Honor 7X Review: A Good Bargain?

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Honor 7X: At First Glance

The Honor smartphone used to be a subsidiary of the Huawei range of phones we’re familiar with. In 2020 however, Huawei gave up their successful smartphone brand to Shenzhen Zhixin New Information Technology Co. Ltd.

Since its independence, smartphone lovers have been on the lookout for just how well Honor will strive on its own. Nonetheless, the Honor 7X smartphone was among the devices released in December 2017 by Huawei before the breakout.

Notably, the Honor 7X is a redefined version of the Honor 7 which was released in 2015. Now, the important question is, did Honor really refine the smartphone or they just gave it a new name?

Well, you’ll find answers when you read on!

Honor 7X: Design, Dimension & Weight

When compared with its predecessor, the Honor 7X has a more sophisticated and near bezel-less design. Actually, this version is slightly taller, narrower, and thinner than the previous version.

The body build of this smartphone is not different from that of the Honor 7. You get the same commendable aluminum build quality and design for its price range.

As an aluminum smartphone, this well-built device looks like it would survive a hard fall. The Honor 7X has slightly curvy edges which add to its overall aesthetic look.

You pretty much know what brand it is with the “honor” logo taking its place on the slightly thick lower bezel. Speaking of bezels, the front-facing camera of the Honor 7X is placed on the left part of the upper bezel.

Just in case you’re wondering, a bezel is a border between the screen and the phone’s actual display. Apparently, most smartphones recently manufactured come with slimmer bezels which means a more modern look.

Unlike some other mid-range smartphones, the Honor 7X does not have a navigation bar on the phone’s surface. Instead, you’ll see the navigation bar when you power on the display which is more commendable.

This navigation bar includes the Back, Home, and Recent button that helps you move around apps. Having the navigation bar on the phone’s surface is not so desirable because it results in thicker bezels – and we definitely don’t want that.

Moving on to other features, there’s a micro USB port for charging and a single loudspeaker. Asides from those, there’s a headphone jack and a LED notification that lets you know when the phone is charging.

On turning over this smartphone, you can’t miss the dual rear-facing cameras and the LED light occupying the upper area of the phone’s back. Just below them is the rear-mounted fingerprint sensor.

Still on the back, you’ll see another “honor” logo on the lower part of the phone’s back. When it comes to color variants, you won’t be disappointed when you purchase this smartphone in blue, gold, or solid Matte black.

Moving on to the sides, there’s the volume rocker and the phone’s power button just beneath. While on the left side, there is a single tray for the dual SIM.

This single tray functions like most modern smartphones. It accommodates a regular and nano-SIM slot on the Dual-SIM model, or you can sacrifice the nano-SIM slot for a dedicated microSD card instead.

We can’t come this far and not talk about the weight and dimension of the Honor 7X. This smartphone weighs 165g and has a dimension of 156.5 x 75.3 x 7.6 mm.

The Honor 7X is slightly weightier than its previous version which weighs 157g. Being weightier is understandable because the Honor 7X is a larger version.

Having said that, you can be sure that the Honor 7X won’t feel like a dumbbell in your hands!

As a whole, the Honor 7X presents an impressive design for a smartphone at its price point. With that said, I will be rating Honor 7X a nine out of ten in this design review section.

Honor 7X: Display Features

The display of the Honor 7X is packed with a 5.9″ IPS LCD display. Furthermore, this display has FHD+ (1080 x 2160) resolution.

One thing to love about the Honor 7X is the larger screen than the previous version which was only a 5.2″ display. On the Honor 7X, you get wider viewing while watching a video in portrait mode or playing an android game.

As for the IPS (In-plane switching) LCD, it is one of the best display technologies used in phones. Unlike the AMOLED display type, the IPS LCD has a more accurate display of colors even when the phone is at different angles.

Apparently, what this means is that you will get an excellent display in Honor 7X. However, compared to AMOLEDs, IPS LCD displays are known to consume more battery.

If the battery is good enough, that won’t be a problem – we’ll find out in the battery performance section. Furthermore, this smartphone managed a respectable maximum brightness of 458 nits.

Nits of brightness is an important feature of a display because it measures just how bright a screen gets. Obviously, the higher the number, the better.

With that said, Honor added just 8 nits to the new model over the previous one which had 450 nits. The nits on the Honor 7X are however not as much as the Redmi Note 4 which has 484 nits.

Regardless, you can be sure that you won’t need to strain your eyes when looking at the screen of the Honor 7X. You may however strain your eyes when using it outdoors.

This is because the screen is a bit reflective when using it under sunlight. What that means is that you’ll have to increase the brightness to the very maximum when you’re viewing the screen outdoors.

Having highlighted the display features of the Honor 7X, the smartphone deserves a nine in this section of this review. This is because the large screen, screen brightness, and display type are more than expected for the price range.

Honor 7X: Camera Features

One thing to definitely get right on a smartphone is the camera features you get from it. Well, the Honor 7X is a dual-camera smartphone.

The main rear-facing camera consists of both primary and secondary cameras. The primary camera is 16MP with ƒ/2.2 while the secondary is a 2MP sensor camera.

Besides this secondary camera is a single LED flash that functions for taking brighter images in low-light situations. Additionally, the Honor 7X has an 8MP front-facing camera with ƒ/2.0.

For clarity, the “ƒ” symbol means Aperture (ƒ.stop), and the figures beside the symbol simply mean the rate of aperture the camera has. Aperture is very important in knowing just how much picture quality to expect from a camera.

Furthermore, aperture refers to how wide the camera lens goes which in turn determines how light passes through the camera. Here’s the tricky part, the lower the figure, the better the aperture – which in turn means better quality pictures.

