The Honor 7X offers great value. It is one of the few handsets that can take on Xiaomi's Note 4 and Mi A1. It has an impressive thin-bezel design on budget. The overall built quality is also good. But, like everything else in this world, the Honor 7X isn't perfect. In fact, it has quite a few shortcomings. These cons are only evident in long term use. The Honor 7X is a love at first sight for a budget buyer, but then it fades away slowly. I have put together some of the points why I decided to part with the 7X after using it as a daily driver for around three months.
Stutter and lag
The Honor 7X is powered by HiSilicon Kirin 659 chipset. The chip is manufactured in-house by Huawei. The quad-core processor coupled with Mali-T830 MP2 was quite snappy initially. However, the performance took a dip after a month. Now, I encounter constant lag and stutter every time I pick up the phone. In comparison, the equally dated Xiaomi and Moto phones, which are powered by tried-and-tested Snapdragon chips, are pulling off better performance.
Scratch magnet
The Honor 7X costs Rs 12,999. For that price, it offers truckload of features. But, it misses out on one important aspect that we take for granted. It lacks the scratch-resistant Corning Gorilla or Asahi glass protection. I used the 7X like any other phone. It looked normal until one fine day I used it under direct sun light and realised how badly it was scratched. I was surprised that my 7X's screen looked worse than a Diwali offer scratch card. At worst, I made this phone share the pocket with a key. But then, I do that with every other phone. Xiaomi phones that cost half of the Honor 7X such as the Redmi Y1 Lite never had such issue. I know that manufacturer need to cut corners to offer devices at a competitive price. But, looking at the condition of my 7X, I think Honor should stop saving money to avoid a scratch-resistant glass.
Scratches in all its glory.
User Interface
Huawei's EMUI is loaded with features. But, let’s face it that it has no merits when it comes to aesthetics. The only decent thing in this UI is the blue splash screen at the start-up. Every UI elements past that is downright tacky. The icon design is so sloppy, it looks as if they are designed by Chinese kids. The icons are unusually big and do not adhere to any colour scheme.
The settings panel shares no design resemblance with the rest of the interface. The EMUI also fails to utilise the entire screen. In most apps, the phone prompts you with a silly black bar to activate the “Full screen display”. Shouldn’t that be default?
Dull screen
The Huawei Honor 7X offers great screen to body ratio of 77 per cent. It packs in a 5.9-inch tall screen in a compact footprint. But, the quality of the screen is nothing to write home about. Although IPS (In Pane Switching) screens are known for rich colours and wide viewing angles, the one on 7X disappoints on both fronts. Compared to the similarly priced phones, the 7X produces dull colours. The blacks barely look grey. I have noticed is that the screen's refresh rate is also not up to the mark. While scrolling through menus and web pages, the screen flicker is quite noticeable.
— by Chandrakant Isi
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