Honor India – Tech Raman

7 Reasons that makes Honor 7C an Interesting Buy

Lakshmi Rajan — Thu, 14 Jun 2018 07:17:42 +0000

Honor 7C is an entry level mid-range Smartphone that was recently launched in India along with Honor 7A. The Honor 7C has a 5.99-inch display with a 2:1 aspect ratio and HD+ (1440 x 720) resolution. In India, the price starts at ₹ 9,999. In case you are planning to buy the Honor 7C, here are 7 good reasons that might impress you. Before we start with the top reasons list, let’s take a quick look at the specifications:

Honor 7C Specifications

5.99 inch 18:9 FullView 2.5D curved glass display
HD+ resolution (1440 x 720 pixels)
Snapdragon 450
Adreno 506 GPU
Android 8.0 (Oreo) with EMUI 8.0
3GB RAM with 32GB internal storage, 4GB RAM with 64GB storage
Dual SIM (nano + nano + microSD)
Dedicated microSD card with upto 256GB support
13MP rear camera with LED flash, f/2.2 aperture, secondary 2MP camera
8MP front-facing camera with LED flash, f/2.0 aperture
4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS + GLONASS
3000mAh built-in battery

Honor 7C has dedicated microSD Slot

In India, many Smartphone users have two SIMs in their phone. While dual-SIM connectivity is supported almost on all phones retailing here, most OEM’s opt for hybrid SIM card slots over dedicated slots. In the case of hybrid SIM tray, you can have two SIM’s active or opt to sacrifice one SIM for a microSD card. Few phones like Honor 7C offers triple SIM tray, which allow users to have two active SIM’s and one dedicated microSD card for expanding the storage. Honor 7C supports external storage up to 256GB.

Honor 7C offers safety first with Ride mode

Never mix driving and talking on your phone, it can be fatal at times. Bringing safety forefront, the EMUI 8.0 in Honor 7C comes with a ride mode. Once enabled, the home screen turns into ride mode and you see a dialer and a SOS button. The ride mode setting has following option:

Auto answer by voice – people who calls you gets a message you are driving or you can set a custom message. If it is very important, they can press “1” to connect.
Auto answer by text – Your phone automatically sends a text message stating you are driving and will call later when there is an incoming call.
Decline automatically – calls will automatically be declined or shown busy with this option enabled.

Ride mode also has a ride tracking feature. It will trace your ride and give analytics like distance travelled day, week and month in chart form. Also the time you spend on driving.

Honor 7C makes PayTm payment Easier

I use Paytm extensively, my regular vegetable shop guy to milk vendor to my saloon everyone accepts Paytm. With increased usage of the digital payment mode in India, Honor has previewed a new feature to access PayTm payment page quickly instead of opening the app each time. Just double tap on the fingerprint sensor area with your assigned finger and it pops directly the PayTm payment screen. Quick and neat. The feature is not enabled with the Honor 7C smartphone yet but will be rolled out via OTA update pretty soon.

Honor 7C has dual Bluetooth Connectivity

Bluetooth 5.0 brings dual Bluetooth support but Honor 7C has BT 4.2 but still the company has enabled a dual bluetooth support in this phone in a limited sense. You can connect your headset as well as a bluetooth speaker simultaneously, while you are playing a song in the speaker, you can still keep the calls coming in through your bluetooth headset without having to connect / disconnect individually to shuffle between calls and music playback. Have you ever wanted to connect your phone to a Bluetooth speaker to enjoy some music and still keep the calls coming in through your Bluetooth headset, only to end up disconnecting the headset in the process of connecting the speaker? Well, Huawei Honor 7C has a solution for this and it’s called dual Bluetooth. You will no longer end up with a disconnected Bluetooth headset when you attempt to add a second Bluetooth device (speaker) to your phone.

Honor 7C has real time audio monitoring;

For people who love recording themselves when singing or even talking, you’ll love this one. With the Honor 7C, you can connect your earphones and listen to yourself as the recording proceeds, thus bringing a studio-like experience right in your hand. The option would be enabled via OTA update.

Securing your phone with both finger and face

Honor phones always offered a good fingerprint recognition features and also bundled extra features associated with the sensor area. Honor 7C also has a fast and accurate fingerprint sensor technology. It supports app lock plus you can also touch and hold the fingerprint sensor area to take photos when using camera app, answer incoming calls, and stop alarm. You can slide the sensor area to access navigation panel and browse photos. Honor 7C also comes with face unlock. Face recognition works well and you can additionally secure the apps via face recognition too.