In that case, a 16MP camera with ƒ/2.2 wouldn’t be as good as a 16MP camera with ƒ/1.7. Both the 16MP and 8MP cameras are pretty much average as far as smartphone cameras go.

Let’s talk about the secondary rare facing 2MP camera. With such a small megapixel, you may be wondering what could be the use of the 2MP secondary camera.

Well, this secondary camera is used for additional depth when taking pictures in portrait mode. This means you can’t use it to solely capture images directly.

Even in those two scenarios where it’s supposed to function, it does very little to enhance the overall photo quality. Despite that, the 16MP camera captures pictures with decent quality and provides adequate details to images.

This 16MP camera balances exposure and provides details of highlights and shadows in images. As for photo enhancement, the main menu has features such as HDR, Panorama, face-detection autofocus, among others.

There is also an advanced settings menu, where you get to choose different filters for images taken. Also, rather than having the secondary camera create the bokeh effect, there is a feature dedicated for just that.

Moving to the 8MP front-facing camera, it functions similarly to the 16MP rear-facing camera. In detail, this camera provides natural-looking images with just the right amount of color.

When it comes to video quality, the 1080p video is not the best you’ll get especially compared to what high-end smartphones offer. Nevertheless, this video camera produces little background noise and you get good video quality in bright light situations.

In brief, the Honor 7X offers decent camera features without any wow-factor on it. That said, I will be rating Honor 7X an eight in this camera review section.

Honor 7X: Battery Life and Talk Time

The battery power of the Honor 7X is a 3340 mAh battery. Notably, this battery is non-removable, meaning if it gets faulty, you wouldn’t be able to replace it yourself – only the manufacturer can.

Having good battery life cannot be underestimated. That’s why phone manufacturers try to meet up in terms of battery quality – and the Honor 7X is not an exception.

According to FoneArena.com, this battery lasts up to 33 hours 36 minutes on 3G talk time. As for web browsing, the phone lasts 10 hours 10 minutes.

To give you an idea of just how long this battery lasts, I played a video in loop. This means I played a video repeatedly till the battery got low and the Honor 7X survived till 9 hours 23 minutes.

Apparently, the Honor 7X doesn’t impress when phones like the Asus ZenFone 3 is in the room. For the same video playback test, the ASUS ZenFone 3 lasted 16 hours 24 minutes on video playback.

An unimpressive part of the Honor 7X is that it does not have a fast charging feature, it gets a 33% charge in 30 minutes. Within that same 30 minutes, the OnePlus 9 gets a 98% charge.

That is a lot of charging difference. However, the OnePlus belongs to the high range smartphone category so we can expect it to have such fast charging feature.

Comparatively, the Honor 7X charges faster than the Moto G Power that gets a 22% charge in the same 30 minutes. As for a full charge, the Honor 7X actually takes about 2 hours 32 minutes to get a full charge.

Even though the Honor 7X will keep you waiting while charging, it has an average battery life that will survive a full day. That being said, in this battery life review section, Honor 7X deserves a nine.

Honor 7X: Storage Options & Performance

Like every other section of the review so far, the storage option of this smartphone is average. To be precise, the Honor 7X offers two storage options – there’s an option for 32 or 64 GB of storage.

Even though these two storage options are quite common in smartphones – it’s more impressive. To give you a comparison, Samsung J7 Crown offers only one option of 16 GB storage.

Just in case either storage options are not enough for you, expanding the storage is possible. Both the 32 and 64 GB options lets you expand storage up to 256GB using a microSD card.

As I earlier stated in the design section, one of the slots on the dual-SIM slot can be used for the microSD card instead.

The storage options of the Honor 7X are not exactly mind-blowing. However, this smartphone offers maximum storage of 320 GB (the 64 GB that comes with the phone + 256 GB expandable storage).

A total of 320 GB storage is definitely sufficient for whatever you intend to use the Honor 7X for. Having said that, I will be rating the storage options section of this Honor 7X review a nine.

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Honor 7X: Security Features & Sensors

When it comes to security features and sensors, the Honor 7X doesn’t have it all. To start with, this smartphone does not have an accelerometer and gyroscope sensors.

For clarity, the accelerometer sensors help determine a phone’s orientation and automatically change the orientation. This is how your phone knows when to rotate as you turn it around.

Another sensor that is absent is the barometer sensor. The absence of this sensor may affect the level of information you see in a health app on this smartphone.

Also, the Honor 7X does not have the face recognition feature. Even at that, the Honor 7X has a fingerprint sensor that serves well as a security feature.

This fingerprint sensor allows you to unlock the phone with your fingerprint instead of a PIN. The phone also has a proximity sensor and an ambient light sensor.

The proximity sensor is useful for increasing the battery life of the phone. This proximity sensor turns off the display when the phone screen comes in contact with your face or ear.

In the real sense, this is an important feature because it increases the battery life of the phone when the display is off. Another sensor that helps maintain battery life is the ambient light sensor.

This sensor determines the degree of light around the phone and automatically dims the phone’s display. Asides from saving the battery, your eyes are also protected from the screen brightness.

Going back to the fingerprint sensor, it is rear-mounted and is easy to reach when holding the phone. As for responsiveness, it’s also super fast, you’re able to unlock this device in milliseconds.

In brief, even though this smartphone doesn’t have all the sensors you would expect in a smartphone, it has the necessary ones. For that reason, this section of the Honor 7X review deserves an eight.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

In summary, the Honor 7X doesn’t totally excel at one thing. It’s more like a sprinkle of goodness in each feature it has and that is acceptable for its price.

This smartphone will serve you well if you just need an average device with a big screen for better viewing pleasure.

For its price tag, the Honor 7X is one great budget smartphone. Despite its imperfections, is a good smartphone without a doubt.

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