Huawei Ascend P7 Full Review: Remaining Outstanding Appearance Design

As Huawei’s annual flagship mobile phone, Huawei Ascend P7 attracts high attention. Huawei announced the phone in Paris France in the evening of 7^th May, Beijing time. Huawei Ascend P7 inherited the P6’s ultrathin body, and did various improvements based on the P6. Let’s find out whether the phone is worthy expectation.

Huawei Ascend P7 Specifications:

Huawei Ascend P7 adopts self-produced Hisilicon Kirin 910T 1.8GHz quad core processor, 1.8GHz basic frequency, 2GB RAM + 16GB ROM, supporting storage extension up to 64GB. 5.0 inch 1080P resolution IPS screen, using incell technology, covering 3^rd generation Corning glass on both side of the phone. 13mp proposition camera and 8mp preposition camera, while the main camera is the F2.0 aperture, Sony’s 4^th generation stack sensor. Based on Android 4.4.2 customized Emotion 2.3 operation system and 2500 mAh capacity battery, supporting TD-LTE, TD-SCDMA, GSM, FDD-LTE, WCDMA (Last two only supported while global roaming).

Still outstanding design and performance

Opening the package, inside there is Huawei Ascend P7 mobile phone, data cable, charger, earpods and a card pin, as well as the instruction and the warranty card. We can found the phone is filmed both sides, and there is identification of button’s function on the back film. Let’s check the main body after the unpacking.

 Frontage of Huawei P7

The dimension of Huawei Ascend P7 is 139.8 x 68.8 x 6.5 mm, using 5.0 inch screen, hence it is a bit bigger than the Huawei P6. And the 6.5mm thickness is a bit more than P6’s 6.18mm., but it remains in the group of ultrathin phones. The border of P7’s body is made of aluminium alloy , the the phone is quite integrated. .

Both side of the body is covered by 3^rd generation Corning glass, which is stronger than previous generation, and the anti-scratch ability is said to be raised by 300%. 5 inch screen can be considered as the mainstream of nowadays phones. As the phone carries narrowed 2.97mm frame, it would be no issue while operated in one hand.

 The Corning glass in the back of Huawei P7.

Looking at the back of the phone, different with the Huawei P6’s all metal material, the Huawei Ascend P7 used Corning glass as well on the back side, the double glass design make it looks pretty tactile sensation and texture, it is two different feeling apart with the metal. The 3^rd generation Corning glass provides enough hardness protection to the body , and save the phone’s weight, only 124 grams, and it can reduce the radiation situation of the phone.

 Film coated metal texture

Scanning the unique recombination texture design under the back glass, 7 layer of filmed coating metal texture avoids making the back as a black dull piece. Overall,  the first impression of Huawei P7 can be considerably amazing, the texture feeling showing different style while the shape remains similar to the P6. Let’s check the details of the body.

Huawei Ascend P7 evaluation: more humanized body details.

Body details: absorbing P6’s experience, much better improved.

Huawei P7’s 8MP front camera

The upper part of front side was designed as the same as the Huawei Ascend P6, arranging the telephone receiver, front camera and light distance sensor. The front camera has been greatly upgraded to 8MPs, and it has 10 classes of facial beatification function, the video facial beatification function ext. We will mention it in the camera introduction.

 The virtual button can be hidden.

Huawei Ascend P7 used the same virtual button design as the P6, the virtual button can be hidden any time, and can be resumed by sliding up. There is only Huawei logo on the lower side of phone, which makes it laconically

 The card slot and power button locates on the right.

The power button is in round metal style

Huawei P7’s buttons and card slots are all located on the right, they are all in metal material as the frame is. There are volume button, power button, memory card slot, Micro SIM card slot arranged from up to down. The power button is redesigned as round shaped and using spiral grain design.

Upper: SD card slot, Lower: Micro SIM card slot.

The card slots needs to be opened by pin attached, both slots have presentations, upper slot is for SD memory card while lower is to use Micro SIM card..

The left side of the body is rather smooth

The left side keeps smooth and tidy, no buttons or card slots. They cancelled the earphone hole on the left bottom that was on P6, which has been moved to the top of the phone, no more ejector pin needed. Apparently this design looks more humanize.

 The bottom design is in arc-shape.

The bottom of the phone remains arc-shaped design, but more transit smooth in the corners, which makes it more comfortable to handle compared to the P6. You won’t feel the corner angles. And there is a USB prot and little microphone on the bottom.

 The earphone hole is designed on the top.

Different from the arc-shape design on the bottom, the top of the phone is original straight smooth design, and is in mental material. The earphone hole locates on the left, and there is assistant microphone used on video recording.

