Let's be honest. Most of the budget phones suck. You'll have a tolerable screen, crap camera, and bad performance. Definitely getting what you pay for in the long run. Many phone manufacturers still make them - mainly for the prepaid market. For everyone else, you'll have to deal w/ Motorola for the most part.
Huawei's Honor is looking to change all of that w/ the Honor 7X. Originally released late last year but recently got the update to Android Oreo. We had it for a few weeks but finally got a chance to dive into it more recently and we're ready to talk about it. We're looking to see if this could be a contender for a good Android budget phone or not.
The Honor 7X has an interesting place within the other Honor models. You still get the premium exterior w/ mid-level internals. Similar to the View 10, you got a brushed aluminum body, chamfered edges, antenna bands, micro-USB, bottom-firing speaker, and a headphone jack. With the price point, don't expect any water-resistance on here - especially if the Honor View 10 didn't have it.
You do have a large screen for its class w/ a 5.9inch LCD +18:9 aspect ratio & a 2160 x 1080 resolution. The visuals that come off of this screen is better than what you would get from the entry-level Motorola devices. The display gives you a great combo of great colors, deep blacks, and viewing angles. Being slightly higher resolution than your standard 1080p panel, this is nice! You also got a lightning-fast fingerprint scanner on the rear which is always good to have.
- 5.9inch LCD display w/ 2160 x 1080 resolution
- Octa-core Kirin 659 CPU
- 3GB of RAM + 32GB of storage expandable up to 256GB via microSD
- Dual cameras on the rear: f/2.2 16MP w/ PDAF (phase-detection autofocus) + 2MP for depth-sensing + portrait mode
- f/2.0 8MP front-facing camera
- EMUI w/ Android 8.0 Oreo
- 3340 mAh battery
Now, this doesn't offer the high-end Kirin CPU that's on the Mate 10 Pro but you got a mid-range version of the processor w/ a Kirin 659. It's not as lightning -fast as the higher-end chipset and it shows as it can get sluggish once and a blue. However, it is good enough to handle everyday tasks w/o buckling. Other than that, you got w/ 3GB of RAM + 32GB of storage that gives you good experience but I would have loved to see this w/ an extra gig of RAM though.
OK performance w/ a long-lasting battery.
Underneath it keeping everything on is a 3340 mAh battery. Now on paper, it sounds like meh but this thing performs like a flagship. Thanks to the right mesh of internals, the Honor 7X can last almost all day on a single charge. Me using it for about 2 hours on YouTube, a few hours listening to podcasts/music, emails, social media, etc. I got closer to 18 hours w/ heavy-to-medium usage on a single charge.
Keeping the same dual rear-facing cameras, the 7X has it as well. So instead of the usual suspects of monochrome + color or standard + wide-angle dual camera setup, they switched things up this time around. This has a f/2.2 16MP w/ phase-detection autofocus and a 2MP to contribute w/ depth-sensing + portrait mode.
The shooters are definitely better than most budget phones.
You got a decent amount of detail present and good color reproduction in bright-to-decent lighting. Drop down to low-light situations and it goes from acceptable to bad - depending on the situation. Lacking any OIS & being armed w/ a higher aperture, there will be some noticeable noise in many photos. Same results go for the 8MP shooter in the front. But other phones in this price point don't come close to this kind of picture quality.
The 7X originally shipped w/ EMUI 5.1 + Android 7.0 Nougat but back at the end of April, it got updated to EMUI 8 + Android 8.0 Oreo. Oreo adds picture-in-picture support for apps like Google Maps + YouTube as well as Project Treble for better battery life. Interestingly enough, Treble usually don't come to devices that didn't ship w/ Oreo. So this happening is good news that Honor is trying to keep up w/ software updates.
While the latest version of EMUI offers new improvements to catch this up w/ the Honor View 10 and the Mate 10 Pro. You do get the bloatware of apps like Booking.com and a bunch of Honor apps. But there are actual benefits present like a less-congested Settings menu and the addition of a native screen recorder option to name a few. So I can only imagine for those of you who had this phone before & after the update is like night-and-day.
The Honor 7X shapes up to be a better overall package than the other budget phones.
TG 2 Cents
The Honor 7X is offering a powerful performer for a phone that costs only $200. You get great necessities w/o too much to sacrifice in this price point. Aluminum body, great FHD+ display, all-day battery life, and decent-to-good cameras. Leaving you w/ a great value on an Android device.
You gonna want to case up as this has no Gorilla Glass present or water-resistance. Even lacking NFC for mobile payments too BTW. Although there are trade-offs, I think it does a good job at covering the basics. I would recommend this over a Motorola E or G series any day.
