Honor 7X and Xiaomi MiA1 sport dual lens cameras

By GizBot Bureau

| Updated: Friday, December 15, 2017, 12:31 [IST]

Honor 7X first impressions

The mid-range smartphone segment has witnessed some dramatic changes in last one year. The smartphones in sub Rs. 18K price-point have rapidly adopted some noteworthy features from top-of-the line flagship handsets. The edge-to-edge screen and dual-lens camera setups, which were once associated only with flagship series devices, can now be experienced in mid-range category.

A big credit goes to Chinese smartphone manufacturer Huawei which introduced dual-lens camera setup in budget price-point with Honor 6X in first quarter of 2017. Since then, several Chinese and Indian smartphone makers have introduced their share of budget dual-lens enabled camera handsets.

Huawei has recently launched the successor of Honor 6X in a global event in London. Honor 7X brings an improved dual-lens camera setup and also features a taller 18:9 aspect ratio screen. The aggressive price-point makes it one of the sought after Android handset in mid-range segment.

However, Honor 7X is not the only handset worth spending your cash in this price-point. Xiaomi MiA1 is also a compelling package and is worth checking out. If you have been looking for an answer to the question, 'Which one of these two mid-range smartphones is best suited to your requirements'; you are at the right place.

Honor 7X review: An affordable alternative with dual cameras and 18:9 display

We have compared and highlighted the most noticeable features of Honor 7X and Xiaomi MiA1 to help you solve the riddle. Read out this comparison to find the smartphone that matches your requirements.

Design and Display

Honor 7X is a clear winner when it comes to design and display performance. The smartphone sports a 5.99-inch FHD+ display with the latest 18:9 aspect ratio. This gives the handset a modern feel and makes its much more futuristic looking handset when compared to the Xiaomi MiA1. The MiA1 is still stuck with a standard 16:9 aspect ratio screen that does not go in sync with today's standard and fails to deliver an immersive multimedia experience. Honor 7X's taller FHD+ screen offers better pixel density and is more apt for video playback, web-browsing and gameplay. And despite packing a larger screen, Honor 7X feels more compact due to its better screen-to-body ratio of 77% as compared to 70.1% on MiA1.

Battery and Memory

Good battery backup and better external storage support also gives Honor 7X an edge over Xiaomi MiA1. The former is backed by a bigger 3,340mAh battery unit as compared to Xiaomi's 3,080mAh battery unit. On the storage front, both the smartphones have 64GB variants; however Honor 7X's internal memory can be expanded further by up to 256GB, which is exactly double of what Xiaomi MiA1 has to offer.

Honor’s dual-lens setup camera vs Xiaomi’s dual-lens camera setup

This is where things get interesting. Xiaomi sports a 12MP+12MP rear camera, whereas Honor 7X sports a 16MP+2MP rear camera. Both are dual-lens enabled but Xiaomi features a 12MP telephoto lens, which offers 2X optical zoom, whereas the 2MP secondary lens on Honor 7X only senses depth information and does not offer any optical zoom to the camera system. As far as image quality is concerned, Honor 7X has an edge over MIA1 as the 16MP primary camera produces better looking everyday images with better detailing and contrast.

Processing power and Software

Xiaomi's MiA1 ships with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 625 CPU whereas Honor 7X is backed by Huawei's in-house HiSlilcon Kirin 659 chipset. Both are octa-core chipsets but Snapdragon 659 is based on latest 14nm manufacturing process whereas Kirin 659 CPU is designed on 16nm manufacturing process. The real-life performance is similar and both handsets efficiently manage everything in day-to-day routine. Talking about the software, Xiaomi MiA1 offers stock Android Nougat experience whereas Honor 7X ships with Huawei's customized EMUI 5.1 skin deployed on Android Nougat. If you prefer slightly better feature sets and useful software tweaks, Honor 7X is the handset you should buy. However, if stock Android experience is what you are looking for, go for Xiaomi MiA1.

Conclusion

Seeing all the above mentioned points, we can say that Honor 7X seems like a better value for money deal between the two. The smartphone comes at a starting price of Rs. 12,999, which is exactly Rs. 1,000 less from the current best buy price of Xiaomi MiA1 and still offers a better design, crisp display, larger battery and better storage features. We leave the final decision on your shoulders to select the handset that better meets your requirements.