Design and Blueprint We’ll first talk about the design of the smartphone. For a mobile that falls in the budget range, the look and feel of the phone is very pleasing. Honor 7C has premium looks, with a metal back panel and a 5.99-inch HD+ IPS LCD display and 2.5D curved glass dominating the front. Above and below the display are the front facing camera and Honor branding, respectively. The phone is very sleek and has a minimalistic design. It comes without any antenna lines on the metallic back-panel, which also has the Honor branding on it. The back panel of the smartphone also sports dual cameras and a fingerprint sensor. The top and bottom inserts on the back panel are made of plastic, but that doesn’t hamper the looks of this device in any manner. Honor 7C comes in three colour options – Black, Blue and Gold – and the one that we got for review was dressed in Blue. We are really impressed with the build quality of the smartphone and it feels solid to hold. In spite of this, the phone is not very heavy at 164g and one-handed usage is not a problem at all. The side edges of the smartphone are where the SIM card and microSD card slots along with the volume rocker keys are placed. The bottom edge stocks the 3.5mm jack, microUSB port and speaker grille.
Coming to the display of Honor 7C, the smartphone sports a 5.99-inch HD+ IPS LCD screen and has an aspect ratio of 18:9. Although we were thoroughly impressed by the design of the smartphone, the same cannot be said about the display. There were a few good points, but some things were just average. The colour reproduction was accurate and vibrant, but we found the display to be reflective. We have seen phones with better sunlight readability. On the upside, viewing angles were just right. Considering that most of its competitors have a full HD display, it was also slightly disappointing to see Honor 7C to come with just a HD+ touchscreen. In a nutshell, Honor 7C’s display left us with mixed feelings and we felt it definitely could have been better. Performance, Camera and Features Before we begin speaking about Honor 7C’s performance, we’ll take a minute to take you through its specifications. The Honor 7C is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 processor and comes in two storage variants – 3GB RAM/32GB onboard storage and 4GB RAM/64GB internal storage. The one that we are using is packed with 4GB RAM. Users can add a microSD card of up to 256GB, too. Coming to think of it, Honor 7C and 7A are first smartphones from the company to ditch its Kirin processors. For imaging duties, there is a 13MP+2MP dual rear camera setup and an 8MP selfie camera. The smartphone houses a 3,000mAh battery and runs Android 8.0 Oreo skinned with EMUI 8.0. The software of the smartphone is extremely feature rich and some interesting ones include the ability to switch between Wi-Fi and mobile network automatically. The smartphone does so by detecting which network is stronger. There is a Ride Mode for those who travel on motorcycles, too. Over that, a number of things can be done via the fingerprint sensor including answering phone calls, taking photos, videos and stopping your alarm clock. While these were some things that we liked, one thing that we really didn’t was bloatware. And Honor 7C has plenty of it. There are a number of gaming apps on it and the phone also has Truecaller, UC Browser and Netflix pre-installed. Coming to the performance, the smartphone was good in performing daily tasks. We used multiple tabs of Chrome and opened various apps to put the phones multi-tasking ability to work. Honor 7C mostly performed well, although we did encounter an occasional lag in launching some heavy gaming apps, but it was negligible. We observed a delay only in launching these apps; the functioning was not affected by it. One thing we liked a lot about the Honor 7C is that it did not heat up even once, even when we were gaming or browsing the net for a long while. The smartphone from Honor survived all kinds of games – from Super Mario to Asphalt 8. We just loved the experience. But, the best thing about Honor 7C is definitely its Face Unlock feature. It worked instantly each and every time without any exceptions. It is a feature we were thoroughly impressed with. We were quite happy with the battery life of the smartphone, too. It lasted us an entire day in spite of usage that included watching YouTube videos, using Maps for navigation and social media apps like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. If your usage isn’t heavy, it can last you more than that. Skipping over to the calling experience. The call quality of the smartphone was good. We never encountered a problem with making or receiving calls even in areas like elevators and basements. As for the cameras of this smartphone, they mostly just did an average job. The colours seemed slightly dull in most pictures and the objects seemed abnormally sharp. Shots taken at night were particularly unclear and grainy; the ones during the day weren’t bad but looked like they could do with some improvement. The case was similar with the selfie shooter. The shots taken during well-lit conditions were decent enough, but the ones taken in low lit conditions were not up to the mark. We ran a few benchmark tests on Honor 7C. It scored 782 and 3,989 in single and multi-core scores of Geekbench 4 and got 70,506 in Antutu benchmark test. Both showcasing decent performance when it comes to this segment of smartphones. Verdict and Final Thoughts Honor 7C has its ups and downs. The design is sleek, the built is solid and the battery is long lasting. The bloatware and the average cameras are the downsides of the phone. At a price of Rs 11,999, the smartphone is a decent buy, but we have seen other smartphones in the same price range like Xiaomi Redmi 5 and Asus Zenfone Max Pro M1 that are better when it comes to overall performance. Pros – Good built and design, Accurate face unlock, Lasting battery Cons – Bloatware, Cameras