 

13MP rear camera

Let’s check the details on the back, upper left corner is the 13MP camera and single LED flashlight, the camera is Sony’s newest 4^th generation stack sensor, with F 2.0 aperture, no stand out of the lens and the whole back keeps smooth and can be put on the table horizontally.

 Location of the speaker

There is a strip shaped speaker on the down side of back, and some printed information of Network supporting and type.  In the actual usage, the speaker’s volume could be lowed down while put on the table, but the ringtone or music still can be heard clearly.

Conclusion: Totally, the Huawei Ascend P7 inherited the shape design of the P6, overturned the all metal body design and used the double Corning glass layered design, meanwhile, adding recombination texture on the back, making the whole perception of the P series with some fresh different appearances. It appears that Huawei is a company that is able to adopt the users’ opinion, for example , the criticized pin-operated earphone hole was cancelled, and its location was moved to the top of the body, the corners was more smooth, the power button was redesigned. Huawei P7 still keeps high process design level.

5 inch Full HD screen

The Huawei Ascend P7 equips 5 inch screen, possessing 1920×1080 high definition resolution, its PPI has reached 445, which is mainstream class. In order to have more beautiful looking, both sides of the body are coated with Corning 3^rd generation glass and the anti scratch ability has been raised 300%.

The 3^rd Generation Corning Glass is more crush and scratch resistance, makes better protection to the screen board.

Compared to the iPhone 5s, not only the P7’s screen size is larger, but with high definition resolution, Huawei P7’s PPI is larger than the iPhone 5s, as a result its display fineness is better and brings excellent visual impact.

From the display of texts, we can find that the Huawei P7 is more smooth in line and higher precision, while the iPhone 5s shows a bit fussy.

Display of the three-primary colours tends to be accurate and no obvious colour cast.

From the screen recopy, the Huawei P7’s display ability is in the mainstream, although it is not as fine as the 2K resolution screen, there is still obvious promotion compared to last generation product, and its performance is remarkable in the display brightness and color restore.

Huawei P7 Evaluation: More humanized Emotion UI.

More humanized Emotion UI.

Huawei P7 has unique magazine lock screen interface, it has subscription of stars, motor, sports, fashion etc. The theme and wallpaper will be changed randomly after each unlock, the wallpaper is delicacy beautiful. Sweeping from bottom to upper, the shortcut menu can be displayed, which includes daily shortcut application such as music play control, calendar, calculator, flashlight and mirror.

The main interface is the known Huawei Emotion UI main interface, only secondary menu, no entirely flattening, looks fashional. The drop down list contains shortcut buttons, the brightness control, the button position can be customized and the theme can be changed anytime, there are near 10 built in theme, user can custom details including wallpaper, unlock style , text type etc.

For the Huawei P7 use virtual buttons, it inherits previous design of Huawei mobile phone, the navigation bar on the bottom can be hidden, and the hidden bar can be recalled by sweeping from bottom of the interface towards up.

Huawei P7 has button suspension function, the newest suspension buttons can be half-penetrated, moved, self-fading animation effects. The suspension button function can be launched in the pulled down shortcut menu list, or in system settings. The suspension button has functions including back, main page , multi windows, lock screen and memory clearance etc. The operation of suspension button can replace the function of navigation bar while hidden.

The multi window function mentioned above, is to display multi window in the type of plug-ins. It is already used by many that user can watch video while surfing the internet, or calling calculator while you are shopping online. There can be many scenario to apply the practical function.

The voice assistant can be launched while swept up from the homepage button.

The setting part is traditional Emotion UI style, divided to the common settings and all settings.

The mobile phone information shows the Huawei P7 use Emotion 2.3 based on Android 4.4.2 system. Let’s check what special function is in the settings.

Huawei P7 has comprehensive functional mobile phone steward, which owns the root level of permission, so it can manage permissions of every application, self-boot settings and limitation of flow in background function apart with the normal speed up, phone clearance, phone anti-virus functions. Because it has root level authority, installing similar third party software appears unnecessary.

There is built-in power saving manage, default is intelligent power saving mode, and normal power saving mode can be considered as performance mode, other modes are super saving mode, which just keep the basic function of calling, messaging, the phone data network is closed, and the display theme is turned to darker tone, the high power consumption application will be turned off.

When the driving mode is turned on, it will enter concise driving interface, the voice function is default on, the navigation, music or call can be launched by voice control, the voice interactive model is improved. The Bluetooth earphones can be connected, the phone will enter driving mode automatically if Bluetooth earphones is connected.

The phone also has senior citizen mode, the whole interface will be changed to large cube style, the most common function is set in, plus with the flashlight and radio etc.

