the minimum for modern smartphones; for smooth operation of Android, it is already desirable to have 3 GB. Moto G5S runs on the same processor, but 3 GB of memory allows this device not to experience problems with the responsiveness of the interface.

On the Honor 7A, everything works quite smoothly if nothing else is happening on the device. As soon as you start downloading a big game or updating many applications in the store, the work becomes jerky. There were several cases when it seemed that the smartphone was frozen, the load above the minimum strained this device too much.

Even individual tasks such as activating the device via a fingerprint scanner occur with an annoying pause. The camera app takes too long to load, sometimes several seconds.

The Geekbench 4 multi-core test returned a score of just 2835, which explains the issues. For comparison, Huawei P9 Lite on the not very powerful Kirin 659 processor scored 3644 points. At the same time, the Honor 7A surpassed the Moto G5S with its 2294 points, but the latter uses the same Snapdragon 430 to work with a Full HD screen.

Benchmark Antutu test:

In general, this smartphone is clearly not for gaming. PUBG Mobile constantly lags even though it loads on low settings by default. The less demanding Guns of Boom performs better, but each round starts off slow. Simple games like Super Mario Run, Angry Birds 2, Alto's Adventure work well. They also perfectly fill the entire screen with an 18:9 ratio.

The storage capacity of the Honor 7A is unlikely to please anyone. 16 GB is too little these days even for a budget smartphone. The device supports microSD memory cards, and you can also install two SIM cards.

⇡#Communications and wireless communications

As we have already said, the device can work with two Nano-SIM cards - the second SIM card is installed instead of a memory card. It is noteworthy and important that the smartphone has two separate radio modules installed - they work according to the Dual SIM Dual Active scheme, that is, when any activity occurs on one of the cards (for example, an incoming call), the second does not go offline. Working with SIM cards is implemented in the simplest way: after installing both SIM cards in the device, the smartphone will offer to assign which one to call, send messages and access the Internet with.

Honor 7 – SIM card management

The gadget can work in fourth generation networks – LTE Cat.6 is supported. The maximum theoretical data reception speed in mobile networks is 300 Mbit/s, upload speed is 50 Mbit/s. All bands important for Russia have been implemented - there should be no problems with 4G reception, regardless of the operator. In general, the smartphone reliably receives signals from mobile networks and does not lose it for no apparent reason. It is noteworthy that Honor 7 has a software option that allows you to improve the quality of signal reception - it is called “Signal+”.

In terms of wireless interfaces, Honor 7 is equipped almost to the maximum. The device supports Wi-Fi of all more or less popular protocols at frequencies of 2.4 and 5 GHz, Bluetooth 4.1 and is even equipped with an infrared port designed to control household appliances - for this it even has its own, quite convenient application called “Virtual remote controller". It is very easy to work with: the user must select the type of household appliance, find the desired manufacturer in a fairly large list, test the functionality of the proposed code and save the device. After this simple procedure, the treasured virtual control panel will appear. And all this is fine and wonderful, but the version that arrived in our test laboratory does not have NFC. Probably, modifications intended for other countries have support for Near Field Communication, as is sometimes the case with Huawei. However, our version did not have NFC - we double checked.

The smartphone has a navigation module installed that can communicate with GPS and GLONASS satellites. We have no complaints about his work. A minute after launching the profile test, the gadget detected eleven satellites, but it used only five of them to determine its location. The error radius was moderate - within 8-12 meters, that is, he was oriented quite accurately.

Software

Like the Honor 9 Lite before it, the Honor 7A runs on Android 8.10. There is good news and there is bad news. The Android version is almost the latest, but the shell on top remains far from ideal software.

Huawei's approach to creating a user interface is to combine elements of Android and iOS, the result is not the best.

Like iOS and unlike pure Android, this interface does not contain an application list by default. Icons for all programs will be on the home screen, so you will have to sort them into folders so that the screen is not cluttered.

You can enable it in the application menu settings, which shows the flexibility of this bootloader. You can change a wide variety of options if you don't mind navigating through the numerous settings menus. We have already mentioned the ability to change screen shades, you can also customize the arrangement of elements in the navigation bar and block individual applications.

The Themes app lets you choose dozens of design elements to change the look of your home screens. There is support for facial unlocking, which must first be activated. This may mean that it is not as reliable as on the iPhone X. Despite this, the system works quite stably and very quickly. If you want maximum protection, it is better to use a fingerprint scanner.

Huawei and Honor smartphones are notorious for having a large number of pre-installed applications. Like many developers, the Chinese company puts its own mediocre calendar, notepad, gallery, video and music program, and various tools. Games and the list of the best applications also make you want to get rid of them as quickly as possible.

⇡#Conclusions

We chose the title “not enough honor” for this material for one reason: Honor 7 is too disrespectful to older Huawei smartphones. Seriously, let's face it: with the same P8, Mate S and others like them, he did what the first Volkswagen Golf GTI did with sports cars of the same time - he made them meaningless. Honor 7 is fast enough, it has many wireless interfaces, it can work with two SIM cards, it has good cameras, decent battery life, it is equipped with a good display... and official resellers are asking 23 thousand rubles for it at the start of sales! Yes, let's admit, he doesn't have a very expressive appearance. But for the above-mentioned gadgets, it is also not so outstanding that you overpay for it. This suggests a logical conclusion: why pay more? The conclusion was short, but that’s probably all we would like to say about Honor 7.

Cameras

Recently, even modest Huawei and Honor devices have dual rear cameras. Oddly enough, this did not happen here and the only camera has a resolution of 13 megapixels.

Like the Honor 6A, the new smartphone is capable of taking surprisingly good photos in the right lighting. They provide natural color reproduction, blue skies and white clouds also look natural, while the detailing of dark areas is at a high level.

