The Huawei Ascend P7 is the best phone Huawei has made, but falls short of really differentiating itself from the titans of the smartphone game. A great front facing camera compliments a decent rear facing shooter, and an accessible software experience compliments an equally accessible handling experience.
Design
While it does add a little to last year’s remarkably thin P6, we’re still dealing with a very streamlined design here. With modest improvements over its predecessor, Huawei has sought for an incremental design update, and it’s arguably the better looking of the two. A metal skeleton holds together double Gorllia Glass 3 panels, making for a phone that could feasibly withstand a little punishment, if that’s your sort of thing.
While a flat profile is found all around the sides, two rounded corners up front are opposite a nicely rounded bottom portion. All the buttons are on the right and below them are the dual SIM and microSD trays. For international travellers, and others that like to have access to two different network carriers, dual SIM functionality is an absolute necessity.
At the top, you’ll find the headphone jack and on the rounded bottom is the microUSB port. With optics and speaker on the back, you’ll find a patterned design just under the glass on the rear, ever subtly so. In terms of its design, what stands out here is not just how thin this device is, but how well it rocks the 5 inch screen. Its thin bezels and refined edges result in it being one of the best handling phones of its size, making it, to an extent, better at handling than the majority of current mainstream flagships. Huawei is to be commended in this regard, because the device is remarkably well balanced in the hand.
It features flat but minimally sized sides bezels, which make for a comfortablefeel, one that is reminiscent of the iPhone 5S, of which this phone has been noted to take inspiration from. Move along, legal teams, move along.There’s no doubt that it features a rather pleasant aesthetic as well, and in particular; it’s white edition is quite attractive. When you consider how large its display truly is, it’s impressive when you have it in your hand.
Display
Huawei has opted to graduate its P series to a 1080p screen at 5inches in size, bringing in tow a 441 PPI density, which is to say the screen affords exceptional clarity, where you will be quite hard pressed to find pixels of any kind. Further, it’s not hard to get impressed by the colors this screen puts out, especially with how colorful Huawei‘s user interface is. Colors appear incredibly vibrant and even at pretty steep viewing angles it retains all that fidelity. Even playing highly addictive game Injustice with its much darker tones was easy with this punchy display, as it exhibited great contrast and nice deep levels in the dark areas.
Somewhat interestingly, you do get the option of adjusting the screen’s color temperature, if you really feel the need to, and a high sensitivity allows usage even when you’re wearing gloves – a boon for those in less than ideal climates.
Performance
Huawei has opted to stick with their in-house processing package, which consists of four Cortex – A9 cores – dubbed the HiSilicon Kirin 910T, backed by Mali graphics and 2 GB of RAM. It’s a robust processing package, to be sure, and one that performs nearly every operation lightning fast. Revisiting the intensive Injustice game, I never ran into any big issues with lag and performance while playing. Getting around the operating system and loading apps never posed any problems, either. Without a doubt, it does help that Huawei doesn’t overdo it with unnecessary transitions, and opts to keep the interface cleaner than other manufacturers.
Hardware
When it comes to hardware, there’s things we like to see, and other things we don’t appreciate as much. Huawei’s Ascend P7 pulls ahead of the pack in terms of hardware with the inclusion of a microSD card slot, an often sought after feature that here allows for expanded storage over the included 16GB. Of course, the Ascend P7 offers the full range of connectivity options as well, including NFC, as it is plainly shown in the notification area when turned on. Call quality on the AT&T network brought us no issues, which is to be expected. Its rear facing speaker facing speaker, despite the less than ideal placement, is a decent performer. It affords the user quite loud sound, but is not as rich as some of the smartphone titans of today, like the HTC One M8, for example. That being said, while it is not too rich, it still does a decent job of showcasing the low end of the audio spectrum pretty well
Camera
2014 is the year of the selfie – like it or not. People love taking pictures of themselves and their loved ones. Huawei‘s focus on self portrait game was already made known in the P6 and continues here in strong form.
But first, let’s talk about the rear facing camera – 13 megapixels are what you work with here and they perform about as well as you’d expect. While there isn’t anything particularly stunning about the photos you get, the colors are really vibrant and noise levels, despite still relatively unchecked, don’t become too prevalent unless you crop in 100% or more.
Software
Finally, in software, the Emotion UI returns once again in a very colorful and quite pleasing manner. As was mentioned before, the lack of transitions make for a really snappy experience, though the notification dropdown doesn’t quite exhibit this as well; still, it all makes for one of the nicer Chinese interfaces around. But it does come with the usual Chinese interface trope – a lack of an app drawer means you’ll have to organize your apps into folders – or get a new launcher. Ultimately, the Emotion UI looks like a pretty simple skin over what is essentially Android Kitkat, with a simple recent apps screen and easy to navigate settings area.
Huawei‘s own additions serve some good purposes, too – in particular, a Phone Manager that provides all the tools needed to accelerate the phone by closing background apps, freeing up space by deleting files, and much more that are listed when it scans the entire phone for issues. It’s nice to see a manufacturer like Huawei attempt to go the extra mile in this regard. As anyone who’s used Android extensively knows, even the most powerful devices can get slowed down by unnecessary files and the like. With this feature, anyone who’s nitpicky about what goes on in their phone will have that extra sense of control with it..
Video Review :- Huawei Ascend P7 Design, Hardware & Camera Review
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