[nextpage title=”Introduction, Features and Unboxing”]
Huawei Y7 Prime – Introduction
Huawei has just released another mid-range smartphone in Pakistan – Y7 Prime. Rivaling directly to Samsung’s Galaxy J7 Prime, Y7 Prime is an attractive contender with respect to the price point and the backup time. Released earlier this week, Huawei Y7 Prime costs 24,999/-.
No doubt Samsung has a bigger market across the globe, but believe it or not, Huawei is giving tough time to the Korean smartphone maker in markets like Pakistan. The Chinese tech giant launches its smartphones in every segment of the market, just like Samsung. In fact, Huawei names its smartphones directly in line with what Samsung chooses usually for its mid-range devices. Huawei Y7 Prime is just one of those.
Huawei Y7 Prime follows its line-up of Y3 and Y5 to directly compete with Samsung’s line-up of J3 and J5. Similarly, Y7 Prime stands besides Samsung’s J7 Prime which is currently available for Rs. 28,000/- and is powered by not more than 3300mAh Battery.
Whereas Galaxy J7 Prime provides higher resolution, Huawei Y7 Prime features only 720p resolution on its 5.5-inch display. The pixel density of 401ppi on J7 Prime is extremely sharp for everything, but Y7 Prime gives you around 267ppi which is just enough in most cases for human eye. However when coupled with a massive battery of 4000mAh, Y7 Prime could give you about double the backup time as would J7 Prime. In addition, Y7 Prime has 32GB of storage while J7 Prime only has 16GB in Pakistan market, both with 3GB RAM. So that’s pretty much the difference you’d have in most similar devices from two brands.
Huawei Y7 Prime – Features & Specifications
| HUAWEI Y7 PRIME | |
|---|---|
| PLATFORM CHIPSET / CPU / GPU |
Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 Octa-core Cortex-A53 1.4 GHz Adreno 505 |
| DIMENSIONS WEIGHT |
153.6 x 76.4 x 8.4 mm 165 grams |
| DISPLAY | 5.5-inch IPS LCD Display HD Resolution 720 x 1280 pixels Pixel density: ~267ppi |
| RAM | 3GB RAM |
| STORAGE | 32GB microSD card slot |
| REAR CAMERA | 12 MP, PDAF, f/2.2, LED flash, 1080p/30fps video |
| FRONT CAMERA | 8 MP, f/2.0 |
| OS / SOFTWARE | Android 7.0 Nougat EMUI 5.1 |
| NETWORKS | Dual-SIM 2G/GSM, 3G/HSDPA, 4G/LTE |
| SENSORS | Fingerprint, Proximity, Ambient Light, Compass, Gravity, Phone Status Indicator |
| BATTERY / POWER | 4000mAh battery non-removable |
| PRICE | PKR. 24,999/- |
Here are the quick bullets from our review.
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
|
|
Unboxing and Retail Box Content
The box is simple in a red color with a pop-out style. The retail package brings along everything you’ll usually look for when you buy a new smartphone. In addition, Huawei feels good to ship an added plastic screen protector. The package includes following items.
- The Device: Huawei Y7 Prime
- 5V/2A Fast Charger
- microUSB cable for connectivity and charging
- Earphones with 3.5mm pin
- User Guide and Warranty Card
- Add-on screen protector plastic
Huawei Y7 Prime Unboxing – Video
[nextpage title=”Build, Design and Display”]
Huawei Y7 Prime – Build and Design
Huawei Y7 Prime has a distinct design, from a more frequent mid-ranger looks, with sturdy aluminium back panel. On the front the Y7 Prime has a smooth 2.5D curved glass. Weighing only 165 grams, Huawei Y7 Prime is just 8.4mm thicker with curvy rounded frame around.
Though the frame is plastic but it’s a tough one with a little taller top and bottom portions. The metal back panel is fixed into body and doesn’t allow users to remove – hence the battery is not user-removable too.
The 5.5-inch screen features an IPS LCD display with only 720p resolution as mentioned above. Which is quite common in the price range however it helps the system consume less power indeed. The screen size provides around 71% visual area of the front side – commonly referred as screen-to-body ratio.
It makes the pixel density around 267ppi which is not too great at sharpness but mostly acceptable. I personally prefer to have better power backup with a moderate display resolution like this.
On the front, you can see that the lower portion of the screen is just printing the brand name “Huawei” while on the upper portion, there are standard components – an earpiece in the middle, proximity and ambient light sensor, and a front facing camera.
Front-camera comes with screen-flash feature to brighten up the nearer subject for some better selfies.
Other common components include the micro USB port on the bottom side of the phone along with the speaker grill. The mouthpiece or the primary mic is hidden inside the second grill. On top, there is only a 3.5mm audio jack.
On the right side of the phone, you will have the power button and the volume rocker. The hybrid SIM slot is available on the left side of the phone. Like many now, Huawei Y7 Prime also has dual-SIM support but when used with a microSD card, only one SIM can be used.
As noted above, Huawei Y7 Prime has aluminium back panel with matte finish. The frame is a solid plastic which doesn’t feel like plastic at all – it’s good. Top and bottom sides of the frame are extended inwards joining at the metal back plate. The metal back is slightly curved on the left and right sides and directly meets at the frame
On the upper portion of the back panel, we have a primary camera of 12 megapixels with an LED flash. Right below the camera, we have the fingerprint scanner. Down there on the back we have standard branding and labeling on the phone.
