Huawei Y7 Pro 2018 Review: Perfect Budget Replacement for Your Old Smartphone?

There was a time when Samsung and Apple were the only company that dominated the smartphone market. However, that has drastically changed with time. Huawei is one of the Top Four Chinese brands to capture 67% of global market share in 2017. It is a surprise but when you look at Huawei’s past few releases; Huawei P20 Pro, Mate 10 Pro, Nova 2i; it’s apparent. Each smartphone brings something different to the table.

Before using Nova 2i, I was pessimistic about Huawei replacing the Samsung or Apple experience. But it did give me a great experience. And, how I saw the brand value for Huawei did change. When I first heard Huawei’s latest budget release: Huawei Y7 Pro, I jumped with excitement. Not only does Y7 Pro follows Nova 2i, Huawei’s Best Seller in Nepal, but it must live up to the expectation set by its predecessor.

So, I got an opportunity to spent almost two weeks with Huawei Y7 Pro. During the testing period, I had my doubts about the phone. How can a smartphone have everything and still be under the budget? After spending two weeks with Y7 Pro, I think I might have the answer.

Huawei Y7 Pro 2018 Review

Design

In the past, Huawei has been criticized for taking too much inspiration from iPhone’s design. But in new releases, Huawei is starting to come up their own unique design. They have outdone themselves, in terms of design, in Y7 Pro. The entire unibody is metal with plastic finish on the side. I especially like the Blue-Black color combination, its one of those things that look just right. The sleek and smooth unibody design works great with the glossy side finish. Since it’s a matte-finish, you don’t have to worry about the smudges. However, the plastic side does make the phone slippery. A protective case might be a good investment.

Moving to the button and port placement, Y7 follows its predecessor. On the right, you get a volume button and a power button. You also get a headphone jack, micro-USB, and a mono speaker. The phone comes with triple camera setup; dual rear camera and a single front camera.

That’s all the things you’ll notice when you first get to hold this beauty. In all honesty, the design aspect of this phone is really good. It gives you that premium looks with a quality feel. And people did compliment the device a lot during my testing.

Display

Another one of the best things about Huawei Y7 Pro is the display. Long story short, the display looks amazing! The large 5.99-inch HD IPS display loos incredible. Following Nova 2i’s footsteps, this comes with 18:9 aspect ratio with Full View Display. Especially, the black-colored borders will give you a unique feel like border-less display.

I have nothing to complain about the screen. The quality of the picture is sharp, rich and vibrant. The display can easily adapt to any conditions thanks to the onboard ambient light sensor. Even under the direct sunlight, you can easily use it without any external assistance. You will appreciate the beauty of this display.

Hardware

Huawei Y7 Pro comes with Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 SoC with octa-core processor clocked at 1.4GHz. For graphics and gaming, you get an Adreno 505 GPU along with 3GB of RAM. The internal storage is 32GB with microSD support. You can easily add extra 256GB of storage with the help of dual-SIM slot which supports a microSD slot.

But, how does Y7 Pro perform in the real world? Before we begin, you should keep it in mind that Y7 Pro is a mid-tier budget smartphone. So far, my experience with the phone has been great! During my two weeks of testing, I did not encounter any lag in performance. Switching between apps, multitasking and media playback were smooth and quick.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

However, trying to game on this is a different story. Light games like Clash of Clans, BBTan, Candy Crush, among others work great. You get fast performance during the gameplay. But, heavier games like Tekken, Telltales’ Batman and FIFA suffer performance dip. I did encounter issues like gameplay freezing and frame drop while playing these resource intensive games.

Huawei’s game mode somewhat tackles this issue head-on. Using Game Center, you are likely to see significant improvements in gameplay. There was one thing you will likely notice when you start using the Y7 Pro more often. It gets warm. No, it’s not an overheating issue. It just gets lukewarm around the middle section of the phone. You will feel the increase in temperature when you use the device for a longer period. This becomes more apparent when you use the camera or performance-heavy tasks like gaming. The “lukewarm” issue will nag you for a bit, but it won’t intersect with the overall experience. You will most definitely enjoy using this phone, especially for its performance.

Huawei Y7 Pro 2018 Key Specifications

• Display: 5.99 inch HD IPS display with 1440×720 resolution, 18:9 aspect ratio
• Chipset: Qualcomm MSM8937 Snapdragon 430
• CPU: Octa-core 1.4 GHz Cortex-A53
• GPU: Adreno 505
• Memory: 32GB internal storage with MicroSD expansion up to 256 GB, 3 GB RAM
• OS: Android Oreo 8.0 with EMUI 8.0
• Rear Camera: Dual: 13 MP + 2 MP, autofocus, LED flash
• Front Camera: 8 MP with Selfie Toning Flash
• Battery: 3000 mAh battery
• Sensors: Face Unlock, accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass

Software

Huawei is often known for their continuous update on their mid-range smartphones. Well, Y7 Pro is no different. It comes with Android Oreo out of the box! However, it’s not pure stock Android experience. You get a Huawei’s EMUI on top of Android Oreo. Huawei’s EMUI is often considered to be like an iOS. To be fair, you can easily see the resemblance between the two operating system.

