Honor X7a Review: Battery Above All
Following the sold-out success of the HONOR X9a 5G– arguably the toughest sub Php20K phone in the market today, the comeback brand seeks to build even more momentum as it released the HONOR X7a last week via a summer-themed party held at The Island in Uptown BGC.
If durability was the main pain point addressed by the X9a, the X7a looks to solve users’ battery woes, promising an Industry-setting 3-Day Battery Life with its 6000mAh battery.
The HONOR X7a also has a 50MP Ultra-clear Quad Camera system, 128GB storage, and a stunning 6.74-inch HONOR FullView Display, promising a well-rounded use experience throughout the day, and more – all at an affordable price.
Though we weren’t able to join the launch event, we were able to bring the HONOR X7a to our HongKong trip to see which promises it fulfills as well as those ones it fails.
Welcome back loyal Technivores! In this feature we give you the Ups and Downs of the HONOR X7a!
Like I mentioned earlier, we brought the HONOR X7a with us for our week-long HongKong adventures and to test its battery life we installed our China Mobile data sim in it and used it as a hotspot throughout our travels.
Unfortunately, I forgot to monitor and check battery levels regularly, but our usage involved moderate hotspot and mobile data use just when we were commuting to our destinations, watching YouTube videos and social media browsing and using the camera sporadically. Still, I only needed to charge it once and that was already on our last day.
We’ll be testing it more in the following days and update this article.
HONOR X7a Specs:
6.75-inch TFT LCD display, HD+ resolution
Mediatek Helio G37 Processor PowerVR GE8320 GPU
6GB RAM +128GB storage
CAMERAS:
REAR: 50MP f/1.8 main + 5MP f/2.2 ultrawide + 2MP f/2.4 macro + 2MP f/2.4 depth sensor quad rear camera setup
FRONT: 8MP f/2.0 wide front camera
CONNECTIVITY: 3G, LTE Dual SIM WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS,
BATTERY: 6000mAh battery with 22.5W fast charge support, 5W reverse wired charging
Android 12 with Magic UI 6.1
Titanium Silver, Ocean Blue, Midnight Black
Price: PHP 7,990
UNBOXING AND PHONE PROBE
The HONOR X7a comes in a white box with a photo of the smartphone on front. Inside you’ll find the smartphone unit, a clear plastic case, paper documents, sim ejector pin, USB C cable and wall adapter.
Exploring the phone, the sim tray and mic is on the top, on the right is the volume rocker and the power button which doubles as a fingerprint scanner.
The left side is clear while at the bottom is the headphone jack, mic, charging port and loud speaker.
On the back, there’s a glass-like camera island that holds the quad cameras and the LED flash. The HONOR logo is placed below the camera module. The front has a decent bezel size, even the chin. The use of a waterdrop notch for the selfie camera instead of the cleaner-looking punch-hole is a giveaway that it’s a budget phone.
We’ll talk more about the display in the next section.
DESIGN AND DISPLAY
The Honor X7a has a sleek, slim body measuring 8.27mm, making it easy to handle and aesthetically pleasing. The design looks clean and elegant but its pretty basic and doesn’t stand out from the crowd. If you want something eye-catching go for either the Titanium Silver or Ocean Blue colorway. There is also the Midnight Black option which looks more formal. The shiny, glass-like back panel of the Titanium Silver variant that we have isn’t as prone to fingerprints.
Due to its massive 6.74-inch display and 6,000mAh battery, however, the HONOR X7a is bulky and weighty. It can be quite exhausting to hold the device, particularly with one hand, for extended periods of time.
Overall, the HONOR X7a has a basic design and build quality is just okay.
It does makes up for it with its display. The device sports a 6.74-inch FullView Display, which is perfect for watching videos and editing photos. The screen has a 90Hz refresh rate, which ensures smooth swiping and gaming experience.
The display boasts a resolution of 1600 × 720 and supports 16.7 million colors, providing sharp and vivid visuals. The TÜV Rheinland Low Blue Light Certification ensures that the display doesn’t strain your eyes even after extended use. The Honor X7a features Eye Protection, which includes Eye Comfort, E-book, and Dark Mode. This feature ensures that users have a safe and enjoyable entertainment experience while protecting their eyes.
