Honor 7C Brief Review, Ratings, Pros Cons, Specs, Cases & Covers

Honor 7C Brief Review and Pros Cons:

Huawei has been on a smartphone launch spree lately and this time around, It is looking to reinforce the segment where most of Its revenue comes from In India, Honor 7C is latest in line of sub-₹ 10k smartphones in India, packing some hefty features for the price.

Honor 7A  and Honor 7C feel absolutely similar except this one is a little bigger with a 5.99-inch IPS LCD panel with a full 18:9 aspect ratio at a resolution of 720 x 1440 pixels which turns out the pixel density to be a measly ~269 PPI. Since It is 2018 and everything is about putting more display estate and ditching bezels, low cost Androids are not missing the trend either. There are some bezels on the sides which are not that noticeable but the ones at top and bottom are. The smartphone is not much thick at just 7.8mm and weighs 164grams which is not at all heavy given Its a smartphone with a 6-inch display. The backplate is made of aluminum accompanied by plastic antenna bands on top and bottom. We are not very impressed with the construction and materials used here, It feels solid enough though. Honor 7C is overall a well-built phone with some sacrifices as It occurs with every on-budget device. 

So, as the spec sheet says, Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 runs the show on Honor 7C which is definitely an upgrade over Snapdragon 430 on Honor 7A. Snapdragon 450 has an octa-core CPU packed of 8 Cortex-A53s clocked at 1.8GHz. Adreno 508 serves as GPU, coupled with 3GB of RAM. This places Honor 7C in exactly the same leagues as the Xiaomi Redmi 5 and the device is an impressive budget performer. The multitasking is smooth. Presence of 3GB of RAM makes things easier and a tad smoother.

General performance is fluid and we don’t have any beef with the smartphone here. Adreno 508 is quite capable when it comes to gaming and can take almost all titles on the Play Store head on. It struggles a bit heavy gaming but It still plays most games with absolutely no lag. For everyday tasks, the smartphone is powerful enough but if you are a power user you might need to dial your expectations down. Huawei has done to give the most value for money in form of Honor 7C.

Dual cameras are the new mainstream definition of smartphone camera and It's taking over the scene quite fast, we appreciate Huawei making the game intense by putting dual sensor 13 MP + 2 MP, f/2.2, with LED flash at the back and an 8 MP, f/2.0 sensor with a soft LED flash at the front for selfies. The second camera at the back doesn’t do a lot, except capturing the depth information for making those bokeh shots possible. While taking the camera out for a spin, we found that It is just a notch better than other budget cameras but the performance isn’t all that stupefying. It takes some decent shots in outdoor lighting with very feeble dynamic range, the camera struggles without a shy in low-light conditions and the indoor lighting doesn’t work well as well. The portrait mode works justifiably good but isn’t the best we’ve seen in the range. Overall, the camera performance is quite satisfactory with nothing to blow our minds. And since Its a budget Android, no one is expecting exceptional camera prowess here. 

The story is similar with front selfie camera as well and it takes nice shots in outdoor well-lit conditions and performance is average indoors. The front camera works well for the Face Unlock feature and phone usually unlocks in around 0.3-0.5 seconds.

Honor 7C runs on Android Oreo 8.0 out of the box with EMUI 8 on top. EMUI is Huawei custom overlay on top of Android which has come a long way from being annoying and gimmicky to being a more sophisticated, snappy and polished skin. We don’t like skins, we are stock Android people but if one has to go with skins, I definitely count EMUI as one of the finest ones out there. It is still feature loaded with some of them quite appreciated like Ride mode for bikers, gaming mode to avoid notifications, Huawei Histen for enhancing audio quality.

Huawei has shipped Honor 7C with 3000mAh battery. It gets about a day’s worth of battery life on normal use but you would need to put it on charge before that if you are a heavy user. There is a MicroUSB port for charging at the bottom, and you shouldn’t be expecting a USB-C here. The charging isn’t a sweet dream as there is no fast charging and the smartphone takes nearly 2.5 hours to fully charge.

Snapdragon 450 is a decent performer and Honor 7C scores around 65000 on Antutu benchmark. The device has a sturdy build but is not covered with any IP rating so keep It way from liquids and dust at all times.

Honor 7C has been priced at ₹ 9,999 in India for the model with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard storage. The other variant comes with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of onboard storage, priced at ₹ 11,999. The Honor 7C is available exclusively on Amazon.in. Other than that, customers can also get the smartphone at Honor India's own online store.

So, that’s all we have about Honor 7C at the moment, the device is almost a big brother to Honor 7A and is one of the most budget complete smartphones in the segment which is quite volatile. Huawei has been active in keeping their lineup up to date with the latest trends most of them are seen here - the tall, 18:9 display, dual cameras, face unlock and more. Honor 7C is right on the money, we believe the pricing could have been a bit more aggressive to hurt the likes of Xiaomi but the ones who are looking beyond Xiaomi in the budget range, Huawei is offering some greatness.