Outrageous as it may seem, I have grown to like EMUI. It’ minimalistic and It’s not as bad as Samsung’s TouchWiz UI. I’d like to visualize it as a bridge between iOS and Android OS. You get the best of both worlds. All I am saying is that, if you hate EMUI at first, you’ll grow into it.

Another interesting fact, there is little to no bloatware in Y7 Pro! Huawei does listen to their fans and well-wishers. Finally, you don’t have unnecessary application hogging up the system resources. Though, I do miss the in-built pedometer. The pedometer was one of the more useful bloatware. I wouldn’t mind if Huawei included that in their next release.

Face Unlock (Security)

Huawei has decided to include Face Unlock as the primary security feature. This didn’t sit very well with me. I was pessimistic about it replacing the Fingerprint Unlock particularly since Face Unlock made its debut just a few months ago.

Despite this, I decided to test it out for myself. Registering process was a piece of cake. I was surprised to see that Face Unlock is responsive and quick. When it worked, you didn’t miss the fingerprint unlock. But, it isn’t as perfect as you want it to be. In rare cases, it wasn’t very accurate detecting my face. During those times, I was forced to use my password. Those rare times were often in the poor light conditions and night time. I think this is one of the biggest drawbacks of the Face Unlock.

Face Unlock is good but it isn’t good enough to replace fingerprint. In all honesty, I am more likely choose a fingerprint over a face unlock. But when I did use face unlock feature, it did make my life easier. I hope Huawei advances its accuracy and speed in future updates because there is a lot of room for improvements.

Battery

Huawei Y7 Pro is powered up by non-removable 3000mAh Li-Ion battery. Compared to batteries currently available in the market, it’s neither too large nor too small. The discharge time might vary upon use, but recharge time does not. Y7 Pro takes on average 3 – 4 hours to go from 0 – 100%. This is nothing unusual but something you should keep in mind, especially for gamers.

I got a decent life at normal use. Browsing memes, texting, playing music and video are things I do most often. The smartphone lasted me the entire day without the need to charge it again. I’m mostly left with around 10-15% charge at the end of the day. I consider the battery size quite enough for average use. Though, tables turn when you bring gaming into the mix. You can game for around 2-3 hours on average. Depending on the game, it eats through the battery. You might want to keep your charger close during your gaming session.

Camera

Huawei Y7 Pro comes with the triple camera setup; a dual-rear camera and a front camera. On the rear side, its a 13 Megapixel primary shooter and a 2 Megapixel secondary camera. On the front, it has an 8 Megapixel camera with Selfie Toning flash.

Off the bat, there aren’t too many modes to play. There are only two modes: Wide Aperture Mode and Beauty Mode. Wide Aperture mode allows you to capture pictures with blurred background. It’s quite like the one in Nova 2i. Using this mode, you get the ability to touch and refocus in post-click. I was a huge fan of this feature from the Nova 2i days. This gives your pictures a professional feel which is always great! Moving onto another mode: Beauty Mode. This allows the user to beautify your pictures, removing any smudges or pimples. On average, I did not use this feature as much I’d like. The quality of the picture looks over processed. So normally I’d turn this mode to a lower level or just completely off.

Other than that, you also get features like Panorama, HDR, and Filters. Obviously, it isn’t as feature-rich as Huawei’s other cousins. However, there are plenty of settings you can play with. Such as Audio Control, Capture smiles, ultra-snapshot and much more.

Talking about the picture quality. It does give you a decent bang for the price. Color saturation and dynamic range are good, but it lacks the sharpness. I feel like the image is slightly overexposed which worked for Nova 2i, but it does not work here. In any case, colors are rich and bright. The camera is good, but it isn’t the best one in the market right now.

Compared to the image quality, the video quality is much better. The object in the video looks vibrant. And the sound quality is also great. It significantly suppresses the background noises. However, the video also lacks in sharpness. Plus, this has no image stabilization, so the video might get shaky.

Here are the few samples:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Final Verdict

So, after two weeks of testing, how do I feel about Huawei Y7 Pro? It’s a good phone. It tries to pack best of everything while still being affordable. Y7 Pro somewhat succeeds in becoming a decent smartphone. It gets your work done, clicks decent picture, and looks good while doing it. But Y7 Pro is far from being the perfect smartphone. While it tries to give you bits of everything, it also takes bits of something. It’s For example, selecting Face Unlock over Fingerprint Unlock can be considered as cost saving method. That’s the type of scarifice you have to be willing to make.

For this reason, if you want something with a great camera or massive battery, this phone isn’t for you. However, I would recommend Y7 Pro for average users. Especially those people who want a good smartphone that packs every necessary bit, without going out of the budget. You get the latest smartphone with latest specs with that gives you a decent performance. In the end, I’d like to say that Huawei Y7 Pro does give you a good value for your money! And, yes it is a perfect budget replacement for your old smartphone.

So, what do you think about Huawei Y7 Pro? Will this be your next budget smartphone? Tell us all about it in the comments down below!