Honor 7X Review: Bezel-less, dual camera-smartphone on a budget

Amazon India will exclusively begin the sale of the new Honor smartphone on December 7 starting at Rs 12,999

Honor is making a big focus on budget devices at present and it looks like the Honor 7X might end up being the favourite budget phone of the year.

The new Honor 7X was launched globally in a major event in London at a price of Rs 12,999 for the 32 GB variant and Rs 15,999 for the 64 GB variant. Amazon India will exclusively begin the sale of the new Honor smartphone on December 7.

The most notable feature of the Honor 7X phone is its bezel-less display. The phone's 5.93 inches diagonally with a Full HD+ 2160 X 1920 resolution and an 18:9 aspect ratio look impressive. Plus, it stretches nearly edge-to-edge.

Here are our observations on the newly launched successor of the Honor 6X:

Back view of Honor 7X

Display & Design:

On the design front, the new Honor 7X has a whiff of a knock-off iPhone 7 Plus about it. Although the phone is made of a better quality plastic uni-body than many others in the market, the two cameras on the back are far too close to the top of the phone, which tended to constantly block the dual camera while taking photos. Moreover, we felt that there was no need for the Honor logo to be on the front of the phone, which makes it unattractive with the thin bezel. The device is available in three colours: Black, Blue and Gold.

On the back, there’s a fingerprint scanner, while the bottom houses the charging port, headphone jack and speaker.

Performance:

Apart from the looks, the device didn’t disappoint at all. Honor 7X is powered by Kirin 659 CPU and 4GB of RAM. We happened to get the 128 GB internal storage variant which is sufficient for the users. The powerful RAM and processor make the device almost free of lags and gives a smooth performance while playing high-end games like Injustice or while switching between apps in a jiffy. There are a few pre-loaded games – none of which seem optimised for the wide display, oddly – and they all play fairly well.

The software is the EMUI-skinned flavour of Android Nougat that you’ll find on Huawei handsets. There are plenty of customisation options and a good battery-saver mode, but there’s also way too much bloatware.

Camera:

Next big thing in this phone is the dual rear cameras. Sporting a dual rear camera (16 MP and 2 MP), which can capture Portrait Mode-like bokeh shots with in-focus foregrounds and blurred backgrounds, the photos came out pretty well in the daylight and outdoors. However, things felt very artificial at night. The autofocus of the extra sensor is simply there for gathering data for the wide-aperture mode and thus makes a beautiful low light shot quite artificial.

The 8 MP selfie camera seems adequate - good enough for social media use and can also take decent bokeh shots.

Battery:

The 3340mAh battery keeps the Honor 7X running all day, but the lack of fast-charging is a sore point. The battery is powerful and does not heat up the device even after long hours of usage. However, Honor is still using Micro USB rather than the now much more common USB-C, which comes as a little disappointing for the users.

Verdict:

The Honor 7X phone is a worthy choice for great Android smartphone experience with almost all the latest features that you may desire. But, you’re not going to mistake this for a flagship experience, but it’s perfectly adequate. Priced at Rs 12,999, the phone is a probably going to be the most favorite budget smartphone for the young.