Honor 7C Design
Flat metal backplate, 2.5D curved glass on the front gives the Honor 7C a premium and sleek look. Absence of antenna line, Honor branding in limited space, back panel looks clean due to less information. Better placement of horizontal dual camera setup has been given. The rear panel is made of Kuljama metal but plastic has been used in the top and bottom.
Honor 7C comes in Black, Blue and Gold color options. We have reviewed the blue variant of the phone, which is a unique option in itself. The phone is not very heavy, though. However, it is wide, which makes it difficult to use with one hand. Build quality is better. The phone feels solid in the hand and there was no problem even after falling during the review. The fingerprint sensor at the rear is fast and accurate. Also the placement is fine. Through this, users will also be able to take pictures, calls and notifications with many shortcuts.
Honor 7C The left side of the Honor 7C is for the SIM tray, with separate slots for two Nano SIMs and a microSD card. The right side is equipped with volume adjustment, power button, where the thumb easily reaches. At the bottom is the Micro-USB port, which is flanked by the headphone jack and speaker. The lack of a USB-Type C port may be a bummer for many users.
Honor 7C specification and display
The Honor 7C is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 processor, which is part of smartphones like the Xiaomi Redmi 5 and the Oppo A71. Let us tell you that Honor 7C and 7A are the first phones of the company in which the company’s own Kirin processor has not been used.
There are two variants of the smartphone. There is one with 3 GB RAM and 32 GB storage, which costs Rs 9,999. Second 4 GB RAM and 64 GB storage. We have reviewed the powerful variant, which costs Rs 11,999. You will be able to use microSD card up to 256 GB.
Honor 7C has a 3000 mAh battery. The phone runs on EMUI 8.0, which is based on Android 8.0. In terms of connectivity, the phone has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GLONASS, 4G VoLTE and Micro-USB port. The user will also get a headphone jack in it. The phone supports dual sim but only one 4G sim can be used at a time. The second SIM will automatically be limited to 3G.
Honor 7C sports a 5.99-inch HD+ IPS LCD display. The display of Honor’s smartphones so far has been great, but there is something lacking in this phone. Colors are vibrant, viewing angles are decent but the screen isn’t legible in outdoor lighting and the display becomes reflective. First party apps work fine on the 18:9 display and third party apps don’t fit the aspect ratio due to EMUI 8.0.
Honor 7C performance, software and battery life
Talking about the performance, Honor 7C did a fine job in general usage. However, the phone started getting stuck when used heavily. Sometimes there was a complaint of the phone getting stuck when multiple apps were running in the background. We encountered stuttering keyboard and UI animations during the review.
The Snapdragon 450 has been put to good use in the Xiaomi Redmi 5. To our surprise, the Honor 7C with the same processor experienced performance issues. On the positive side, the Honor 7C does not get hot. Despite playing heavy games, no complaints were found in it. Asphalt 8 stuttered a bit during loading but everything was smooth while playing the game.
Honor 7C supports face recognition. For this, the 8 megapixel front camera of the phone is used. It works fine. Support in better light is great but it disappoints in low light or direct sunlight.
The Honor 7C runs Huawei’s EMUI 8 custom skin on top of Android 8.0. EMUI has improved a lot over the years. Now it has become more versatile and comes with many useful features. However, EMUI 8.0 has been plagued with lag and unwanted apps. The phone comes with 5 Gameloft games and many pre-installed apps like UC Browser, Messenger, Netflix and Truecaller.
Battery life is good, but it cannot be called spectacular. The Honor 7C lasted 10 hours 40 minutes in our video loop test. In normal use, the phone goes on throughout the day. The charger was needed around 10 pm. The smartphone does not support quick charging and takes more than two and a half hours to fully charge with a dedicated charger.
Honor 7C cameras
There is a dual camera setup in the back of Honor 7C, in which the user will get a 13-megapixel primary and a 2-megapixel secondary sensor. The front camera is of 8 megapixels, which is equipped with fixed focus snapper and F 2.2 aperture.
Cameras are average. Photos taken during the day look good in the display of the phone. But there is a lack of detail in a closer look. In our experience, pictures taken at night came out blurry. The noise was too much. Videos were also recorded of average quality. There was also a lack of detail in this. There was also a complaint of focus shifting.
You will also get wide aperture mode. There are 7 levels given to blur. The blur effect is not accurate and the edge detection is also poor. The 8MP selfie shooter takes decent pictures in good lighting conditions. But in low light the pictures become noisy. Beauty mode is already active while taking a selfie. But the pictures look artificial.
Decision
The look of Honor 7C is sleek, build quality is good, many useful features are also available. Battery life is good and the display also has to be praised. But EMUI is slow and many unwanted apps are given. Front and rear camera performance is very average.
If you are thinking of buying this phone, then you can also consider Realme 1, which does not have fingerprint sensor but is much better in other aspects. Whereas, Redmi Note 5 is more value for money phone. The Honor 7C has been priced close to the Honor 9 Lite, which features a higher-resolution display, better cameras, and a sleeker glass body.