Honor 7X Smartphone Review

The Honor 7X is from the budget arm of Huawei, giving great value for money, and high-end features, with a wide 18:9 5.93inch screen, it’s one of the most affordable 18:9 smartphones with a nearly 6inch screen available. The smartphone features dual cameras on the rear and a number of advanced shooting modes. The Honor 7X is priced between £229 and £250, sim-free and available in black or blue.

Honor 7X Features

The Honor 7X features dual cameras on the back, with one 16mp camera, and one 2mp camera. There is a single LED flash on the back, and no LED flash for the front selfie camera (however, there is an option to use the screen as a flash).

The front of the phone features a large 5.93inch 18:9 aspect screen, with a FullHD+ resolution of 2160x1080. The phone has a metal body, with a rear fingerprint sensor, so that you can quickly unlock the phone. 

Dual cameras – The main camera on the back of the smartphone is a 16mp f/2.2 camera, with a 26mm equivalent lens. The second camera is a 2mp camera, to help with bokeh and background blur. The main camera features Phase Detection Auto Focus (PDAF) for quicker focus. 

The portrait mode is designed to blur the background, and you can apply "Beauty effect" if you want it to. You can shoot using the wide aperture mode, designed to blur the background of your photo, with more control, and you can adjust the (software) aperture from f/0.95 to f/16.

The 8mp selfie camera lets you use beauty mode, plus enable and disable background blur. The camera app has gesture control, which means you can take photos by waving at the front camera. There's also smile capture.

The Honor 7X will record FullHD video at 30fps, and there's an option to record slow-motion video (this records VGA video at 120fps).

The phone comes with a generous 4GB RAM and 64GB Storage, which should be plenty. There's a MicroSD slot if you want to add more, or you can use two Nano SIMs.

The phone is running Android v7.0, and EMUI 5.1. Wi-Fi bridge can extend your Wi-Fi, making the phone a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Key Features

• Dual rear cameras: 16mp f/2.2 (26mm), and 2mp
• Phase Detection AF (PDAF)
• Dual LED flash
• 8mp f/2 front camera (Selfie, 27mm)
• 5.93inch 18:9 FullHD+ screen
• HDR shooting
• 4GB/64GB, MicroSD slot
• FullHD video
• ISO50-ISO1600 (Manually selectable)
• Fingerprint sensor
• Metal body (frame and rear)
• 3340mAh battery
• Available in black, blue

Honor 7X Handling

The screen is large and clear. You can split the screen into two apps. It's bright, and viewing it outdoors in bright light was quite good, although it wasn't as bright as some other smartphones we had to hand.

The fingerprint sensor is in a good place on the back of the phone and is easy to find with your finger. The camera lenses are in the far corner, away from the fingerprint sensor, so it is easy to avoid smudging the lenses with your finger. Although, as the protruding camera lenses are the only edge on the back of the smartphone, it’s quite likely you’ll end up using them as a grip at some point. A quick wipe of the lenses with a soft cloth is all you need to keep them clean.

On the side is the usual unlock / power buttons, and volume controls. The phone is solidly built and feels strong thanks to the metal back and sides. It feels slightly more robust than most glass smartphones and is thin at 7.6mm thick.

The camera app has a number of different shooting modes including: Photo, Pro Photo, Video, Pro Video, HDR, Panorama, Light painting, Time-lapse, Slow-mo, Filter, Effects, and Watermark.

You can download additional features including Good food, watermark, audio note, document scan. Pro mode lets you adjust ISO, Metering, Shutter speed, Exposure compensation, Focus, White Balance, and there's a built-in guide to explain the options and settings.

At the bottom of the phone there is a headphone socket, and a MicroUSB connection, this seems slightly dated considering most Android smartphones have now switched to USB-C connections. You'll also find a speaker at the bottom.

Geekbench 4 gives the smartphone a score of 904 single core and 3565 multi-core. AnTuTu benchmark gives a score of 74597, making it slightly slower than the Moto X4.

Battery Life – Battery management straight out of the box doesn’t appear to be as good as some others, such as the Moto X4, and the battery would drain more quickly even when not being used, however, the 3340mAh rating is better than many smartphones. As the battery can’t be removed, you’ll need to take a USB charger if you think you're going to run out of power