Huawei Ascend P7 Review

Huawei has released the sequel of the ultra-slim Huawei Ascend P6 in the shape of the Huawei Ascend P7. The P6 was instrumental in cementing the position of Huawei as a market leader in smartphones, and very stylish and classy ones at that. The Ascend P7 has taken it one step further, with a 5 inch display providing 1080p resolution, an improved chipset and camera along with numerous other enhancements to its predecessor.

While initially Huawei targeted the slimness of the Ascend P6 as its key feature, the smartphone had the distinctly classy design with the faux metal back which became very popular among users. While the Huawei Ascend P7 does not target the same slimness factor, standing at 7.1 mm, the device has modified its designing a bit with the back being glass covered this time around – and we must say, we are simply amazed with the double-texture.

With the front and back covered with Gorilla Glass 3, the smartphone features the similar metallic frame. And we can certainly appreciate the Gorilla Glass 3 on the front to protect the display which we can easily see as an improvement from that on the Ascend P6, especially given the upgraded pixel density.

The device has also upped its game regarding cameras, and the front facer has a BSI sensor, is 8MP, and the front facer features modes as well, like panorama for selfies and enhancements for face. The main camera is Sony, 13MP, and has 1080p capture abilities for videos. The chipset has been upgraded, and is based on Cortex A-9, and provides LTE support too. Though we had heard about some overheating issues, in some sets of Ascend P6, Huawei claims they are all resolved this time around, and the OS has been upgraded to Android 4.4.2 KitKat assisted by the latest Emotion UI.

While unboxing the Huawei Ascend P7, you will get everything inside the retail box that you need to get started with this phone.

• Huawei Ascend P7 handset
• 1A compact charger (will use the USB cable for charging)
• MicroUSB cable connector for charger for charging
• Earphones
• Two NFC tags

The Huawei Ascend P7 brings forward an improved 1080p IPS display, bringing the pixel density by more than one hundred to 455ppi, one of the best for 1080p. The display has wide angles of view, blacks which are deep, good contrast, and great colors – overall the display is great.

The screen glass has reflectivity, while the sunlight legibility is decently visible, and this means the display will not give any trouble in direct sunlight. The Gloves mode is also present, making the screen extra sensitive to accept touch through gloves as well - something that is ideal in the cold, though it does reduce battery life.

The Huawei Ascend P7 offers an extremely rare option, which is the adjustment of the color temperature of the screen. What is even better is that this option is provided via a slider, giving even more control.

The Smart Backlight toggle from the Ascend P6 is again present here with the Huawei Ascend P7, and rather than spiking the display brightness levels due to drastic changes in brightness settings it helps maintain the screen brightness level in consistent increase or decrease.

For the normal everyday user, there may not be too much of a difference between the Ascend P6 and Ascend P7, with a lot of design similarities. For the most people who still may be able to differ between the devices, the back would be the giveaway, with the radial grove patterned plastic covered by Gorilla Glass 3 and consisting of tiny dots for extra texture replacing the brushed metallic looks of the Ascend P6. The design of the Huawei Ascend P7 looks extra classy.

The sides of the device give an angular feel with their being flat, with a metallic frame surrounding the smartphone. The back of the Ascend P7, as mentioned above is layered with glass covering which is somewhat slippery, and the metallic sides are much more beneficial than just display, providing sufficient grip. Also, the unibody design does not come this time around as the eject pin being a separate tool rather than a part of the smartphone as was the case with the Ascend P6.

The placement of the buttons like the lock key and the volume rocker has also thoughtfully been done so that they are comfortably within reach while holding the device.

Just above the display there lies is the earpiece, the sensors, and the 8MP front facer that includes the Back Side Illuminated sensor with itself. The right sides contain the card slots (the first one for microSD cards and the second one for microSIM), the power button, and the volume rocker – the power button this time around is round in shape. The left side is bare, while the bottom contains the MicroUSB port and primary microphone. The secondary microphone for noise cancellation and stereo video recording, accompany the 3.5mm audio jack at the top. The audio jack this time around does not have the eject tool to protect it from the dust, or for ready access in case a swap is required. At the back near the top left is the 13MP camera, below which lies the single-LED flash. Near the bottom left corner lies the loudspeaker grille.