The camera gets better with Dual setup

Honor 7C has a dual camera setup. The settings has a wide aperture mode. While the portrait mode and wide aperture both play with the aperture levels, the portrait mode we see these days in many dual camera Smartphones is tailor made for people but wide aperture gives you more control to handle the amount of bokeh, the subject you want the depth field to highlight etc. What it also gives is the freedom to control the aperture in the edit mode of the images. In addition to these features, EMUI 8.0 in Honor 7C also offers features like:

Gaming mode,for uninterrupted game play, more like a DND mode for gaming.
Navigation dock , an quirky way to access home, back and recent menu with a dock that also gives an option to hide the on-screen navigation keys
One-hand UI, to minimise the screen for easy use.
Three finger screenshot
Flip to mute etc

What you think of these features? Do share your thoughts. ]]>

Honor 7A Camera Review

Lakshmi Rajan — Sat, 09 Jun 2018 00:21:53 +0000

If you have ears on the Indian Smartphone market, you would have heard a lot of conversations around Honor in the recent months, the company has been super aggressive in India with back to back Smartphone launches. The aggressiveness seemed to have paid them off too with the Honor brand making into the list of top five brands in India for the first time with a 146 per cent growth. The latest to be enlisted into their Indian portfolio is the new 7 twins – the Honor 7A and 7C, with the 7A being the most affordable of the two. Priced at Rs 8,999 the Honor 7A arrives in a price segment that is competitive but still offers the brands a wider pie to take their own piece of cake. Camera is something that most use a lot in their Smartphone and if you are thinking of buying Honor 7A go ahead check out our Honor 7A camera review.

Honor 7A Camera Specifications

13MP + 2MP dual camera (rear)
F/2.2 aperture
phase detection autofocus, LED flash
1080p video
8MP Selfie camera
F/2.0
Front LED flash
1080p video
Camera modes : Photo,video, HDR, Panorama, Good Food, Document scan
Settings mode: Smile capture, Touch to capture, ultra snapshot, timer

Honor 7A app loads faster and is quick to access with a simple yet intuitive interface. The main screen of the app is not cluttered, you see the preview pane that also shows the last photo in the gallery, photo and video buttons. On top has the flash, wide aperture, beauty mode and toggle for front and rear cameras. Swiping on the screen left or right, takes you to modes and settings page. The modes are stripped down version with less options unlike in some of the higher range Honor Smartphones. We have the photo, video, HDR, panorama, filters, watermark, good food and document scan options. There is no slo-mo or timelapse option for the videos.

The settings tab has timer, touch to capture, smile captures, burst shoot, set of options for volume button functions to assign for shutter which is by default or zoom / focus. Double pressing volume down button when the screen is off can be used to open camera and take a quick snapshot or just open camera.

Now let’s move on the camera quality.

Honor 7A Camera in good day light conditions

Rest assured of carrying some good memories of images when taken under good sunlight. The Honor 7A does a decent job at it. The color reproduction is natural, what you see is what you get in the final image. There is no artificial color / saturation enhancements. The color tones are natural and I liked it. The dynamic range is a bit weaker but then for an affordable Smartphone under Rs 10,000 that would be nitpicking. If you look at the flowers in the pictures, it has come appreciably true to the original color which I kind of like it. [gallery columns="4" link="file" ids="13576,13577,13578,13579,13580,13581,13582" orderby="rand"]

Honor 7A Camera in Indoor lightings

How about coming indoors and trying the camera? The picture says it all. Any room for complaints? Not at all for this price. Even in the various ambient light settings, the colors are natural and close to the original. [gallery link="file" columns="4" ids="13559,13558,13557,13556,13555,13554,13553" orderby="rand"]

Honor 7A Camera in Low lights

Low light photography can be challenging even for some of the flagships and for mid-rangers it gets even more difficult and at entry-level segment it becomes a nightmare in some of the mobiles. While we have seen a lot of improvements in recent time in the mobile camera technology, it still is tough situation to handle the camera in low light situations. We have seen Honor / Huawei doing remarkably well in the last quarter to tackle this and the parent company’s Huawei P20 Pro has the best low light camera optics I have ever seen in mobiles. With Honor 7A, it still is a challenge considering the aggressive pricing, nevertheless the Honor 7A could manage decently well low light photos, but as expected there are some noises in the images. [gallery link="file" columns="4" ids="13563,13562,13561,13560"]

Honor 7A capturing people

So how does it capture people? There is no special portrait mode but it does a decent job and you can notice some soft backgrounds. The details are decently detailed for this segment. You can also experiment with wide aperture for the background depth and play around post-capture in the edit mode.

