Honor 7X

Compared to the Honor 6X, the 7X is a design upgrade in every way. It’s super sleek, with an all-metal body and 2.5D curved glass for the display. The screen measures 5.93-inches in size, but it’s hard to tell thanks to the 18:9 aspect ratio, which results in bezels that are shrunk on all four sides. It feels like a 5.5-inch form factor, and the 7.6mm slimness of the chassis makes it pretty comfortable too for one-handed usage too. With full HD+ resolution (2,160 x 1,080 pixels), the screen is sharp with punchy colours, although it's highly reflective. I did find the auto brightness to be a bit iffy as well, often dimming the screen to a point that I’d have to manually increase it.

The Honor 7X features a 16MP camera at the rear, an upgrade over the 6X’s 12MP shooter. The secondary depth sensor remains the same at 2MP. The dual camera module enables the 7X to take bokeh shots, letting you adjust the aperture between f/0.95 and f/16. You can also adjust the aperture in edits, and change the focus point as well. The camera can take nice depth of field images in daylight, although there is artificial softening around the edges of the subjects, especially if you choose a very wide aperture. The camera app also features a Portrait mode, which offers a similar bokeh effects for portrait shots alongside beautification effects. The camera can capture decent macro and daylight images, but in anything less than bright sunlight, you can expect a significant amount of grain. Photos taken indoors displayed high levels of noise even during the day, and night time shots lack detail. The front 8MP camera offers a Portrait mode as well, although it's software based since there's only a single sensor. 

The 7X runs Android 7.1 out of the box, with Huawei’s custom EMUI 5.1 interface on top. The brand doesn’t have the greatest track record when it comes to providing software updates, although we expect it to roll out Android Oreo for the 7X at the very least.

Like the Honor 9i, the 7X is powered by the Kirin 659 SoC, paired with 4GB of RAM. There are 32GB and 64GB storage options to choose from, and both feature microSD card slots for expansion. Unfortunately, the 7X ships with a hybrid dual-SIM slot, so you’ll have to forego one of the SIMs if you want to increase the storage. Despite the heavy EMUI skin, I found the 7X to be fast and responsive in daily usage. Gaming on the smartphone doesn't cause it to heat up too much, and apart from a few frame drops, is fine for more graphics heavy games. The 18:9 display isn’t optimised for many apps and games though, so in many cases you’ll see a black band at the bottom of the screen. There is an option to enable a full screen mode for incompatible apps, but this stretches the display and warps the view in some cases.