As always, Huawei has used another one of its chipsets to power the Ascend P7, using HiSilicon Kirin 910T chipset. This chipset has 2GB of RAM, four Cortex A-9 cores which are each 1.8GHz, an LTE modem integrated, and a Mali-450 GPU. Though the A-9 are now becoming somewhat the past, their utilization in a quad-core theoretically it could still provide a smooth performance. Huawei has adopted a modified manufacturing process to take out the overheating issue from the equation.

On the performance front, Huawei Ascend P7 provided some decent scores, as expected from Huawei. The single processor performance is better for A-9 Cortex, as compared to the ones on Galaxy Note II. However, the multi-core testing produced some good results, taking out competition using quad-core Krait and Krait 300 powered devices.

The RAM performance was not impressive, though the GPU testing produced some very good performance. Also, the graphics performance was nowhere near impressive.

The overall performance of the Huawei Ascend P7 turns out to be pretty smooth, with the quad-core processors, the Kirin 910T chipset. Ascend P7 came out pretty strong, even under heavy load, web browsing in parallel, and gaming.

The Huawei Ascend P7 has Android 4.4.2 KitKat, enhanced with the Emotion UI v2.3. This makes for a flat, app drawer free interface.

The lockscreen has been improved, with a cool “sunshine” effect as fingers are dragged across the display. Different themes, wallpapers, shortcuts, widgets, and dual clocks can be used – even transition effects can be changed. The homescreen is pretty standard, with four customizable shortcuts docked at the bottom, and visible on all screens. There can be up to nine homescreens this time around, and all apps installed will come up on the homescreen like the iOS. The downside is that apps cannot be hidden, though grouping still can be done. Pinching the homescreen opens the Overview mode using which the homescreen panes can be organized, added or removed. Huawei has kept widgets intact, though apart from some Huawei specific ones, only the generic Android ones are present.

Huawei has added a Simple homescreen mode displaying large tiles which makes the display easy to understand, for those who feel the normal display too difficult. The notification area is standard, with toggles on top, expandable to display all, and swipe enabled. The Power Manager is ever present as well, showing battery life time remaining, and has the standard modes of Smart, Normal and Ultra performance – each can be configured to a very good detail. The Gloves mode toggle is present, which increases sensitivity of the display to accept touch even through gloves, although it reduces battery life – it is better to keep a check on this, if you do require this option. The task switcher is standard Huawei, with the “Kill All” option too.

Google Now is integrated with the logged in Google account, and works in its usual efficient self, helping around with different things like the email, interest based information, traffic route information, sports updates among other options. It also accepts voice commands, so that is always a plus.

Huawei Ascend P7 contains the same strong phonebook, with the structuring in tabs, the pop ups, the alphabetical list among other features, including custom ringtones. The messaging has become more interesting thanks to the Swype integration, as well as split keyboard modes, keyboard height, themes and others however, these features are hidden within the input settings, so it can be a bit difficult to enter them.

The signal and call audio quality was pretty nice, and the proximity sensor does a perfect job turning off the screen the whole duration the smartphone is near the ear. The auto call pickup when phone is put to ear, as well as call muting when phone is put face down are still there, and helpful as always. The secondary noise cancellation also works nicely, making noisy surroundings seem like much calmer ones. However, the loudspeaker test scores were below average, which will make it difficult for you to pick all calls in noisy environments.

The Huawei Ascend P7 has two internet browsers built in, with the standard browser accompanying the more widely used Chrome, which allows for users to log in, and sync information and tabs.

Huawei has also pre-loaded some of its homemade apps, with the star performer being the Phone Manager app, which allows great control from one interface, like the app permissions, phone optimization, network control, battery usage, Do Not Disturb, and call privacy, among others. The app can provide one touch optimization, which frees memory and recommends settings for better battery usage optimization.

