One Charge, 3 Days of Battery – HONOR X7a Review

By Christopher David

Honor recently launched the Honor X7a in early Feb 2023 as one of its offerings in the mid-range smartphone segment and at an extremely affordable price. The X7a enters the UAE market as a budget smartphone after the X9a which was launched around Jan 2023, with more extravagant features. Honor has been on a launching spree with another model X8a launched just a few days back and a couple more launched at the MWC on 27th Feb 2023 (more about that later). The X7a despite being a budget smartphone, sold at 599 AED will catch your eye with its specs and some features are not to be missed.

Let’s see what the X7a has to offer –

Battery – I normally do not list out the battery feature at the beginning, which comes in mostly towards the mid-section or the end. But this one’s different. The X7a sports a 6000 mAh battery which promises a battery life of 3.5 days on a single charge. More or less, it did last for a good 3 days on a single charge, so that’s a great plus for someone who’s mostly on the go. HONOR X7a’s battery performance is also verified by DXOMARK which is awarded the 3.5 days long battery life. Also, it offers a scenario-based battery life – 20+ hours for video watching, 33+ hours for social media browsing, 15 hours for gaming etc.

HONOR X7a adopts the 22.5W HONOR SuperCharge. While the battery consumption is slow and battery life is the highlight, the supercharge could have been a bit quicker. Nevertheless, the battery performance of Honor X7a stands tall compared to the other brands available in the market with the same price tag. Honor also promises that X7a can maintain 80% of its capacity to stay intact even after 3 years of usage.

Display & Specs – Honor X7a sports a 6.74-inch screen display with the Honor FullView Display. The display is pretty good at a 90.07% of screen ratio and for one-hand usage. The best part is the slimness of the device which is 8.27mm, this makes the phone grip your hand perfectly. The HONOR X7a supports HD resolution and a colour depth of 16.7 million colours, making it a handy device for watching movies, videos, and photography. With up to 90Hz refresh rate, the functioning is quite exquisite, even though devices are offering 120Hz refresh rate, the pricing is nowhere close. You can choose to keep the refresh rate at 60Hz to save battery but this device has extremely strong battery life. I would keep it at 90Hz for that extra seamless performance without worrying about the battery draining. Also, the device is TUV Rheinland low blue light certified for a better viewing experience and low blue light emissions.

The fingerprint sensor sits on the right side of the device with volume up/down buttons just above the sensor. Many brands have tried the fingerprint sensor on the sides, the right side mostly and I kind of like that placement personally. With a C-type charging slot, right next to it sits the 35 mm audio jack.

There are 3 colours available in the market which you can choose from, i) Titanium Silver, ii) Ocean Blue & iii) Midnight Black. The phone sports 4GB/6GB RAM with 128GB storage (expandable up to 1TB) and the manoeuvring etc. seems quite seamless and no hiccups in between switching apps or heavy usage. The phone runs on Magic UI 6.1 OS (based on Android 12) powered with a Mediatek Helio G37 chipset.

Camera – The X7a comes and uses the Quad camera setup at the back with 50MP main camera, a 5 MP Ultra-Wide lens and 2MP lens for Macro & Depth shots and a front 8MP camera for those selfies. The camera is quite good with bright and sharp shots and visually rich pictures while Video recording can be up to 1080P at 30fps. Apart from slow-mo the camera is quite equipped for excellent picture quality at a price range that beats many mid-range smartphones. Some of the features would be large aperture, portrait, photography, filter, AI photography, video, professional, panorama, HDR, time-lapse, watermark, super macro, high pixel, smiley face capture, time-lapse shooting, etc.

HONOR X7a is available for purchase in UAE markets via HONOR Online Store, Axiom, Emax, Etisalat, Jumbo, KM Trading, Lulu, Nesto, Sharaf DG and Noon for AED 599. Upon purchase, consumers will get HONOR Gift box as a gift.

Highlights – Battery Life, Camera, Smooth UI, Full Vide Display and Price.

Verdict – The Honor X7a is a pretty handy device when you are on the go mostly because of its extremely efficient battery life. Available at just 599 AED this device is good for its camera, and display (which means watching video content is a good experience on this, especially when the battery doesn’t run out of charge easily). With so many mid-range smartphones available in the market recently and everyone trying to ship more numbers, the X7a stands out among competitors, with what it has to offer at the price point it’s selling.