Categories: Mobile

Huawei Y7 Prime review

Here is our review of the Huawei Y7 Prime.

What do you look for when buying a new smartphone? Display? Top notch specifications? Software experience? Most people, especially in Pakistan, do keep the battery life in mind too. Unavailability or unreliability of electricity makes a strong case for getting a smartphone with long battery life. Check out Huawei mobile phones prices in Pakistan and start comparison of various smartphones.

Keeping this predicament in mind, a lot of brands are releasing smartphones catering to specifically this need. Huawei, with its newest Y series phone, Y7 Prime, and its 4,000 mAh battery, is also hoping to target this market segment. Let’s see that, including battery life, how this phone holds up in different departments.

Specifications

Huawei Y7 Prime comes with following specifications:

5.5 inch HD (720 x 1280) IPS LCD display
Octa-core 1.4 GHz Snapdragon 435 processor with Adreno 505 GPU
3 GB RAM and 32 GB internal storage (with microSD card slot of up to 256 GB)
12 MP primary camera with f/2.2 aperture
8 MP secondary camera with f/2.0 aperture
Android 7.0 Nougat with EMUI 5.1

Pros and cons

Like every other phone, there are some good and bad things in Huawei Y7 Prime. Here are the pros of Huawei Y7 Prime:

Amazingly long battery life
Good performance
Decent camera results

In addition to these pros, Huawei Y7 Prime has following con which might put off some people who are looking to buy the device:

720p display on a 5.5-inch display

Design and build quality

Huawei, despite the low cost of the device, has chosen to use premium materials in the construction of Y7 Prime. It has a completely metallic body which gives it an elegant look as compared to its other competitors. The front of the device is very simplistic and consists of only the display along with earpiece, ambient light sensor, and the front facing camera. There are no physical buttons as Huawei has instead opted for on screen buttons used by Android.
The back of the device has the rear facing camera along with the fingerprint sensor. Aside from the traditional manufacturer logos, the back is mostly clean and sleek looking.
The right side houses the volume rocker and the power button, both of which are tactile and easy to press. Th left side has a single hybrid dual SIM/SD card slot. The top of the device has the 3.5 mm headphone jack and the bottom consists of the loudspeaker grills and the micro USB port.

Display

Now we come to one of the weakest points of Huawei Y7 Prime, its display. For its 5.5 inches large screen, Huawei opted to use a 720p display. The list of reasons why it makes sense might be a long one, including important ones like improved battery life and low impact on performance. But the fact remains that a sub 1080p display on a 5.5-inch display is stretching things quite a bit. The display might look pixelated to those with keen observational sense. Apart from the pixelation issue, the display checks nearly all other boxes. It has good color reproduction and decent viewing angles.

Software experience

Huawei Y7 Prime is running the latest EMUI 5.1 with Android Nougat update. Along with a refreshed look, it brings a number of changes from MIUI 4 which go a long way in improving the overall user interface. There is now a separate drawer for applications which helps in reducing the clutter from home screen.

There are also some nifty additions like a built-in themes store and a device manager which keeps track of device resources and frees them up regularly to keep it running at the top condition. The device manager scans the whole device and generates a report based on how well the device is currently performing. One click optimize button can then fix all the issues and restore it to optimal condition. There are also a number of very important and useful additions to the software like a display color temperature adjustment tool in the settings. These little additions make the whole experience much more user-friendly.
MIUI 5.1 is a slimmer and leaner version of Huawei’s custom Android skin. It claims to be much lighter than previous versions and the performance gains from older versions are clearly visible in day to day uses. There is no lag whatsoever when sifting through multitasking view or opening new applications.

Performance and battery life

Huawei has equipped the Y7 Prime with an Octa-core 1.4 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 processor. It is a budget processor and performs well according to its price. The Adreno 505 GPU is also adequate for the price range and runs most mid level 3D games without any hiccups and issues. There is also no visible lag or performance hits while carrying out day to day tasks like opening/closing applications and multitasking a few tasks in the background.

The benchmarks also show similar results with the scores lying in the middle of the spectrum. The results from Geekbench application are:

The results from the AnTuTu benchmark are:
With a 4,000 mAh battery, it is not preposterous to assume that this phone will provide good battery life. In fact, the whole selling point of this phone is its extraordinarily large battery life. Huawei has made sure to market the phone to its strengths and is making a good point of highlighting it this strength. With constant access to a wireless data connection, 4-5 background apps at one time, casual gaming and streaming from YouTube and other music applications, Huawei Y7 Prime easily lasts a whole day and good part of the next day. I was able to make it two days on a single charge with the usage mentioned above. The screen on time is also on the high side and varies between 7 to 8 hours.

Camera

With the advancements in mobile camera technologies over the past few years, people are starting to expect better and better cameras in even low to mid-range phones. This phone does not break the tradition and ships with a 12 MP rear camera with f/2.2 aperture. The aperture size seems to be a little low and this is reflected in some pictures taken during night time. Pictures which were taken in low light seem a little more blurry and lackluster in details than other competitors. During daytime, when there is ample amount of light available, the pictures come out well sharpened and with an acceptable amount of noise around the edges. Color reproduction is also accurate and overall pictures seem pleasant to look at.
The front camera is 8 MP and has a f/2.0 aperture. The aperture is a bit larger than the rear camera and thus the selfies taken by it seem a bit brighter. It captures a good amount of detail and the automatic processing makes sure that the pictures taken by the front camera are social media ready. Overall, the camera department does not disappoint and most users will be sufficiently happy with it.

Conclusion

The conclusion is usually the portion where I talk about how well the price of the phone is justified in comparison with the features and specifications it is offering. Huawei Y7 Prime, coming at a price of 24,999 PKR, packs a lot of punch for its asking price. The main attraction is, of course, the 4,000 mAh battery which will provide more than enough juice to forget about charging the phone for at least a day or two. With a pretty decent camera and smooth performance, the device is actually very competitive for its price range. The display might annoy someone coming from higher resolution screens but it is perfectly adequate for day to day usage. All in all, Huawei Y7 Prime is a perfect candidate for a good low to the mid-range smartphone.