Gadgetory

we're seeing some great releases out of the Chinese market this year and in this review we're going to take a look at the update to a phone from the veteran company Huawei that was originally known as the thinnest phone around hey it's Josh regard from Android Authority and this is the Huawei p7 while it does add a little girth to last year's really thin p6 we're still dealing with a very streamlined design here a metal skeleton holds together two panels of Gorilla Glass 3 meaning that this phone for all intents and purposes can take a little bit of abuse while a flat profile is found all around the sides two rounded corners up top are opposite a nicely rounded bottom portion all of the buttons are on the right and below them are the sim and microSD trays up top is the headphone jack and on the rounded bottom is the microUSB port the optics and the speaker are on the back atop a pattern design just under the glass what really stands out about this phone is not just its thinness and it's like profile but also the fact that it really rocks this new five-inch screen very well this might be one of the best handling phones of its size making it to an extent better at handling than current mainstream flagships the flat but minimally sized sides make for a pretty comfortable feel one that is somewhat reminiscent of the iPhone 5s of which this phone has been noted to take some inspiration from but ultimately you have a pretty unassuming design here and especially in this white edition you have an attractive phone that gets plenty of points because is really easy and comfortable in the hand Huawei graduates the p-series to a 1080p screen at five inches in size this IPS screen also brings 441 pixels per inch now it's not hard to get impressed by the colors this screen puts out especially with how colourful Huawei's user interfaces colors are greatly vibrant and even at very steep viewing angles it retains pretty much all that fidelity and even playing injustice with it's pretty much much darker tones was easy on here with good contrast and nice deep levels in the dark areas you do get the option of adjusting the screens color temperature if you really feel the need to and a high sensitivity allows usage even when you're wearing gloves Huawei sticks to an in-house processing package consisting of four cortex a9 core dubbed the hisilicon Kiran 9 100 T it is backed by Mali graphics and 2 gigabytes of RAM now revisiting the intensive injustice game I will say that I never ran into any big issues with lag and performance while playing getting around the operating system and loading apps never pose any problems either it does help that Huawei doesn't go very crazy with all of the transitions so you get the feeling of real speed here so I had really no complaints with the performance of the p7 the sense of speed you get from the operating system snappiness certainly lends itself to fast work and fast play Huawei does pull ahead of the hardware department with the inclusion of a microSD card slot and often sought-after feature that here allows for expanded storage over the included 16 gigabytes the full range of connectivity options is available here including NFC which is fairly obvious because it clearly states NFC at the very top in the notification area call quality on the AT&T network brought me no issues pretty much a standard experience was had here the rear-facing speaker on the other hand despite the less than ideal placement is actually a pretty decent performer quite loud but not really too rich but able to at least showcase the lows pretty well which is not always the case covering the grille with a finger effectively stifles the sound though and as far as battery goes the 2500 milliamp power unit did pretty well for me a five-hour stint consisting mainly of playing music via google play music and also one hour almost of playing in just as Strait brought this phone down to 70% and I do feel like with moderate to heavy usage you will still be able to make it to that 12 hour mark the good standby time that I observed on here however can easily put this phone past the day day and a half mark so you should be able to get pretty much what you need out of this phone there are power saving modes available and they include projected hours of usage so you can see just how far you're going to get one mode in particular can bring the phone down to its essentials if you really need to eke out as much as you can while weighs focus on self-portraits was really made known in the p6 and it continues here but first let's talk about the rear-facing camera 13 megapixels are what you work with here and they perform about as well as you would expect - while there isn't anything particularly stunning about the photos that you get the colors are really vibrant and noise levels despite still relatively unchecked don't become too prevalent unless you crop in now the app keeps things pretty simple with just six button elements on the viewfinder filters and modes including HDR best photo and panorama now what I really did like about the camera experience was the super fast ultra snapshot through which you can get a really quick photo from standby via a quick double press of the volume down button it doesn't take the time to focus on the subject however so that is the trade-off for a 1.3 second picture taking speed the front-facing camera is a powerful 8 megapixel shooter really helping to please anyone who loves taking self-portraits it's a pretty powerful camera on its own but a couple tools added in to help make the most of the self-portrait experience beautify helps to soften your skin at the expense of some detail though so if that is your thing that is available a box on the top right will show you where to look for a proper perspective and a panorama mode lets you tilt the phone and piece together three photos for a wider look for let's say group shots I did find it pretty simple to use but making people wait for you to tilt the phone left and right and plus anyone that might suddenly move during the shot can ruin it all in all you get the kind of performer you would expect from a flagship device there really aren't too many bells and whistles here that differentiate the camera experience from other flagships except for of course the front-facing camera if you really love to take selfies but then again not all of us do and finally in software the emotion UI returns once again in a very colourful and quite pleasing manner I before that the lack of transitions makes for a really snappy experience though the notification drop-down doesn't quite exhibit this as well still it makes for one of the nicer Chinese interfaces around but what does come here is the usual Chinese interface trope a lack of an app drawer which means you'll have to organize your apps into folders but ultimately the you motion UI looks like a pretty simple skin over what is essentially Android KitKat what with the simple recent apps screen and the easy to navigate settings area huawei zone Edition serves some good purposes - in particular a phone manager that provides all the tools needed to accelerate the phone by closing background apps freeing up space by deleting files and much more or that are listed one it can scan the entire phone for issues and list them off anyone nitpicky about what goes on in their phone will have that extra sense of control with the phone manager easily my favorite aspect of the emotion UI is the easy mode where everything is presented in large buttons on an attractive grid it manages to still provide everything that is needed while staying minimalistic and keeping things pretty tight and finally all of these elements are able to be easily customized in the themes application not only are there a slew of built-in themes already available you can easily tweak any single aspect from within the actual application so in the end the lack of an app drawer for anyone used to having one in their Android will find quite a bit to like in this snappy take on it the huawei p7 is not quite available across the board yet but we have been getting reports that in Europe it'll probably come in at around 350 euros which does put it somewhat below the price point of current mainstream flagships but it is up to you whether or not you want to go out on the limb to pay the full price for a phone that is not as widely regarded as the ones coming from Sony Samsung and HTC and so there you have it the Huawei p7 I do find myself enjoying this phone mostly because of its ease of use both on the outside with its slim and light profile and on the inside with aspects like the easy mode but while I did find quite a bit to like about this phone I will admit that unless you're looking for those specific kinds of experiences and maybe perhaps the powerful selfie camera there really isn't too much distinguishing this phone from the more mainstream competitors when compared to the behemoths in the market no one defining feature really separates the Huawei p7 from them but when you look at the whole package you do find a smartphone that succeeds in bringing power function and accessibility in a fairly unassuming way it may not be the life of the party but the huawei p7 certainly deserves to be at that party as always thank you guys very much for watching and I hope you enjoyed this review of the Huawei p7 as you may have gleaned from this review there are a lot of things to like about this phone as it performs exactly the way that you would want it to but there are no defining features that really separate it from the current mainstream flagships and because it's availability is a lot lower comparatively to those other flagships it's kind of a hard device to really recommend over so keep it tuned to Android authority for all of the best coverage including a future coverage of events like the Google i/o event coming up at the end of this month at I'm going to be at after that check out the coverage from my colleagues in Android Joe Jace Kevin the tech ninja and of course lawn and once you're done with all of that drop us some likes subscribe if you haven't already and then head on over to Android authority comm for even more because we are of course your source for all things Android