Huawei Honor 7: Another Solid Offering at an Affordable Price

Huawei is one of those companies I wish we could have more in the United States. A large Chinese corporation with a track record of offering excellent phones for even better prices. So when the reviews started coming out without an official announcement, I decided to check up on their latest offering: the Honor 7. It promises all around excellent specs for a great price, on par with OnePlus’s lineup so with increasing availability in bigger markets, it might just make a significant mark in the market.

Looks

The Honor 7 starts impressing at first glance with a metal body and a plastic type coating to keep the metal safe from potential scratches. It’s on par with the iPhone 6 and far surpasses the OnePlus One and Two, at least in build quality. It may even be on the level with HTC’s flagship smartphones. Huawei has also done something pretty good for the price range with the design: eliminate thermal issues which is prevalent on other phones with metal builds. All in all, a well made device. Well done Huawei.

Another big part of the signature Huawei look is the software; it resembles iOS in a few unfortunate ways. The biggest is the lack of an app drawer meaning you must have all of your apps on one of your screens at all times.

What It Does

This is the really impressive part of the Honor 7: the internals. It has an awesome in house processor with 3GB of RAM which results in power comparable to the top end smartphones made by Samsung and other top competitors without any of the heating issues which have plagued one certain computer processor manufacturer. There’s also the screen which is a respectable 1080p, just like the OnePlus Two. The camera is also on par with the OnePlus Two with good low light performance and richly detailed images.

Then there’s the features that Huawei managed to pack in unlike the OnePlus Two. It has a micro SD card slot, NFC, and a customizable button with a few command types that you can set however you like. Even a fingerprint scanner on the back in about the location of buttons on the LG G4. The fingerprint scanner is the best available right now. It’s fast and accurate; it properly beats Apple Touch ID. With expanded support for fingerprints in more places in Android so it’ll become even more useful.

Finally, the price. The Honor 7 retails for £250 with no indication of an US price at this point but hopefully it falls at around $300. The Honor 7 would be the flagship killer to beat at that price.