Honor is becoming one of those few brands in the Indian smartphone industry that is bringing the still-to-be-mass-adopted technology to its consumers that too with an affordable price tag. We saw the Honor 9i that come loaded with the latest 18:9 display along with four cameras at an affordable price of around Rs 18,000. Now, following its footstep is the latest Honor 7X.
But the question here is: Will it be able to disrupt the market at this price point? We got the chance to spend some time with the device and here are our first impressions.
Design and Display
Just like Honor 9i, this one also comes loaded with a metal unibody design that certainly gives a premium look. The smartphone is quite thin and lightweight, which makes it quite comfortable to hold. The back panel is flat and you will notice camera humps at the top-left corner and if you move south, you will notice a fingerprint sensor.
The front of the device bears a bezel-less display, which as an aspect ratio of 18:9. The front-facing camera along with a usual array of Sensors and earpiece is on the top of the front panel, while the on-screen navigation buttons are at the base. The right houses volume rocker and power on/off button, while the left houses a Dual-SIM slot. The top is bare, while at the bottom, you will find a Headphone jack, micro-USB port, and a speaker grille. That said, the smartphone certainly gives a premium look, though some might find a bit slippery in nature due to the flat back design.
Moving to the display, the phone features a 5.93-inch Full HD+ screen with a screen Resolution of 2160 x 1080 pixels and an aspect ratio of 18:9. This means that unlike other smartphones, this one sports a bigger screen in a chassis of a 5.5-inch display smartphone. During our initial testing, we found out that the smartphone goes gives some good output in terms of colour and the viewing angles are good as well. We will talk more about this in our upcoming review.
Hardware and Software
On the hardware, the Honor 7X is powered by a HiSilicon Kirin 659 octa-core Processor clocked at 2.36GHz along with Mali T830-MP2 GPU. The phone is backed by a 4GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. That said, the smartphone will surely face a stiff competition with the likes of Xiaomi Mi A1, Motorola Moto G5S Plus as both the smartphones comes loaded with competitive specs and offers some good performance as well.
On the software front, the device runs on EMUI 5.1 based on Android Nougat. Honor has come a long way in terms of making their user interface rich in features and performance. We liked the fact that the company has the option to choose between standard layout and an App drawer. Navigating between the apps and screens in a delight and it is quite smooth as well. One can also change the navigation keys according to their wish. The UI comes loaded with some India-centric feature including a Hindu Calendar, which showcases all the panchangs and dashas.
Camera
The Honor 7X has a dual rear camera setup which includes a 16-megapixel primary sensor with LED Flash, PDAF, and a secondary 2-megapixel sensor. In its front lies an 8-megapixel camera for selfies and video calls. The user interface is quite easy to use and one can swipe left and right to open different modes and camera settings respectively. There some interesting modes like Pro mode, HDR, Night Shot, Panorama, Light painting, Time-lapse, filter, slow-mo, effects and more.
During our initial testing, we found that the smartphone does click some good photos in broad daylight. However, while utilizing the depth of field mode, we found that the camera was not properly highlighting the subject. The front camera does a decent job as well.
Battery and Connectivity
A 3340 mAh non-removable battery is inside the phone with Fast charging technology which claims to offer up to 21 hours of talk time. On the connectivity front, the smartphone offers Hybrid Dual SIM, 4G with VoLTE, WiFi (802.11 b/g/n), Bluetooth 4.1 and GPS. It would be interesting to see how well does the battery perform during our review period. So, stay tuned with us for a full-fledged review of the Honor 7X.