Cheap Smartphone Is Getting Good, Good Smartphone Is Getting Cheap. The Huawei’s subsidiary Honor smartphone has been coming with quite a few good yet affordable smartphone like its Honor 6, Honor 6 Plus and the most recent Honor 7.

Honor 7 received a very good respond when it announced in China and has been reported to receive more than 9 million pre-orders.

Technical specification Honor 7

• 64-bit Octa-core HiSilicon Kirin 935, Quad 2.2GHz + Quad 1.5GHz
• Mali-T628 GPU
• 3GB of RAM
• 5.2-inch FHD IPS Display
• 16GB Internal Storage (with microSD card slot)
• 3,100mAh Battery
• EMUI 3.1 Based Android 5.1 Lollipop

Packaging

The packaging is very simple and straight forward. These are the items packed inside:

• Honor 7 Smartphone
• 5V, 2A Wall USB Charger
• microUSB Cable
• Earpiece
• Warranty Card
• User Manual

Metal Body Design, Camera & Fingerprint Sensor

Honor 7 is built using full metal body design where I find it’s very premium-ish and this reminded me of HTC One M7 & M8.

The rear of the Honor 7 sat a protruded 20 megapixel f/2.0 camera paired with dual-tone LED flash. The rear camera features PDAF (Phase Detection Autofocus) where you able to get faster focusing. Unfortunately, an optical image stabilizer is missing.

On the front you will find a 5.2-inch IPS Full HD display and on top of you is an 8 megapixel f/2.4 26mm wide angle lens selfie camera. There is also a warm-white LED flash which it able to provide better selfie taking in very dark enviroments.

On the right side you will find power button and volume rocker buttons.

Then on the left there is a smart key button that can use to perform shortcut tasks or launch app. It work perfectly as shutter button if you like to take photo.

Honor 7 support dual SIM (both nanoSIM) and the second slot can also be equipped with microSD card (up to 128GB).

It also has a built-in Infra blaster where you can use your smartphone to control your house’s home appliances like TV, Blu Player, Air Cond and etc.

Bottom you will find two speakers grill and a microUSB port. Only one of the speaker grill that produce sound where the second which I believe is microphone. Maybe this way it would look more symmetry in term of design perspective.

There is a fingerprint sensor below the camera and I find it quite accurate and fast. I able to wake up and unlock the phone hassle-less even I placed my finger at different angles. The fingerprint sensor does works as a trackpad on some apps too.

Performance

Honor 7 is equipped with an octa-core Kirin 935 processor with 3GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. The processor that it uses is similar to the Huawei P8 and perform impressively good. Buttery smooth and lagging no where to found during my test.

I would say the performance is quite similar to Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 devices and much better than Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 smartphone that available now in the market.

Software 

There are some apps that I find it very practical and useful for instant, the wake up phone by placing finger on the fingerprint sensor. It’s quick, accurate and we don’t have to press any button or touch taps the screen.

Next is the Smart key. Basically it work just like MiKey where you can assign single press to launch camera, double press launch Google Now and etc.

WiFi+ give you consistent and smooth internet experience where it will switch between WiFi and your mobile data.

The default music player is very simple and nice. It will change the background color as per the music’s album art. It also display song lyrics on the music you played.

Photo Samples

Here are some photos taken with Honor 7 with no editing or touch up. Click on the image for larger photo size viewing.

Conclusion

If you are looking for a flagship smartphone and have tight budget, I would highly recommend this smartphone.

Love
– Accurate & fast fingerprint reader
– Good camera with fast AF
– Premium metal build design
– Dual-SIM
– microSD card slot
– IR blaster
– Affordable price point

Hate
– Rough texture on the back
– Limited to Full HD & 30fps video recording

Price & Where To Buy

The Honor 7 is priced at RM 1,399 and you can purchase it thru Honor’s official store vmall.my or you can purchase from Lazada Malaysia.