Honor 7A wide aperture mode

There is no portrait mode in Honor 7A but there is the wide aperture mode. While the portrait mode and wide aperture both play with the aperture levels, the portrait mode we see these days in many dual camera Smartphones is tailor made for people but wide aperture gives you more control to handle the amount of bokeh, the subject you want the depth field to highlight etc. What it also gives is the freedom to control the aperture in the edit mode of the images.

The picture below was captured with wide aperture and it gives a nice highlight to the brand while keeping the rest in a soft blur. I particularly liked this capture.

The picture below was taken with wide aperture and then later in the photo edit option I had manually set the wide aperture at 5 (you get maximum 6)

In this image, I had changed the reading in the wide aperture in the edit option to 5. You can see the background blur pronounced.

The wide aperture mode gives more flexibility and ability to control the focus later. Videos can be shot on 1080p both with the front and rear cameras. The focusing is again decent, though there is no EIS image stabilisation which is a very rare inclusion in any case in this segment.

Verdict

Honor 7A is a reliable, decent Smartphone for photography. If you love the natural colors, this camera would impress you for the price it comes at.

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Honor 9 Lite Review – A Thing of Beauty is a Joy for Ever?

Lakshmi Rajan — Sun, 04 Feb 2018 17:00:45 +0000

Honor packs in a potent mix of beauty and performance in Honor 9 Lite. I think its a smart offering that sets the bar high for competition. With a price starting at Rs 10,999 in India, its no push over for others. Honor has been resurgent in India with their recent Smartphones gaining good traction and overall positive vibes around the brand now. With back to back releases they are on a high, and the Honor 9 Lite is a confident product and also comes with flaunting four cameras, read on our Honor 9 Lite Review to know our in-depth take on the device. Out of the box you get:

Honor9 Lite Smartphone
Soft back case
Pin
USB Type C charger
Power adapter

Design and Build Quality

Double sided 2.5D glass
Aluminum frame
151 x 71.9 x 7.6 mm
149 grams

Few seasons back, we had many full glass bodied Smartphones but soon metal became the main stay with glass finding place in premium offerings. Honor 9 Lite makes a bold statement with a mirror-life finish at the back. Available in three colors, Midnight Black, Sapphire Blue and Glacier Grey, they outshine the rest of the competition on style quotient and elegant design. Honor has by now very much owned the Blue color and the Glacier Grey is the new sizzler but they Grey the Honor says is a complicated shade to make and it would be available in limited numbers. A light aluminum frame holds the glass on both the sides and it also helps to keep the phone lighter. The phone has rounded sides and gives a comfortable grip. Having glass rear also means its a bit slippery and the back is also prone to smudges. The right side has the power button and volume buttons and the left side the SIM tray. Its a hybrid dual SIM and supports 4G VoLTE. The bottom is populated with a speaker grille, microUSB port, mic and an audio jack.

Display

5.65-inch IPS LCD display
2160×1080 resolution
18:9 aspect ratio
75.5% screen-to-body ratio
428 ppi density

Full vision displays and 18:9 aspect ratios has changed the way we perceived the display sizes, now the 5.65 inches is the new 5-inch compact phones. The Honor 9 Lite’s 5.65-inch display features it and if you look for a palm fitting phone between the 7x and 9i, the Lite fits your needs. The fullHD+ IPS panel pops colors and has good brightness level. The viewing angles are good and we can safely say the display is one of the strong point of the Honor 9 Lite. The display settings has eye comfort mode which can be scheduled.

