Honor 7S smartphone review – best phone under £100?
Honor 7S
£99.99Pros
- That price!
- Honor-y build quality
- Decent display
- Reasonable photos
- Latest Android OS
Cons
- Not the fastest phone
- Photos suffer in low light
Honor, has a reputation for producing amazing smartphones. The recently released Honor 10 is a firm favourite with its mid-tier price and flagship spec. So, can Honor rule the budget market with their new sub-£100 Honor 7S?
Launched a few days ago, the Honor 7S has a decent enough spec sheet. For less than 100 notes you get a vibrant FullView display, an LED flash on both front and back cameras, and more.
Can it match its sibling and take away the trophy in the battle for best budget blower?
Honor 7S design
The Honor 7S has a vibrant 18:9 widescreen 5.45-inch HD display. Just like its stablemates, it has barely-there bezels. This makes it easy to operate single-handedly. The 1440 x 720 resolution is impressive at this price point too.
Around the rear is a 13MP snapper with its own LED flash.
The SIM slot handles a pair of SIM cards as well as a microSD card up to 256GB.
There are no fingerprint scanners here and charging is via microUSB. However, there is a headphone port on the top edge.
The phone is typically Honor in build quality, which is a good thing. In fact, it reminds me somewhat of the 7X, which I liked a lot.
Honor 7S performance
The Honor 7S runs on up-to-date, Android Oreo 8.1, albeit skinned with Honor/Huawei’s EMUI interface. The good thing is that this means that it will run all the same apps as any other, more expensive, Android phone. Under the hood you’ll find a 1.5Ghz quad-core processor. The battery has a capacity of 3,020mAh, which will easily see this breeze through a day’s use, especially as it’s backed by Honor’s smart battery management.
On-board storage is rated at 16GB. This can be augmented via the aforementioned microSD slot.
Granted, this is not what you would call a powerhouse of a machine. I did still put it through the customary benchmarking software though and, to nobody’s surprise, it didn’t break the top 50, appearing at number 51.
However, that said, technophiles aren’t the 7S’s demographic. This is a budget phone offering great build quality and a great screen. That screen is actually brilliant too for the price.
Camera
If you are expecting great photos from a smartphone at this price point then prepare for disappointment.
Saying that though, shots are reasonable in good lighting. Low light shots are grainy at best, check out the skull shot.
But again, this was never built to challenge the P20 Pro. Furthermore, the person buying a phone in this price range is probably going to want some reasonable snaps of events, family and friends. Well, reasonable is pretty much what you’re getting here.
The phone also has an LED selfie light designed for taking pictures with the front-facing camera. However, I found that it left photos a little blurry and washed out.
Honor 7S review conclusion
[amazon_link asins=’B07DC6TNHR’ template=’ProductAd’ store=’gadgnews-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’fd333d8d-7f13-11e8-9aae-816eac152c88′]The Honor 7S is simple to use and feels like a phone from a few tiers up from its actual price point. Additionally, the camera performs well, despite the affordable price tag. You can get some clear shots although it struggles in low light.
It does, however, have stamina. The phone’s battery lasted well when using the device through testing, including hours of video playback. Best to leave the phone charging over night though as it is definitely not quick charge.
Flicking between apps and web pages can be a bit of a slog, but I dare say that it’s better than most in this bracket.
Price and availability
The Honor 7S is available in black for purchase now. Visit Hihonor, Argos and Three to purchase for just £99.99
