Huawei Honor 7 vs Honor 6 Plus

The mid-range is fast taking the spotlight from the flagship, and Huawei’s Honor sub-brand is just one of the players aiming to offer premium specs at an affordable price. In the case of the Honor 7, the company has taken last year’s flagship Ascend Mate 7 and combined it with the Honor 6 Plus to create an affordable yet premium-feeling smartphone.

The Honor 7 is one of those smartphones that aims to combine a premium build with impressive specs and an even more impressive price tag, but how does it compare to the Honor 6 Plus? Let’s take a look.

Design

The Honor 6 Plus is certainly an interesting smartphone thanks to its plastic finish that features a dot-matrix design and certainly looks cool, but the switch to a brushed aluminium finish on the Honor 7 makes the new handset infinitely more premium.

At 8.5mm thick, the Honor 7 is 1mm thicker than the Honor 6 Plus but a tad lighter (157 grams vs 165 grams) and the added thickness does mean the handset is a lot more reassuring in the hand. Measuring 143.2 x 71.9mm, the Honor 7 is both smaller and narrower than the Honor 6 Plus – mainly due to the smaller screen – but this change in size means the handset is more manageable in the hand.

The back of the Honor 6 Plus features a plastic finish and that quirky-yet-somewhat-odd dot-matrix design, and the biggest issue with this is the tendency to attract fingerprints. With the Honor 7, the switch to a metal finish means this is no longer an issue.

The matte finish on the Honor 7 has been blasted with ceramic particles to give it a brushed effect that also provides grip and the change is most certainly welcome. An Honor executive told us that designing the finish on the Honor 7 required blasting ceramic materials at different blasting pressures in order to achieve the eventual finish.

Beneath the camera is arguably one of the best features on the Honor 7: the fingerprint sensor. While fingerprint sensors are certainly not new, the Honor 7 brings an updated version of the excellent sensor that debuted on the Ascend Mate 7. The redesigned sensor is the first ever sensor on a smartphone not to feature a metallic ring around it, while Huawei has also added other features to it.

Thanks to gesture support, the sensor can now act as a back button that, by simply tapping it, lets you return to the homescreen by pressing and holding the sensor, pull down the notification sensor by swiping down on the sensor and access the recent apps menu by swiping up on the sensor. The position of the sensor on the rear is such that it is where your finger naturally rests and you’ll find the gestures become very useful in day to day use.

On the right, both smartphones feature the power and volume keys but a key change is that in the Honor 7, the keys are less recessed and have been crafted from ceramic, making them easier to locate and press without looking at the handset. Another change is that while the Honor 6 Plus features separate SIM and microSD card trays on the right, the Honor 7 combines these into one tray which is located on the left.

Beneath the tray on the Honor 7 is another new addition in the form of a button called Smart Key, which lets you launch favourite applications or toggle certain system features. As an example, I have it set up that a single press launches Twitter, a double press takes a screenshot and a long press pulls up Google Now. All of these options are customisable and it’s a quick and easy way to access your favourite applications from any screen.

To the bottom and another change as the Honor 7 houses a bottom-mounted speaker – like the all-metal Huawei P8 – while the Honor 6 Plus has Huawei’s older rear-mounted speaker design. The metal finish on the Honor 7 meant that Huawei couldn’t use a rear-mounted speaker and this is a change that has paid off with the Honor 7 monospeaker appearing to be much louder than the Honor 6 Plus.

Display

The Honor 7 is the follow up to the Honor 6 and not the Honor 6 Plus and features a 5.2-inch Full HD display, which is slightly smaller than the 5.5-inch panel found on the Honor 6 Plus. Both smartphones features the same Full HD resolution and the smaller panel on the Honor 7 delivers a slightly higher 424 pixels per inch density (versus 401 ppi on the Honor 6 Plus).

Despite a slightly larger build, the Honor 6 Plus has a higher screen-to-body ratio than the Honor 7, with the larger handset delivering a 73.2% ratio, while the Honor 7 has a slightly lower ratio of 72.4%. As someone with large hands, the Honor 6 Plus was mostly manageable but the smaller size of the Honor 7 is definitely much easier to use.

Hardware and performance

Like past Huawei smartphones, both the Honor 7 and the Honor 6 Plus are powered by Huawei’s own HiSilicon Kirin chipsets but a key difference is in the chipset being used. The Honor 6 Plus sports a Kirin 925 SoC with 2GB RAM while the Honor 7 is the first smartphone (apart from the Huawei P8 Max) to use the new Kirin 935 SoC with 3GB RAM.

