Huawei Ascend P7

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. While the Ascend P7 looks heavily inspired from the Apple’s previous smartphone, the iPhone 5s, it has also borrowed some design language from Sony’s Xperia Z series.

Instead of a 4.7-inch display available on its predecessor, the Huawei Ascend P7 sports a 5-inch display. This size has become a standard these days and the IPS display bears a screen resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels. With a pixel density of 445ppi, the display is a delight to look at with natural colours and sharp text. The viewing angles are great, and the display is legible outdoors as well, even though it’s slightly reflective.

Most manufacturers take advantage of Android’s openness to customise the interface and add some features on their offerings, allowing them to stand out from the competition. Huawei is no different and it layers the Android OS with its custom skin called Emotion UI. On the Ascend P7, you get Android 4.4 KitKat layered with Emotion UI v2.3.

For imaging purposes, Huawei has supplied the Ascend P7 with a 13-megapixel BSI camera at the back, which features a f/2.0 aperture. The Sony sensor is supplemented by an LED flash to shoot in low light. The shooter can shoot images in widescreen or 4:3 aspect ratio, and can record videos on 1080p resolution. While the rear camera seems in line with most flagships these days, it’s the front camera which Huawei believes act as a differentiator for its offering. Riding on the selfie wave, the Ascend P7 comes with an 8-megapixel fixed-focus BSI camera on the front, which can also record full HD videos.

Unlike other smartphone vendors, Huawei is relying on its in-house expertise for powering most of its devices. The Ascend P7 utilises HiSilicon Kirin 910T, an SoC that offer four Cortex-A7 cores ticking at 1.8GHz. The chip is complemented by a Mali-450 GPU. While the processing combination isn’t low as such, it feels a tad underpowered when we consider the Ascend P7 as a flagship offering. The processor combination is helped by 2GB of RAM, ensuring smooth multitasking.

Tasked with keeping the smartphone running is a 2,500mAh fixed Li-Po battery. While it’s not necessarily of low capacity, it does seem less when compared to the batteries powering today’s flagships. Our usage of the Huawei Ascend P7 also reflects the same thing as the device barely managed to last an entire day if used heavily. Even with frugal usage, it simply managed to get us through the day. The device lasted slightly more than six hours in our standard battery drain test, where we play an HD video on loop with both volume and brightness level set at 50 percent.

The Huawei Ascend P7 is a great piece of hardware and has a good spec sheet. However, when we bring its pricing into the picture – which is Rs 26,999 by the way, then it becomes slightly difficult to recommend this device, considering the cut-throat competition. Add to it the fact that the brand’s custom skin isn’t well-optimised.