Last month Honor announced two budget offerings in India, the Honor 7A and 7C. The Honor 7A is the cheaper of the two and comes with 5.7 inch HD+ display and is powered by Snapdragon 430 Octa-core processor with 3GB RAM and 32GB storage. The phone also comes with a dual camera along with Android 8.0 with EMUI 8.0. Honor 7A comes with 3000mAh battery and is priced Rs 8,999. So how does Honor 7A stack up against the competition? Let’s find out in this detailed Honor 7A Review.
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Design and Build:
In terms of the design language, the Honor 7A takes cues from the company’s other premium offering and looks quite similar to the Honor 8 Pro released last year. The device looks quite decent for the pricing it is being offered and thanks to the smaller 5.7 inch display, the device feels compact in hands. The power and volume keys are on the right side while the SIM tray is on the left side. The top panel houses the 3.5mm audio jack while the bottom panel has micro USB charging slot and the speaker unit.
The device is a budget smartphone and comes with a plastic build. The company has done quite a good work to make it look good, especially with the glossy panels on the sides. The rear panel has horizontally stack dual camera and LED flash along with Honor logo. Overall, for a budget smartphone, the Honor 7A looks quite good and we don’t have much to complain here.
Display:
Honor 7A packs a 5.7 inch HD+ resolution display with 18:9 aspect ratio. Being a budget smartphone, the HD+ resolution display looks quite acceptable. The color quality also looks good and there is 2.5D glass available on the phone. The touch response is also smooth and the sunlight legibility is quite decent if not the best. There is no Gorilla glass offered on the display, so it is advisable to use a screen guard.
Software:
Honor 7A runs on Android 8.0 with EMUI 8.0. We have already covered some of the best features of EMUI. The settings panel has also been redesigned to provide a better experience and aligned with Oreo. While EMUI has 8.1 Oreo version, the company has gone with slightly older 8.0 version.
Since the navigational keys are on screen, you also get the option to customize the layout from the settings. The phone misses out on the dual apps feature which is available on all Honor devices. But you get few useful gestures including three finger screenshot.
Other additional features include motion control and one-handed UI. It also features the themes app. The software also comes bundled with some Huawei apps like Torch, sound recorder, FM Radio, phone manager, etc. The fingerprint scanner supports a lot of functions including locking apps and gestures for viewing the gallery. Another interesting option in the UI is File Safe which is security options and works with pin and fingerprint.
A new feature included is the Rider Mode which allows bikers to have better control on their phones while riding and also notify the caller that the person is riding the bike.
Performance:
The Honor 7A is powered by Snapdragon 430 Octa Core processor with 3GB of RAM. The Snapdragon 430 is a budget SoC and does a decent job in terms of performance. In terms of day to day usage, the experience was smooth and there was no lag or issues. But when it comes to gaming, the Snapdragon 430 is definitely not the best in the 400 series and the Redmi 5 with SD 450 does a better job. But having said in there isn’t any lag or issues in regular usage.
The memory management of the device was also quite good and it was responsive to all tasks it was put to.
The phone comes with dual SIM cards and a dedicated SD card slot. The phone offers 32GB of storage and can also be expanded using SD card. Overall, the 7A did a good job except for the gaming abilities. The phone also packs Face unlock feature which works quite well.
Camera:
One of the areas where Honor smartphones pioneer has been the camera. Similar to other Honor smartphones, the 7A also comes with a dual camera setup. It has 13MP primary camera and a 2MP secondary camera for depth sensing for bokeh shots. The front selfie camera is an 8MP camera with soft flash. The camera interface on the 7A is a stripped down UI and misses out on quite a few options including portrait mode in rear and front cameras. There is wide aperture mode for the rear camera which can take some decent bokeh shots.
Coming to the camera samples taken, the daylight photos had good color and decent sharpness levels and details are also good. The wide aperture mode does a good job with bokeh shots. But when it comes to low light, the phone struggles and you can clearly see noise in low light images. The selfie experience is also decent but definitely not class leading. Overall for the pricing, the Honor 7A has a decent camera. Here are some of the samples taken with the device.
Battery Life:
Honor 7A packs a 3000mAh battery which is quite good enough for a day of usage with HD+ display. The battery performance of the device is pretty good with EMUI offering optimization in terms of battery usage. There is also battery saver mode available which even offers to reduce screen resolution to save battery power.
Verdict:
Priced at Rs 8,999, the Honor 7A is a good package with dual camera, EMUI, decent looks and good battery. While the camera needs a bit of improvement in low light performance, Honor 7A offers a good package for people looking to buy a budget smartphone.
I recently bought Honor 7 phone and the phone is awesome with good camera focus. It runs very smoothly. Battery life is super cool.Games can be played on Honor 7 without any disturbance. Its really super cool mobile phone
Honor 7 is a really nice phone. I recently bought it and I am happy with all the features of the phone. Its display is really smooth. The camera is really nice and its battery is also good. “Total paisa vasul”.