Both handsets use octa-core Cortex processors in a big.LITTLE formation and while the Honor 6 Plus uses the older Cortex A-15 and A-7 cores (clocked at 1.8GHz and 1.3GHz respectively), the Honor 7 uses the newer Cortex-A53 cores, with four cores clocked at 2.2GHz and four more at 1.5GHz.

The Honor 6 Plus is certainly no slouch in the performance market but an extra gigabyte of RAM coupled with the much improved processor and the newer and faster Cortex-A53 cores delivers much better performance on the Honor 7.

Both smartphones also come with expandable storage, which lets you expand the 16/32GB storage on the Honor 6 Plus or the 16/64GB storage on the Honor 7, and like past Huawei devices, the microSD card tray can also be used as a dual SIM card slot. It’s worth noting that the 64GB storage variant of the Honor 7 is currently only available in China with Huawei yet to confirm if this will be made available elsewhere around the world.

Having the option to use two SIM cards definitely makes both of these devices a lot more appealing, but only one SIM card can be used for LTE, with the other limited to just voice or SMS. While this is somewhat disappointing, it’s unsurprising given the price tag and it’s certainly nice to have dual SIM functionality if you are someone who uses two different SIM cards.

Both smartphones feature non-removable batteries, which is unsurprising as it’s a trend that most manufacturers are adopting in their devices. The Honor 6 Plus features a 3,500 mAh battery but despite the extra thickness, the Honor 7 actually drops the battery life by 400mAh, although the 3,100 mAh battery is by no means small.

The Honor 6 Plus has impressive battery life and it is hoped that the Honor 7 also delivers on the battery front, despite the smaller battery size. Huawei itself claims the battery can last 2.57 days with moderate usage or over 1.2 days with heavy usage and to see whether it lives up to these claims, we’d recommend checking out our full Honor 7 review.

The Honor 7 is also the first Huawei smartphone to come with fast charging built-in. Huawei says the fast charging lets you charge for five minutes’ to make an hour’s worth of calls and can charge to 50 percent in just 30 minutes.

It’s worth noting that the fast charger isn’t included in the box due to the lower price tag but it shouldn’t cost too much to buy as an after-market accessory. Both handsets also support reversible charging that lets you charge another phone using a USB-On-The-Go cable but the cable isn’t included in the box and you’re unlikely to use this with the smaller Honor 7 battery capacity.

A key problem with metal devices is signal interference but Huawei has solved this with a dual antenna design that intelligently switches between antennae in a micro second depending on which is providing the strongest signal strength. Alongside this, the Honor 7 also supports Wi-Fi+ technology, which aims to improve battery life by automatically disabling Wi-Fi and then re-enabling it when it recognises you are near a known Wi-Fi network.

As you’d expect from a modern smartphone, the Honor 7 and Honor 6 Plus also come with a range of other connectivity options, including an infrared port to control electrical appliances, Bluetooth 4.0 LE to connect to wearable devices and LTE Cat 6, which offers download speeds of up to 300Mbps and upload speeds up to 50Mbps on the go.

Camera

Arguably the biggest change between the Honor 6 Plus and the Honor 7 is in the camera, with Huawei opting to replace the dual cameras on the Honor 6 Plus with a more traditional single camera arrangement on the Honor 7, which protrudes from the rear but is protected by sapphire crystal to prevent scratching and damage.

The camera on the Honor 6 Plus used two 8MP cameras to let you capture an image and then refocus the image after capture but this feature is dropped in the Honor 7. Instead, the Honor 7 uses a Sony IMX230 sensor to deliver 20MP resolution and all importantly, Phase Detection Autofocus (PDAF). Huawei says PDAF on the Honor 7 can focus on an image in just 0.1 seconds and is happy to show the feature off by detailing the time taken to focus in the viewfinder.

The Honor 7 camera also comes with a range of camera features that debuted on the Huawei P8, include the Good Food, TimeLapse and light painting modes but Huawei has added to these in the Honor 7. The additions include a new demist filter to remove smog or fog from photos, a star tracking mode to capture the night sky and two additions to the light painting mode in the form of silky water and taillight tracking.