Software Features – Liter Version of EMUI 8.0

Honor 9 Lite is the second device after Honor View 10 to come with Android Oreo and EMUI 8.0 out of the box. But unlike in View 10, the EMUI 8.0 is a bit watered down here. Few features have been left out while the essence of the UI is retained. Honor’s own skin has evolved a lot over the years and is more refined now. For those who long for app drawer, there is a provision for it too. Multi-tasking via split screen is made easy with a long press on the menu button, there is the bells and whistles like app twin that enables to duplicate apps but limited to Facebook, Messenger and Whatsapp, Smart assistance that offers one hand UI, motion control actions etc. The features of EMUI that has been omitted include private space that enables the user to have a partition and a separate phone within a phone, glove mode, guest mode and the Game suite which I liked in View 10 that offered a DND mode during gaming episodes. The settings page has a neat layout and then there are few localized customization like in calendar which offers local almanacs. You also have the option to use Huawei’s cloud services for backing up contacts, calendars, Wi-Fi credentials, SMS messages, and call logs but you can’t back up data from third party app.

Performance

HiSilicon Kirin 659
Octa-core (4×2.4 GHz Cortex-A73 & 4×1.8 GHz Cortex-A53)
16nm FinFET
Mali-T830 MP2
3/4 GB RAM
10nm processor
32/64 GB,expandable.

The part everyone would be more interested at, once the vanity settles down. Powering the 9 Lite is the same Kirin 659 that we have seen already in 7X and 9i, which is not bad at all. Its a good mid-range processor Honor has delivered recently. The phone perfectly and dutifully does all the demands of the daily grind an average user would put a phone to use. The call quality is good. The speaker is decent and I had no issue with the occasional speaker calls I made. While I don’t use video calls, there are many who do ask if the dialer has a video call option, the answer is no. A software update could fix it though. The 9 Lite has OTG support and is a decent performer at this price level. Talking about gaming, it could handle most of the games thrown at, though keen gaming enthusiasts will notice few frame drops in heavy graphic intensive games. Glass clad phones tend to heat up a bit more than their metal counterparts and 9 Lite is no exception. On a gaming trip, the phone heats up a bit around the camera module area. You can check the gaming review video below for more details on it and the gaming performance. https://youtu.be/ufxmBRY58lc The apps load quicker and I didn’t notice any lag in daily use. The RAM management is pretty aggressive and if any apps are idle for a bit longer time, it shuts them down. Overall, the 9 Lite didn’t disappoint me. It also has the Gyroscope, so if you are looking at playing 360 degree videos or VR games, it does handle them. As always, Honor does a pretty good work with the fingerprint sensor, its quick and highly reliable. You can also app lock and there is the usual bells and whistles that Honor packs in with touch and hold and touch and slide gestures on the sensor area to access notification lights, browse images, take quick snap etc.

Battery life

The 9 lite has a 3000mAh battery and the Kirin 659 does a good job with the battery optimization inspite of a lighter battery. Putting the phone to a medium use could squeeze out 18 hours of battery life or a bit more. It takes 2 hours or a little more for full charge from 0%.

Camera performance

Rear & Front: Dual: 13 MP + 2 MP,
phase detection autofocus, LED flash
1080 video capability

The four cameras on the Honor 9 Lite makes for any conversational point when someone asks about your phone. The dual camera on both sides also means you can enable portrait mode on both the cameras. The pictures have a good color reproduction and as expected under good day light conditions, the pictures are really good. What I liked more is the selfies, which come nice especially with the portrait mode turned on. For the rear camera though, I liked the wide aperture mode better than the portrait mode, the wide aperture gives a soft background and you can also fiddle with the aperture later after taking an image. Night conditions suffers a bit of noise but that is the case with most of the cameras in this price range in any case. Having tried the Honor 7X and 9i, I realized the later two did fare a bit better than the 9 Lite when it comes to camera but nevertheless 9 Lite has a decent camera optics at this price range. Videos are decent but there is no image stabilization. The camera mode as usual squeezes lots of camera modes.There are bunch of shooting modes like professional mode for both stills and videos, good food mode, light painting, HDR etc. You can also trigger the camera with gesture palm control or by a smile. [gallery link="file" columns="4" ids="12957,12958,12959,12960,12961,12963,12964,12965"]

Verdict:

The base variant of Honor 9 Lite is a sweet deal. At a price of Rs 10,999 it gives you a beautiful phone with a vivid display complete with 18:9 ratio almost gone bezel-less design and it is also a decent performer at this price. ]]>