User review of Huawei's Honor 7 Lite Gold

Hands-on review of my Honor 7 Lite after 6+ months of use!

I've had my Honor 7 Lite made by Huawei for more than 6 months now and I'd like to share my experience with you. Long story short, this is a decent mid-range phone currently under USD 200. It has a good camera, sleek beautiful design and average performance. I am overall happy with this smartphone despite the occasional drawbacks.

Specifications

• Brand – Huawei
• Model – Honor 7 Lite
• CPU – Octa-Core 4×1.7GHz + 4×2.0GHz GHz
• Chipset – Huawei HiSilicon Kirin 650
• Camera – 13 Megapixel With LED Flash | 8 Megapixel Front camera
• Memory – RAM – 2GB| ROM 16GB with a micro sd, microSDHC, microSHXC card Support with 128GB (Uses SIM 2 Slot)
• Display – Screen size 5.2 inch IPS, LCD FHD
• Dimension & Weight – 147.10 mm x 73.80 mm x 8.30 mm, 156g
• Battery – Non-Removable Lithium-Ion 3,000mAh battery
• SIM – Hybrid Dual SIM with Nano + Nano/microSD SIM Compatibility, Dual Standby.
• Support 2G/3G/4G Networks with a speed of HSPA 42.2/5.76 Mbps in 3G and Cat6 300/50 Mbps in 4G LTE Network.
• Sensors – Accelerometer sensor, Proximity, Ambient Light sensor, Gravity, Fingerprint, Compass
• Color – Gold
• Operating System – Android 6.0 Marshmallow with EMUI 4.1

Design and appearance

I've read several reviews on the Honor 7 Lite where people complain that the phone is overly simplistic. In my opinion, Huawei have designed this smartphone beautifully. The back is entirely metal, very sleek and shiny. The display takes the major part of the front side. The power and sound control buttons are on the right side, the sim and SD card slots on the left. The headphone jack is on the top, the mini USB jack along with the microphone and the speakers on the bottom. The Honor 7 Lite also features a fingerprint reader on the back under the camera.

Performance and features

The phone came with Android 6 Marshmallow, but after a while I had the option to upgrade to Nougat, which I did. Currently I'm running on Android 7. In regards to performance, there's a place for improvement, but we shouldn't forget that this is a budget Huawei edition. I've had several occasions where the phone became totally unresponsive and I had to restart it. Mostly that happens when running several heavy applications - the Honor 7 Lite doesn't seem to be coping with them very well. Also, it takes too long time to reflect the change when I try to rotate the screen when using Google Maps navigation.

Another issue I've had and I don't know if this is common or not - wireless networks connectivity. There have been times when I connected to the wi-fi, but no pages load on the browser. The apps also don't connect to the Internet, but the phone shows that I'm connected to the network. This happens on different wi-fi networks but never on mobile data.

These issues are only occasional and irritating, but do not interfere in the general use of the Honor 7 Lite. Other than these, I've not had any other problems. If you don't use heavy resource-eating apps or if you don't open many apps at once, the phone performs well.

My favourite feature of this smartphone is the fingerprint scanner. It's very easy to unlock your phone with only the touch of a finger. It's more secure too, instead of a pattern that anyone can see when you enter it. Of course, if your finger doesn't scan well, you have the option to enter a password to unlock your phone. If your finger is even slightly wet or dirty, the scanner won't take it - keep that in mind. However, I'm surprised at how well it works even compared to Samsung J5 2017's fingerprint scanner.

Issues with Samsung J5 fingerprint scanner

Camera

Now don't expect anything even remotely close to iPhone's camera, but the Honor 7 lite's 13 MP back and 8 MP front camera perform well especially for the phone's price. The camera does exhibit some issues in bad lighting, but it takes overall good quality pictures. Here are some examples:

This picture has been taken outdoors in good lighting (somewhat cloudy day). The focus is good, the colours are accurate and clear, there's barely any noise to be seen in the photo.

Another outdoor picture, closer up than the previous. Here you can see some blur on the edges of the picture where the focus didn't take. The colours are again very good and accurate.


I tried to test macro mode here and as you can see, the focus on the water droplets is good. The outer edges of the picture are slightly blurred as they're outside the scope of the camera's focus.

Here I've tested the camera indoors with bad lighting. You can see that the focus isn't great and there's a lot of noise in the picture. It's slightly blurred too. If you try using flash, you'll get better results though.

Final verdict

I\d say I've enjoyed my 6+ months with my Honor 7 Lite. The price is great, the performance is average. I like the big 5,2-inch display, the camera quality is also decent. Besides the slight performance issues I've described above, I've had no other problems so I think this is a good budget Android smartphone. If you haven't used Huawei before and you have high expectations, it may leave you a bit disappointed. However, if you're just looking for a budget option with big display and overall good performance, the Honor 7 Lite is the right choice for you.

Have you used Huawei's smartphones before? What are your impressions? Share with us in the comment section below!