To the front and both devices come with 8MP selfie cameras equipped with Huawei’s Beauty Mode feature. The Honor 7 takes it one step further with the addition of two other features. First, a new selfie light aims to let you take selfies in different lighting conditions and second, a new Perfect Selfie mode lets you pre-program your face and the Honor 7 will then replace your face with the pre-programmed image whenever you take a group selfie.

Honor 7 camera samples

There’s no denying that on paper, the Honor 7 camera is certainly impressive especially when you consider it an affordable smartphone and while it’s certainly not perfect, it delivers much better photos than the Honor 6 Plus.

Software

A key issue that many users have with Huawei devices is in the company’s Emotion UI interface, which is also known as EMUI and can sometimes feel like an incomplete experience. Just like the Huawei P8, the Honor 7 runs the latest EMUI v3.1 on top of Android 5.0 Lollipop while the Honor 6 Plus is still running the older Android 4.4.2 KitKat OS.

As identified in our Huawei P8 review, there’s several elements that don’t quite make sense in EMUI v3.1 including a notification menu that duplicates notifications and a colour scheme that can make notifications difficult to read. Sadly, these also make their way to the Honor 7 but while Huawei hasn’t fixed all the little elements, it has added some interesting new features.

The knuckle screenshot – which is absolutely atrocious on the Huawei P8 – has been improved so you can now double tap with your knuckle to take a screenshot and can completely turn off the feature in the settings.

EMUI also now comes with a Fast screenshot setting that lets you double press the volume down button to launch the camera and coupled with phase detection autofocus, it should mean you won’t miss many shots.

There’s also a hidden apps drawer, which lets you get rid of some of the icons on the homescreen by putting them in a hidden menu that can be accessed by pinching out. A good use case for this would be if you wanted to separate your work apps from your personal apps as you could hide the work apps and not need to see them once you leave the office.

Sadly, Emotion UI still doesn’t come with an app drawer which most users will find quite jarring and while we’ve asked Huawei to introduce the feature via an option in the settings, it’s unlikely we’ll see it anytime soon. The beauty of Android is that you can change the launcher very easily and this should make the experience more enjoyable if you don’t like EMUI. Having tested Nova Launcher on the Honor 7, I can safely say that it runs smoothly and improves the experience somewhat.

One of my favourite features on the Honor 7 aims to solve the infrequent yet common problem of losing your phone. With the Honor 7 you can now say a customisable voice command when you can’t find the handset and it will respond with a rather cheesy but cute response. The feature works rather well and although it can take a few attempts to set it up, it generally has no issues recognising the wake-up command.

Emotion UI has certainly come a long way since past Huawei devices and while it’s not perfect, I find it somewhat manageable (although many others do not). It’s worth noting however that – at least in my personal opinion – the software experience should not deter you from the Honor 7, which is otherwise an excellent smartphone.

Wrap up

There’s no denying that Huawei’s Honor brand has made somewhat of a splash on the market by offering a premium experience at an affordable price and the Honor 7 is certainly no different. The key thing however is that with the Honor 7, Huawei has made less trade-offs and offers both a premium build and a premium experience at an incredibly affordable price tag.

The Honor 7 is launching in the UK today for just £249.99, which when you consider the specs, is an absolutely fabulous price. In comparison, the Honor 6 Plus costs a tad more at £299.99 and given the choice, I know which one of the two I would rather have.

What do you think of the Honor 7 and the changes made by Huawei since the Honor 6 Plus? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below, don’t forget to check out our full Honor 7 review, hit subscribe and stay tuned to Android Authority.com because we are, your source, for all things Android. See you next time!

Huawei Honor 7 review

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Huawei, like quite a few other Chinese OEMs, is well known for bringing to market smartphones with impressive specifications and features, while keeping it budget-friendly, which is a key aspect of Huawei’s relatively new Honor series of smartphones. Honor 7, the latest addition to the Honor line retains everything that was great about its predecessors, but in a more refined package. Does this device manage to stand out in this highly-competitive segment? We find out, in this in-depth review of the Huawei Honor 7!

Design

While the Huawei Honor 7, with its angular look, features a very similar design language to its predecessors, there is a departure as far as build material is concerned, from a mostly glass construction to a unibody metallic design. The metal backing comes with a ceramic-coated finish, which not only allows for a great feel in the hand, but also slightly helps counter the slipperiness of the metal. With a thickness of 8.5 mm and weighing just below 160 grams, the device also feels very solid and substantial in the hand, and the use of metal certainly makes it feel more durable than its predecessors. With its 5.2-inch display and thin bezels along the sides, the Honor 7 allows for easy one-handed use and makes for a very comfortable handling experience.