HDR shooting mode is supported, which must be selected in the menu. True, comparison does not allow us to understand what benefit it has. In low light, the camera has problems, including focusing on the subject and detailing. Naturally, for such a price this is usual.

On the front there is a 5 MP camera. It copes with its tasks perfectly, although it is better to turn off the decoration mode. In it, the skin is smoothed so that the person becomes like a mannequin.

Examples of photos on the Honor 7A camera

We tested the camera of the Honor 7A smartphone in different lighting conditions. And this is what we got:

At night:

In poor (artificial) lighting:

In daylight:

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that when shooting at night, the phone is slow to focus, which interferes with shooting. You simply won’t have time to shoot dynamic shots the way you want.

⇡#Display

The display characteristics of the Honor 7 are in many ways similar to the display characteristics of the Huawei P8. In particular, they have the same screen diagonals and resolution - both gadgets have 5.2-inch Full HD displays. They have the same pixel density, 423.6 inches. This is a fairly high value - the picture on the screens looks sharp. There is no “pixelation” effect - individual dots on the Honor 7 display cannot be seen, even if you bring the device close to your eyes. You can see this if you look closely at the photo of the display below - the image is quite “smooth”.

Huawei Honor 7 – fragment of screen photo without compression

Huawei has still not installed a Quad HD display (2560 × 1440) in any of its devices - neither in the technologically advanced Honor 7, nor in the fashionable P8. A matrix with this resolution is already used by all the major players in the Android smartphone market - LG (, ), and Samsung (S6/S6 Edge), and HTC (One M9+), and Lenovo, and many other manufacturers, including the second tier . But Huawei’s first smartphone with Quad HD resolution is just about to go on sale – it will be the Nexus 6P.

The display installed in Honor 7 is made using IPS (in-plane switching) technology. Its viewing angles are quite wide - it’s quite comfortable to watch, say, movies and photos on the display together. There are no serious color deviations or shifts, or significant drops in contrast when looking away from the perpendicular. The screen is quite responsive, it responds quickly to touches and recognizes gestures without problems. In total, the device supports up to ten simultaneous touches. The gadget also easily understands touches with loose gloves - this is especially important before winter.

The protective glass of the front panel has an oleophobic coating, so it’s pleasant to touch the screen of the “seven”. During operation, it practically does not get dirty: even if the user left “fingers” on the display, it is not difficult to get rid of them using any cloth at hand. The Honor 7 screen is made using One Glass Solution (OGS) technology, that is, there is no air gap between the protective glass and the matrix, which reduces the number of reflections. A very effective polarizing filter also helps combat glare.

The backlight boundaries of the Honor 7 display are quite wide: the luminosity of the white field varies from 12 to 438 cd/m2. These brightness values ​​allow you to comfortably use the device both in complete darkness and in the sun. The gadget is equipped with a light sensor, thanks to which it can independently adjust the brightness level that is comfortable for working in given conditions. The sensor works quite correctly.

The luminosity of the black field is small: at maximum brightness it reaches 0.33 cd/m2. This is a good indicator for an IPS matrix - the black color looks quite deep at any brightness, including maximum, without deviations into dark gray, dark purple or some other dark color. The contrast of the Honor 7 display is very good by the standards of mobile IPS – 1327:1.

Huawei Honor 7 – Grayscale Color Temperature

The color temperature of shades of gray is slightly higher than the reference value of 6500 K - on average it is 7500 K. Evenness is also not all smooth - very light and very dark tones are colder than the intermediate ones, and in general the picture is a little cold. If desired, the user can correct this in the display settings menu.

All gamma curves coincide with the reference curve - the smartphone display displays various halftones and shades correctly. That is, everything is fine with the display, except that the color temperature is too high - we have no other comments.

Autonomy

Honor 7A received a battery with a capacity of 3020 mAh, which is not bad with such a modest processor and low screen resolution. The same size battery is used in the more powerful Honor 9 Lite.

15 minutes of playing Guns of Boom with 50% brightness used up only 5% of the charge. Honor 9 Lite under the same conditions lost 6%, Honor 7X 9%. This means that Honor 7A can work for 5 hours in this game.

51 minutes of watching TV at maximum brightness used up 12% of the charge. Honor 9 Lite's results were 14%, Honor 7X lost 13%.

The developers promise full-day operation of the device even under high load. It seems that in this case it can be believed, if under high load you do not mean Pokemon Go all day long.

As already mentioned, there is no USB-C connector, and fast charging is also not provided. The latter is especially frustrating since even last year's Moto G5 had it.

⇡#Autonomous work

We have already noted that Honor 7 has a fairly capacious battery – 11.78 Wh (3100 mAh, 3.8 V). For a 5.2-inch smartphone, this is a perfectly acceptable battery. It is enough for the owner to spend a working day or even a day away from the outlet, provided that he at least sometimes lets go of the smartphone. During testing, Honor 7 did not leave us without a connection even once – and this is definitely good. A full charging cycle takes just under three hours; the gadget is powered by Micro-USB.

In our traditional test for HD video playback at maximum screen brightness, the device lasted more than six and a half hours, which is a very respectable result. At the same time, of course, its wireless modules were turned on, and data (applications, mail, and so on) was updated in the background via Wi-Fi. If you lower the display backlight level, the smartphone's battery will be enough to watch a movie throughout the entire transatlantic flight, without interruption.

Honor 7, like other Huawei devices, has three scenarios for using the battery with quite self-explanatory names: (auto-adjusting processor power depending on the task being performed) and energy-saving. The user also has the ability to automatically turn off Wi-Fi when the device is in sleep mode. In general, if you adjust the energy saving settings to suit your needs, you can extend the life of the battery by an hour or two.