The Huawei Ascend P7 has Polaris Office 4.0 inbuilt, which makes document editing easy. Word, Excel and PowerPoint files (support for 2003 and 2007 versions is present) are supported, and PDF files can be opened additionally it works as a file explorer too.

An actual file explorer is also present in Ascend P7, categorizing content into two tabs that can manage the internal and external storage, and it can handle zip files.

Huawei has added some small apps like the Magnifier, which uses the camera to zoom items, the Mirror app to look at yourself, using the front facer and with the brightness and zoom options, along with the standard calculator, calendar, clock, weather, sound recorder, and an interesting flashlight app.

The Huawei Ascend P7 contains the standard Google Maps and Navigation app too, with all the generic functions like route mapping, street view, sightseeing, among others.

The gallery app for the Huawei Ascend P7 is pretty much the same that was present in older versions. The absence of a separate video player requires for this app to be capable to play videos as well. The app allows for simple images and videos view, as well as sharing including via DLNA. The default view is the Albums view, although this can be changed. An Image Editor is also present, which gives for a lot of editing features, with exposure and light settings, effects, red eye correction, color styles, sharpening and straightening, face glow, writing on images, borders and other such features included with the other basic options.

The video player had some minor issues with codecs like many other smartphones, while subtitles of foreign languages did not display correctly, and the player automatically played the first subtitle it found rather than providing a list of options to choose from – the remaining features are pretty standard.

The music player present on the Ascend P6 accompanies the Ascend P7 as well, including four default mood based playlists, to which songs have to be assigned manually. The basic view options are present, the Now Playing allows for quick addition to mood playlists, while Dolby Mobile can be toggled, though there is no equalizer for enhanced settings. The player controls appear on the lockscreen and notification area while the player is open, for better control.

An FM is also available in the Huawei Ascend P7, and requires headset to be plugged in to play, though loudspeaker can be used as long as the headset is plugged in. Still, the radio app does not have RDS support, which means stations being stored have to be labeled manually.

The audio quality on the media front, like music and videos, provided interesting results. The loudspeaker results came out very good, which is to say that the quality was almost perfect, had relatively high level of sound and good audio quality. Even when headphones are plugged in, the audio quality is pretty good, with nice frequency, noise and range are also very good, with almost no distortion. However, there is a distinct increase in crosstalk, which becomes too much to be ignored. Other than this, the audio quality of the Ascend P7 would have been ideal, but as it stands, it can only be rated as a very good audio quality.

The 13MP camera that Huawei Ascend P7 has can capture maximum resolution images of 4160 x 3120 pixels this is also aided with an LED flash. The camera interface is pretty standard, the camera / video toggle, virtual shutter and gallery shortcut to the right, while on the left side there is an advanced menu, which includes settings like modes, and adjustments like smile shutter, object tracking, switch to touch to capture, geo-tagging, white balance, ISO and more. While the camera is a decent performer, it has its own issues.

There are times when the sensor is not able to hit an accurate exposure reading, and when it does, the dynamic range is respectable with only minimal amount of dark shadows and overblown highlights. In many attempts we had to touch focus on a completely different object than the target to get accurate exposure and tones. The noise levels are also on the higher side as compared to competition, and noise reduction processing is not at a level to perform in a more classy way. Still, the noise is relatively on the lighter side and does not impact the image too much, nor does it diminish the fine details.

The camera itself is pretty good when it comes to resolving image details, and also tends to over-sharpen images sometimes, which provides some sharp images, which will look pretty good on social networks since those are not full res shots, and of course a lot of users will be happy as well. Still, at full res, the shots display the effects of over-sharpening coupled with an immature noise reduction, and provides for unnatural shots. The panorama shots are only average at best, with issues in stitching.

The front facer on the Huawei Ascend P7 is a fixed focus 8MP snapper, with options like Beauty mode, and color effects, Panorama mode among others. Still, panorama does not make sense to many of us for a front facer, unless the group of people in a selfie is not large enough. The quality of shots is not as high as we would have liked as well.