Looking around the device, the volume rocker and the power button are found on the right side of the device, while there is a SmartKey button to the right (more about it below), and all buttons are very responsive, easy to press, and offer a good amount of tactile feedback. The power button is placed within comfortable reach, and comes with a slightly textured surface that makes it easy to distinguish between the power button and the volume rocker. The device also comes with a double tap to wake feature, so you won’t have to reach for the power button too often though. Above the SmartKey button is the dual-SIM card tray, with one of the SIM slots also doubling as a microSD card slot.

Up top is the headphone jack and the IR blaster, and at the bottom is the microUSB port, flanked by two grills, giving the appearance of a dual speaker setup, even though it is actually only a single speaker on the left side. Above the display is a speaker grill which also houses a notification LED, and there is also an 8 MP front-facing camera with a flash. On the back is the 20 MP camera sensor, coupled with a dual tone LED flash, with the setup looking quite similar to what is seen with the HTC One M9, and there is also a fingerprint sensor below the camera.

Display

The Huawei Honor 7 comes with a 5.2-inch IPS LCD display, with a resolution of 1920 x 1080, resulting in a pixel density of 424 ppi. Huawei claims that this display features a 1500:1 high contrast ratio and an 85% color saturation rate, making for crisp and clear text and vibrant colors. Viewing angles are good, and it also gets very bright, allowing for comfortable outdoor visibility. While Quad HD is all the rage, the Full HD resolution with this size is more than enough, and no one will have any complaints with regards to the viewing experience.

Performance

Under the hood, the Huawei Honor 7 packs an octa-core HiSilicon Kirin 935 processor, clocked at 2.2 GHz, and backed by the Mali-T628 GPU and 3 GB of RAM. Performance is as smooth as expected from this Huawei-made processing package, and very rarely will there be any signs of stutter or lag. Moving through the various elements of the UI is smooth, and opening, closing, and switching between applications is also fast and snappy. The device also handles gaming pretty well, save for the most graphically-intensive games, where you will notice dropped frames and slow load times. While the device gets the job done for the most part, if you’re looking for a fantastic gaming experience, this may not be the phone for you.

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Hardware

The Honor 7 comes with 16 GB or 64 GB of internal storage, and this can be expanded by another 128 GB via microSD card. Keep in mind though that the second SIM slot also functions as the microSD card slot, so you’ll have to make a choice between expandable storage or dual-SIM capabilities. The device comes with a standard suite of connectivity options, as well as NFC, and while it does feature 4G LTE support, it will be a good idea to check for compatibility with your local network carrier first.

As mentioned, there is a fingerprint scanner on the back, placed within easy reach of your index finger. This touch-type finger scanner is definitely one of the fastest I’ve used, and found it to be faster than the Samsung Galaxy S6 scanner. The scanner is also very accurate and rarely failed to read the fingerprint. Its placement on the back means that you won’t be able to easily unlock the phone while it’s kept on a table however, and users will have to depend on a PIN unlock in this case.

This sensor is not just a fingerprint scanner either, but also supports swipe gestures. A swipe down pulls down the notification panel, a swipe up opens up the recent apps screen, and a tap makes it function like a back button. These gestures are very handy to use, and I found myself relying on them when using the phone. Granted, since it lies within reach of the index finger, the opportunity for an accidental tap or swipe does arise, but the gestures were useful enough to make it worth learning to rest your index finger at a slightly different position. Of course, you can disable these gestures if accidental touches become a significant issue.

Another great addition with the Honor 7 is the SmartKey button found on the left side, with functionality similar to what is available with the Active button of the Galaxy S6 Active. You can set up this button to launch up to three different applications or commands, requiring either a single click, a double click, or a long press of the button. This proved to be incredibly useful, and as we expressed during the full review of the Galaxy S6 Active, we hope that this feature makes its way over to more and more upcoming smartphones.

While the microUSB port at the bottom is flanked by two speaker grills, this is only for aesthetic purposes, as the left side is the one that houses a single speaker unit. While this placement is better than if the speaker was on the back, the quality of the speaker itself is unfortunately below average. It doesn’t get loud enough to be heard even in slightly noisy environments, the audio sounds a bit muffled, and it is also very easy to cover up the speaker when holding the device in the landscape orientation.