 

5 Huawei P7 Evaluation: Performance, Compatibility and Battery endurance.

Hardware score and compatibility and battery life

Huawei P7 adopts self-produced Hisilicon Kirin 910T 1.8GHz quad core processor, compared to Kirin 910, the main change is its 1.8GHz basic frequency, the GPU renderer remains Mali-450MP, and the 2GB RAM plus inner storage 16GB ROM,

Antutu score was 25605, Master Lu score was 22584, similar as the Xiaolong 600 processor models.

Web test and graphic test results are progressed to the Kirin910, but the advantage of Hisilicon processor is not powerful performance, but pursuing good is enough rule. Let’s check the movie and game performance tests.

Last generation Huawei P6 needs some improvement regarding the processor compatibility, such as the picture error in game, quitting error etc. The Huawei P7 runs smoothly while it was tested running major large and middle-small games , including the Asphalt 8, Modern War 4, GTA etc. The picture won’t be error any more. Little games is no problem, but there appears little lag while running large games. Overall, the gaming experience has much improved .

Video decoding is the advantage of Huawei Hisilicon processor, we tested multi format of video including mp4, wmv, rmvb, mpg , mov, mkv, flv, avi, 3gp etc. all of which can be decoded and played, the 720p and 1080p movies can be played as well.

 

Huawei P7’s built in 2500mAh battery performance OK in the test, endurance can be a day opening the intelligent saving mode not the performance mode. However, it is inevitable the charge per day. If the battery tends to be very low, there will be reminder to open super saving mode, and the screen will be turned to black and white mode. Just keeping call and message function, that will last 2 times longer battery life.

Huawei P7 is much better regarding radiation control compared to the P6, one reason is the P7 is not metal made, another is the power saving management lower down the performance, cutting electric consumption and heat. The phone is as hot as normal phones while running large games or testing scores. The back does feel as hot as normal phone compared to the burning feeling from the P6, For the side frame is metal, it could feel hotter than the rest of the body.

Huawei Ascend P7 Evaluation: 13MP + 8MP cameras.

Photography sample: detailed microspur and functional facial beautification.

Huawei Ascend P7 has 13MP back camera, use the Sony newest 4^th generation , intelligence professional picture processing engine, F2.0 aperture, and added 1 second (1.2 seconds) snapshot function. Others, front camera had upgraded to 8MP, and has 10 levels of facial beautification and movie beautification function on the front camera.

The camera’s option is various including intelligence scene, HDR, continuous shot ext. All of those are very useful, letting user to get good photos more easily.

Double clicking the volume down button can launch camera so as to snapshot, the shot time would be displayed after picture is taken. Normally, fast snapshot takes between 1.2 to 1.5 seconds from touching the button to shot.

Outdoors sample

Now we will have a look at the rear 13MP shot sample, all pictures use default settings, and all can check the original image after click on it.

It happened to be raining when the outdoors example were taken place, and there was not much light outdoors, but Huawei Ascend P7 still performed good, the color was accurate and the photos were sharp.

Indoors sample

 On next we shot indoor pictures where was bright enough, so as to give full play to the rear 13MP camera.

Under enough lamination, the Huawei Ascend P7 shot beautiful , vivid pictures, it’s not only because the light, but the camera on the phone.

4cm macro shot

Huawei Ascend P7 ‘s closing up shot is excellent too, it can run macro focus in very short distance, as close as 4cm, now let’s have a look.

While it’s shotting close, Huawei Ascend P7 can easily focus which amazed us, and the photo was satisfied, the main body was clear and the vignette on the background was just about adequate.

Night scene shotting

It’s Huawei P7’s advantage to shot at night, because it has special algorithm in night scene shot, on one hand it can lower the noise, on another hand that made the main body on the photo more clear .

Front 8MP camera samples

Below is the 8MP front camera samples, the screen will display 10 levels of facial beautification while launch the front camera, user can adjust based on actual situation.

 

It can be found on the sample that Huawei Ascend P7’s 8MP front camera is excellent, the girl’s skin changed accompany to the level of beautification in these photos, we can tell the differentiation of those photo and differentiation of those mode of facial beautification. However, for us, young people., level 3-8 will be enough.

Huawei Ascend P7 Full Review Conclusion

As the flagship mode this year, the P7’s performance is worthy to pay attention: other of the inheritance of P6’s thin and shape, the P7’s system runs more fluent and smooth, more humanized and the performance is promoted. 13MP + 8MP cameras can both fit self portrait or others. In all, Huawei P7 has noticeable improvement compared to last generation and performed more balanced.