The Volume Down key when double pressed when locked unlocks the Ascend P7 directly inside the camera app with image taken, and this option is very quick, so that a lot of spontaneous shots actually get captured. Still, sometimes this option may fail to focus properly given the quick action.

The camcorder on the Huawei Ascend P7 has similar interface to that on the camera, and both the front facer and the main snapper can record videos at a maximum of 1080p @ 30fps, with videos being stored as MP4 with a bit rate of 25Mbps for 1080p, and stereo audio at 96Kbps. The video quality is the same as the Ascend P6 with a bit of oversharpening. The exposure and contrast for videos is better than the camera, though the dynamic range still looks out of sorts, with overblown highlights and shadows.

The Huawei Ascend P7 provides the regular connectivity options including 2G, 3G, 4G, GPRS, EDGE – the 3G has 42Mbps downlink to go with its upload rate of 5.76 Mbps, while the 4G has 150Mbps downlink and 50Mbps uplink.

The smartphone provides local connectivity is available in terms of the standard Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct and DLNA, which allows for playing and sharing media. NFC support is present, and the Magic Tag allows programming the NFC tags that come with the package to allow for anything – setting audio levels, activate Do Not Disturb mode, launching apps are some of the options available. There is support for USB host, so that USB drives, mouse or keyboard etc. can be connected to the Ascend P7.

Huawei has raised the Ascend P7 battery size by a 500mAh jump to 2,500mAh battery. Though the battery is not removable, it is fine for a quad-core smartphone with a 1080p display.

The phone managed to pull off more than a couple of days’ usage (53 hours to be exact) when measured as per a normal user, which means an hour each of web browsing, gaming, calls, emails and messages. The device can provide with more than 13 hours of talktime, which is pretty decent, though it did score an average 7 hours of browsing and 8 hours of video playback. We would have expected a bit more coming from Huawei.

As is visible from the above review, below are some of the very few shortcomings for the Huawei Ascend P7:

• The smartphone is single piece meaning the battery is non-exchangeable
• The chipset requires further improvement
• The width, the main attraction of Ascend P6, is no more the unique factor here
• Loudspeaker performance was substandard

While Huawei was brought on the smartphone map thanks to the Ascend P6, it is the Ascend P7 that has come to make the brand stay on the scene. The Huawei Ascend P7 has made itself one of the most prominent devices in terms of design and performance, and this helps the cause enormously. However, the design is getting too close to the iPhone designs, and Huawei is taking a risk here, making their designs all the more similar to those of iPhone.

We feel that Huawei made a mistake here, as the flagship devices of all the competitors are powered by the strongest and most premium of processors, whereas Huawei came out with its own chipset, which did not give even a good rating overall, let alone be the top of the line in this regard. However, maybe Huawei is still happy one of its processors was able to run the KitKat 4.4.2 smoothly. The processor has removed the overheating issue, and additionally, provides LTE connectivity.

The screen size and resolution has been raised by Huawei, making it among one of the prominent smartphones in terms of display. Also, the battery has been raised, with only a minor increase in thickness and no weight gain.

The selfie-friendly Ascend P6 has been upgraded to an 8MP front facer, for even better snaps – the additional BSI sensor and dedicated modes add to the user-friendliness. On the whole, the Ascend P7 is an interesting release, though the chipset performance, and the back camera using 1080p recording fails to hit the spots easily being targeted by competitive flagship smartphones. To some it might feel that while the 2014 flagships are targeting new highs, the P7 is only just reaching the levels attained by the final releases of yesteryear.

In the end, we cannot help but avoid the feeling that while the Huawei Ascend P7 has its own positives, it is still targeting the slot for best smartphone of 2013, rather than competing for the crown of 2014. Also, while the Ascend P7 may be targeting the flagship status at this time, we cannot help but feel that Huawei will be better off with a price reduction and going for the mid-range, as the processor and other options will be more at home there, while Huawei can cook up a more 2014-savvy flagship.