As far as the battery is concerned, the Honor 7 packs a non-removable 3,100 mAh unit, that allows for excellent battery life, with up to five and a half hours of screen on-time during a typical day that involved watching videos, lots of internet browsing, responding to messages, and taking pictures. If you do run out of battery, you can take advantage of the device’s fast charging capabilities, with the device being charged to 50% in just 30 minutes.

Camera

The Huawei Honor 7 comes with a 20 MP rear camera with a dual LED flash and an f/2.0 aperture, along with a front-facing 8 MP unit, with an f/2.4 aperture. As far as the camera application is concerned, there are some nice features available to enhance the shots you can take like super night mode, panorama, slow motion, a food mode to make pictures of food look more appetizing, and more. The camera is also capable of light painting, so you can leave the camera on a tripod for a few seconds to let it capture all the light, resulting in some creative shots. It is also very easy to take a picture, with a long press of the volume down button enough to quickly launch the camera and take a shot.

As far as image quality is concerned, the camera is capable of taking some really good shots with a good amount of detail and saturated colors. That is mostly in well-lit environments however, and as the lighting conditions deteriorate, some amount of grain starts to show up, detail is lost, and colors begin to lack vibrancy. This is true for most smartphone cameras however, and low-light shots with this device are actually quite good. Video quality is unfortunately disappointing, with poor dynamic range and the tendency to overexpose, resulting in you having to continuously tap on the viewfinder to adjust the exposure and focus.

When it comes to the 8 MP front-facing camera with a wide angle lens, it is coupled with a flash, which is more of a dimly lit flashlight, but can be good to let a little bit of light into the shot. The quality of shots possible with the front camera is also impressive, with nice colors and lots of detail, but as expected, some graininess is seen in poorly-lit environments. With features like beauty mode to take advantage of, the selfie lover will not be disappointed by the quality of the this front-facing camera.

Software

The Honor 7 is running Android 5.0.2 Lollipop with the latest version of Huawei’s Emotion UI on top, but you will be hard-pressed to find any Material Design elements in this user interface. In fact, the influence of iOS in this UI is obvious, starting from the lack of an app drawer, leaving users dependent on folders to keep things organized, to the blurred background effect when opening a folder, as well as the ability to pull up a control center of sorts with a swipe up from the bottom, which houses shortcuts to apps like the flashlight and camera.

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There are some useful shortcuts and features available that make navigating around the UI much quicker, including the swipe gestures using the fingerprint scanner, the ability to take a screenshot with a double tap of your knuckles on the screen, and the ability to draw out areas to crop. You can also play around with the on-screen navigation keys, by switching the back and recent apps keys or by adding a fourth button for bringing down the notification panel.

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The notification panel is chopped up into sections – Shortcuts and Notifications. Although it would have been nice to have these two sections combined, the notifications section is quite nice with a little timeline on the left side keeping your notifications very organized. There is also a theme engine available to change the look and feel of the UI to better suit your liking. While Huawei’s take on Android is certainly different from the traditional software experience and can take some getting used to, it is very sleek and is designed very well.

Specifications

Display	5.2-inch IPS LCD Full HD, 424 ppi
Processor	2.2 GHz octa-core HiSilicon Kirin 935 processor Mali-T628 GPU
RAM	3 GB
Storage	16/64 GB expandable up to 128GB
Connectivity	Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac Bluetooth 4.0 GPS+GLONASS NFC IR blaster USB 2.0
Camera	20 MP rear camera with dual LED flash 8 MP front camera with flash
Software	Emotion UI 3.1, Android 5.0 Lollipop
Battery	3,100mAh, non-removable
Dimensions	143.2 x 71.9 x 8.5 mm 157 grams

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Pricing and final thoughts

The Huawei Honor 7 is priced at $400 in markets where it is officially available for the 64 GB iteration, and can be found on Amazon with a price point of close to $500, with color options including silver and black.

So there you have it for this in-depth look at the Huawei Honor 7! Overall, the Honor 7 is a really good phone, with its beautiful display, impressive battery life, a fantastic fingerprint scanner, and good camera. Performance is smooth and snappy for the most part, save for the most graphically-intensive of games, and while the Huawei’s take on Android can take some getting used to, the slew of shortcuts and gestures available enable a good experience. There are some really good options available out there in this price range though, such as the top version of the ASUS Zenfone 2, the Axon Phone by ZTE, and the Moto X Play, which you might want to consider instead.

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