Honor 7C Design
Flat metal backplate, 2.5D curved glass on the front gives Honor 7C a very premium and sleek look. The back panel looks clean due to the absence of antenna lines, limited Honor branding, less information. The horizontal dual camera setup has a better placement. The rear panel is made of metal overall but plastic has been used at the top and bottom.
The Honor 7C comes in Black, Blue and Gold colour options. We have reviewed the Blue variant of the phone, which is a unique option in itself. The phone, however, is not very heavy. However, it is wide, which makes it difficult to use with one hand. Build quality is good. The phone feels solid in the hand and there was no problem even when it fell during the review. The fingerprint sensor given at the rear is fast and accurate. Also, the placement is good. Through this, users will be able to take pictures, calls and notifications along with many shortcuts.
Honor 7C The left side of the Honor 7C is for the SIM tray, which has separate slots for two nano SIMs and a microSD card. The right side is equipped with volume adjustment, power button, where the thumb can easily reach. There is a micro-USB port at the bottom, which is surrounded by the headphone jack and speaker. The lack of a USB-Type C port may bother many users.
Honor 7C Specifications and Display
The Honor 7C is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 processor that is also part of smartphones like the Xiaomi Redmi 5 and Oppo A71. The Honor 7C and 7A are the first phones from the company that do not use the company’s own Kirin processor.
There are two variants of the smartphone. One is with 3GB RAM and 32GB storage which is priced at Rs 9,999. The other is with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage. We have reviewed the powerful variant which is priced at Rs 11,999. You will be able to use a microSD card up to 256GB.
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. Users 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 has a 5.99 inch HD Plus IPS LCD display. The display of Honor’s smartphones so far has been great but this phone is lacking something. The colors are vibrant, viewing angles are also good but the screen is not visible clearly in outdoor light and the display becomes reflective. First party apps work fine on the 18:9 display and due to EMUI 8.0, third party apps do not fit the aspect ratio.
Honor 7C performance, software and battery life
Talking about performance, Honor 7C worked fine in normal use. However, the phone started stuttering when used heavily. There were complaints of the phone stuttering sometimes when multiple apps were running in the background simultaneously. During the review, we faced stuttering in the keyboard and UI animations.
The Snapdragon 450 is put to good use in the Xiaomi Redmi 5. To our surprise, the Honor 7C, which comes with the same processor, had performance issues. On the positive side, the Honor 7C doesn’t heat up. There were no complaints even when playing heavy games. Asphalt 8 stuttered a bit while loading but everything was smooth while playing the game.
The Honor 7C supports face recognition. The phone’s 8-megapixel front camera is used for this. It works well. The support is great in good lighting but disappoints in low light or direct sunlight.
The Honor 7C runs Huawei’s EMUI 8 custom skin, which is built on top of Android 8.0. EMUI has improved a lot over the years. It is now more versatile and comes with a lot of useful features. However, EMUI 8.0 has lag issues and many unwanted apps are also present. The phone comes with 5 Gameloft games and many apps like UC Browser, Messenger, Netflix and Truecaller are pre-installed.
Battery life is good, but not great. The Honor 7C lasted 10 hours and 40 minutes in our video loop test. With normal use, the phone managed to last a full day. We needed a charger around 10 pm. The smartphone does not support quick charging and takes more than two and a half hours to fully charge using 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 2 megapixel secondary sensor. The front camera is 8 megapixels, which is equipped with a fixed focus snapper and F 2.2 aperture.
The cameras are average. Photos taken during the day look good on the phone’s display. But there is a lack of detail when viewed up close. In our experience, photos taken at night were blurry. There was a lot of noise. Videos were also recorded in average quality. There was a lack of detail in them too. There was also a complaint of focus shifting.
You will also get a wide aperture mode. There are 7 levels for blurring. The blur effect is not accurate and edge detection is also poor. The 8-megapixel selfie shooter takes good pictures in good light. But in low light the pictures become noisy. The beauty mode is already active while taking selfies. But the pictures look artificial.
Decision
The look of Honor 7C is sleek, the build quality is good, many useful features are also available. Battery life is good and the display is also commendable. But EMUI is slow and many unwanted apps have been provided. The performance of the front and rear camera is very average.
If you are thinking of buying this phone, you can also consider Realme 1, which does not have a fingerprint sensor but is much better in other aspects. On the other hand, Redmi Note 5 is a more value for money phone. Honor 7C is priced close to Honor 9 Lite, which has a higher resolution display, better cameras and a sleek glass body.