Honor 7x First Impressions: New mid-segment King?

Honor 7x seems like a promising Android smartphone that have the ability to win the mid-segment smartphone war in the Indian market

By Rohit
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Honor 7X first impressions

After Honor 9i, Huawei is back with another camera and display centric smartphone for masses. The new smartphone is the successor of Honor 6x which was launched in the first quarter of 2016 in India and impressed us with its camera abilities and overall performance.

 
Honor 7x First Impressions: New mid-segment King?

Honor 7x brings some noticeable generation updates and is perhaps Huawei's last mobile product for the year 2017. It is due for a global launch in December 2017 and is expected to be priced around Rs. 15,000 in India.

We spent some time with the upcoming Honor 7x to find out what has changed in last 9 months in Huawei's mid-segment series. Here's our first impressions of Honor 7x, which is bound to give a good fight to Xiaomi, Lenovo, Motorola, Coolpad and Indian smartphone makers in mid-segment smartphone category.

Improved dual-camera setup

Improved dual-camera setup

Huawei has been producing dual-lens camera smartphones from quite a while. We have tested a couple of Honor devices with two-lens camera implementation and they deliver good performance as per their respective price-point. Honor 8 Pro is by far the best camera smartphone we have tested from the house of Huawei.

Honor 7x on the other hand is a mid-segment handset and is aimed at price-conscious consumers who want to experience how a dual-camera setup can improve the photography experience.

Honor 7x offers a slightly better dual-lens camera setup when compared with the previous Honor 6x. The smartphone features a 16MP+2MP dual-lens camera setup placed horizontally at the top left corner of the handset.

As it goes with Huawei's tow-lens camera implementation, the 2MP secondary camera is provided to capture depth information to create bokeh effects. The camera's software does all the magic and the results are good for most of the part.

Good bokeh effect and natural color tones in images
 

Good bokeh effect and natural color tones in images

Seeing the specs and speculated price-point, the image output and the background blue ability of the dual-lens camera setup on Honor 7x is quite impressive. The software does mess up with the background blur sometimes, but it's still manageable. Moreover, unlike Lenovo and Motorola's dual-lens camera handsets in the same price-point, the camera app on Honor 7x is fast and wastes no time in capturing a shot, a courtesy of Fast Auto Focus feature built into the camera setup.

As far as picture quality is concerned, Honor 7x's cameras (both front and rear) produce good results. The images captured have decent amount of detailing and display natural color tones. We will spend some more time in the coming week with Honor 7x to find out its camera's full potential.

Taller FHD+ Display for immersive visual experience

Taller FHD+ Display for immersive visual experience

The most significant change that you will notice in Honor 7x when compared with Honor 6x is the new taller 18:9 aspect ratio screen. Honor 7x sports a 5.93-inch FHD+ IPS LCD display, which is pretty touch responsive and produces crisp content and near accurate colors. The screen has minimal bezels on all four sides and will allow you to consume more content in a compact form factor.

Games look good and videos look immersive on Honor 7x. Surprisingly, the IPS screen on Honor 7x seems more bright and lively outdoors as compared to the display on recently launched Honor 9i. If it's software driven issue, Huawei can also improve the sunlight visibility of Honor 9i.

Design: A blend of Honor 8 Pro and Honor 9i

Design: A blend of Honor 8 Pro and Honor 9i

The first time I picked the new Honor 7x in my hands, I instantly recalled Honor's two most recent devices- Honor 8 Pro and Honor 9i. The design of Honor 7x seems like a blend of these two handsets that results in a sleek and premium looking handset. The smartphone comes with a unibody metal design and feels very light in hands. And like the previous Honor devices, Honor 7x also follows a clean and symmetrical design approach. The fingerprint sensor and hardware buttons are placed ergonomically making it easy to use the handset with one hand.

However, the taller display asks for some extra thumb efforts to reach the extreme corners of the screen.The charging port, microphone and the standard 3.5mm headphone jack is positioned at the bottom edge of the handset. The hybrid SIM card tray is positioned at left side and the power button and volume rockers are placed on right side. Up top you have a microphone.

 Hardware and Software: Android Nougat, 4GB RAM and Huawei's in-house CPU

Hardware and Software: Android Nougat, 4GB RAM and Huawei's in-house CPU

While we haven't completely tested the Honor 7x's computing and multitasking abilities, the performance is at par with the recently launched Honor 9i. This is due to the fact that Honor 7x also draws its power from the same 8-core Kirin 659 chipset.

The CPU is snappy and can easily address most of your requirements without breaking a sweat. The smartphone uses 4GB RAM that takes good care of multitasking and you can run several apps at a time.

The smartphone has 64GB internal memory that can be expanded by a hybrid SIM card slot. As far as software is concerned, Honor 7x runs on Android 7-based EMUI 5.1. The custom UI is snappy and apps fire up quickly. There are several built-in tweaks to enhance everyday mobile user experience.

Battery and Connectivity

Battery and Connectivity

As far as battery is concerned, Honor 7x once again mimics Honor 9i and is powered by the similar 3,340mAh battery unit. For connectivity, Honor 7x has Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Hybrid dual-SIM, and GPS.

Conclusion

Conclusion

If you remove the dual-lens camera setup from Honor 9i, what you get is more or less Honor 7x. The dual-lens camera setup offers good output and the new taller 18:9 aspect ratio gives Honor 7x an edge over its closest competitors- Xiaomi Mi A1, Lenovo K8 Note and Moto G5S Plus. Now it all depends on Honor 7's pricing that will make or break it a deal for price-conscious consumers in the Indian market.

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