honor 7x design
I love smartphones with large displays and the Honor 7X is perfect in this regard. The front of the phone is occupied by a 5.93-inch screen. There are thin borders on the sides but the thickness is a bit more at the top and bottom. There is an earpiece and 8 megapixel front camera on top of the screen. Just like the Honor 9i, the 7X has a fingerprint scanner on the rear. The scanner is easy to use and we had a great experience unlocking the phone. Honor has used metal unibody in this smartphone, which gives it a premium look and feel. The phone has antenna bands at the top and bottom which remind us of the Honor 8 Pro (Review).
The edges of the metal body are curved and because of this the phone feels good when held in the hand. The power and volume buttons on the right side of the phone are in the right place. And we realized that the volume buttons are difficult to reach. At the bottom, there is a loudspeaker, 3.5 mm headphone socket, primary microphone and micro-USB port. The dual camera setup on the rear comes with a single-LED flash. Honor has used two rings instead of a single ring key. Even before this, we have seen such camera setup in many recently launched phones. The camera is slightly raised but due to the metal ring, there is no risk of scratches on it. There is a front facing 8 megapixel selfie camera.
The weight of Honor 7X is 165 grams, due to which it feels light in the hand. The thickness of the smartphone is 7.6 mm while the battery capacity is 3340 mAh. Honor has provided a 10 watt charger in the box which charges the phone 100 percent in two and a half hours.
Honor 7X specifications, software and features
Most of Honor’s phones have Huawei processors. The 7X has a HiSilicon Kirin 659 processor and the same processor is used in the Honor 9i. In Honor 7X, you will get the option of 32 GB and 64 GB storage but both the variants have 4 GB RAM. The handset supports hybrid dual SIM slot with two nano SIM slots, which means that you will get the option of two nano SIMs or one SIM and one microSD card. It is possible to expand the storage via microSD card up to 256 GB. The phone supports 4G and VoLTE on both SIM cards, but 4G functionality can be accessed on only one network at a time.
The Honor 7X sports a Full HD+ resolution screen with 2.5D curved glass. But there is no mention of any kind of security. Viewing angles are good and Honor has given the option to set the color temperature as per your convenience. The brightness is good indoors but we faced problems while using the phone with one hand in sunlight.
Like all other Honor devices, the 7X also runs Huawei’s custom EMUI skin. The phone has Android Nougat based EMUI 5.1 skin. You will get the option to choose a layout with and without the app drawer. The UI has a theme support for customization. Honor has provided a single-handed mode for easy use of the phone despite the large screen. Additionally, apps can run in 18:9 aspect ratio if they do not scale automatically.
Along with all the essentials, you also get bloatware. Honor 7X comes with Honor’s support app HiCare and a gaming app store HiGame. Apart from this, there are also web shortcuts like Hi Honor and Honor Community. You’ll get demo versions of Spider-Man: Ultimate Power, Asphalt Nitro, Bubble Bash 3, Modern Combat 4 Zero Hour, and Danger Dash preinstalled. But you can delete them.
Honor 7X performance, battery life and camera
The Honor 7X uses the same combination of processor and RAM as the Honor 9i. And both of them score similar in benchmarks too. The phone scored 62,504 on AnTuTu while it scored 906 and 3569 in Geekbench’s single-core and multi-core tests respectively. Performance in GFX Bench was average. We tried playing Shadow Fight 3 game with heavy graphics on the phone and we did not face any problem in playing the game but it took time to load.
It feels good to watch movies and play games on a larger display. However, we noticed that the phone gets hot after playing games for a long time. And the battery also drains quickly. The phone lasted for a day with normal usage. But playing games and watching videos has a great impact on the battery. The phone’s battery lasted 8 hours in our HD video loop test, which is low for a battery of this size. Honor has provided some battery saver software features in the phone and they are easy to use. But they should not be used all the time.
The camera app is easy to use and apart from the default auto mode, you can choose between wide aperture, moving picture and portrait modes. Apart from this you also get many more modes. There are many other options too like Pro Photo Mode. You can also download other features as per your need.
Photos taken with the Honor 7X look good at first glance. However, when zooming in on landscape photos, you may notice a lack of detail. And you see pixels. Macro shots are good and the difference between the subject and the background can be clearly seen. With wide aperture mode you get good depth of field.
To take pictures at night one has to keep the hand steady. Photos taken in auto mode at night have less noise but the sharpness is fine. But quality is affected. Selfies also appear fragmented but can be shared on social media. 1080 pixel video recording can be done from the primary camera while maximum 720 pixel video recording can be done from the selfie camera.
our decision
With the Honor 7X, the X series has been updated. The phone has a large display with 18:9 ratio. And the powerful hardware will not let you down. The camera performance of the phone is not very good and the battery life could have been better. If you want a modern looking phone then Honor 7X is a good option. But if you want an all-rounder device then Xiaomi Mi A1 (Review) would be a better option.