The colors and sharpness are good enough for watching Netflix, YouTube, and other online videos as the large screen makes more details easily visible. The 90Hz refresh should’ve been a standout feature but the limitations of its processor only manages to make the interface look occasionally smoother.
While a loudspeaker would have been nice, the single loudspeaker on this device does a fairly good job of volume clarity and loudness for the price. If you want a better audio experience, you might want to use the headphone jack, or get a decent pair of TWS earphones.
CAMERA:
Another feature highlight is the HONOR X7a camera system. The device boasts of a 50MP Ultra-clear Quad Camera that includes a 5MP Ultra-wide lens, a 2MP Depth-of-Field lens, and a 2MP Macro lens. This camera system allows for stunning photos with enough details and depth. Additionally, the device features an 8MP front camera that takes clear and crisp selfies.
Not to get your hopes up, but the cameras of the HONOR X7a are okay. Again considering its price, you get the same camera quality from other similar priced devices. It does have the advantage of having a wide angle lens so if you are into taking photos of landscapes this might be something you might want to take note of.
The image quality from the main camera is okay but that will heavily depend on good lighting conditions, as its nothing like the 50-megapixel sensors of the more expensive devices. Details can get sharp, the colors look decent, and the dynamic range is fine. I did notice that it takes a while for it to take photos so make sure you stay still until it finishes processing the pix or you’d end up with a blurry image. Low-light images on the other hand have poor detail and washed-out colors, so better avoid it.
Here are some of our photo samples:
We do like that HONOR included an ultra-wide lens, which is useful if you like taking “0.5” images or large subjects that are hard to fit in a single frame. But with only 5-megapixel sensor, don’t expect great quality and it can get a bit blurry often.
For selfies, the 8-megapixel selfie camera is as good as it gets for an entry level device. Again good lighting is key, otherwise skin tones can look pale with a noticeable lack of detail. But its usable for those video calls.
PERFORMANCE
You can disguise an entry-level phone in a nice design, smack it with several lenses but you won’t be able to fool anyone when it comes to performance and sadly the Mediatek Helio G37 processor is a bit outdated.
Since it came out a few years ago you can’t expect much from this aging processor, and it could only do too much with todays demanding apps. The Helio G37 is suitable for basic tasks like browsing the web, social media, and watching videos, but it struggles with more demanding apps and games. Its performance is likely to be slow and sluggish compared to more advanced processors. Its Mali-G52 GPU means also means that the Helio G37 may struggle with graphics-intensive tasks like gaming and video editing.
You can still play Mobile Legends and other simple titles on this phone but you can only do so in the lowest setting if you want the smoothest gaming experience. I don’t think you can play Genshin Impact on this phone either.
The device runs Magic Ui 6.1 on top of Android 12, with a minimal amount of pre-installed apps, making for a simple and user-friendly UI.
BATTERY
Of course we saved the best for last and that is the HONOR X7a’s main selling point –the 6,000mAh battery, which can last up to 3 days in a single charge. Like I mentioned earlier throughout our trip I never had a problem with the HONOR X7a. In our battery test it scored an onscreen time of 18 hours and 49 minutes which was quite impressive.
It comes with a 22.5W HONOR SuperCharge adapter which can fully charge the device in around 1 hour and 45 minutes, but HONOR said a 10 minute charge will already allow you to watch 3 hours of videos. from 19%, and by 30 minutes, it reached 50%.
SUMMARY
]UPS
- Longlasting Battery
- Big Screen
- Decent camera performance
- Nice Design
- Minimal pre-installed apps
DOWNS
- Uses an old Processor
- Laggy performance
FINAL WORD
For its asking price of P7,990, the HONOR X7a gives you a big screen, a long lasting battery and a decent set of cameras. If you are someone who is always on the go and working outside the office, and need a phone primarily for basic smartphone tasks and connectivity, for calls, texts and some light social media browsing and posting the HONOR X7a is something worth considering because of its battery life.