Huawei Y7 Prime – Display
Impressive, it is, on the Huawei Y7 Prime. Being a mid-range in this price range, the display is quite impressive its maximum brightness. It also performed better outdoors and sunlight readability is appreciable. Blacks are too great for this mid-ranger to provide an appealing contrast ratio.
The front glass is quite smooth but really prone to fingerprints. Once it catches the prints, you will find it harder to clean them off.
Overall the readability experience is quite good with reduced reflections when using outdoors.
[nextpage title=”Software and User Interface”]
Operating System / Software
Huawei Y7 Prime runs Android 7.0 Nougat out-of-the-box and on top it brings its updated software outfit Emotion UI 5.1 – with a lot praises from around the globe. The software has currently been updated to the May 5 security patch. Do not expect further update updates as faster as they are bound to reach Nokia’s latest Android devices.
Huawei has shipped many features in EMUI 5.1 but most of them are limited to the flagship devices only – such as App Twin feature that allows to run certain apps as two instances. For example if you want to run two WhatsApp accounts or two Facebook accounts, that’s the thing for you. Unfortunately, that’s not present in Huawei Y7 Prime or any other mid-ranger.
Multi-user support of Android 7 is also not present in Y7 Prime and only limited to flagship devices – for now at least. Not sure if the company has plans to push the feature in future software updates on Y7 Prime.
Default Home Screen Style
The default user interface of Huawei’s EMUI 5 is pretty straight forward similar to previous iterations with absolutely no app launcher. Everything you install on it, appears on the home screen with its app icon. Multiple home screens, you can add. Organize apps into folders and add widgets to home screens. Huawei sticks to its own kind of interface out-of-the-box which most people have referred to as a clone Apple’s iOS on Android.
The lock screen features a magazine style background delivery which you can even interrupt right between when the system is managing them on the lock screen. Thanks to quick short buttons which you can pull out from the bottom edge on lock screen.
Home Screen with App Drawer
The most prominent feature of app drawer comes along in Y7 Prime. If you didn’t know recently, Huawei has added the app drawer support into EMUI 5 software. You can no change the standard Huawei home screen if you don’t like it, to the app drawer mode.
Just go to Settings > Home screen style. Change to Drawer mode. The change will be quickly take you back to the home screen with an app drawer icon in the bottom row.
Home Screen Customization
The home screen can be customized with different widgets and wallpapers as well as the icon grid can be set according to your desire. On home screen you can trigger search feature by swiping down on the screen (not from the edge though).
That’s pretty much the same we had in previous EMUI versions but the recent apps view is different in EMUI 5. More like a standard vertical carousel of snapshots but with the hints of memory usage.
EMUI 5 – Notification Panel and Shortcuts
Now where the big visual changes come in EMUI 5 and hence in Y7 Prime, is the notification management. It’s much better with previews and hints on very clean and neat status bar panel. You pull it down the same way you do on any other phone.
Unlike previous version, this panel doesn’t have two separate tabs for notifications and shortcuts. A single swipe-down from the top edge reveals the notifications list with only a first row of shortcuts. Swipe-down once again to expand the shortcuts and push the notification further down.
Notifications appear in the groups by app, a small caret icon is provided on each notification that, if you tap on, will expand the notification to reveal snippets from its content. You can quickly set the app notification setting by swiping-right on the that notification.
Further, you can customize the shortcuts – for that, a pen icon is provided right besides the gear icon on status bar. You can now move as many shortcuts and toggles in and out from the selection of your panel.
Eye Comfort
The software brings a very nice feature for display optimization to better suit your eyes. Eye Comfort allows you to set display temperature to reduce the brightness and make it warmer or cooler.
Phone Manager
Phone Manager is a must in Huawei’s software interface always. The built-in app comes with the features which include system optimization, data and traffic management, harassment filter for restricting numbers to call you or send you text. With EMUI 5, we have visual changes in the app but experience remains the same mostly.
You can cleanup memory, view and manage mobile data, blacklist for blocking numbers, battery manager, virus scanner, app permissions. In fact built-in app locker is also available within the phone manager.
Fingerprint Scanner
Huawei’s fingerprint scanner is wow. I haven’t tried all of the budget and mid-range devices of the Chinese phone maker with a fingerprint scanner. But as many as I have tried, I found it impressively fast to do things. That goes same for the Huawei Y7 Prime. On the back, below the camera, the fingerprint scanner is positioned to suit your index finger.
Fingerprints can be managed from the settings. Multiple fingers can be enrolled – you are guided through a wizard until your finger is complete identified and confirmed.
Sure the fingerprint scanner can be used for unlocking the device and several other security features throughout the system. It can be used for many other functions as well, for which the fingerprint enrollment is not necessary. You can enable it to take photos, answer phone calls, stop alarm, pull down notification panel, browse photos etc.
[nextpage title=”System & Battery Performance”]
System Performance
Huawei Y7 Prime is powered by Qualcomm’s lower mid-range system-on-chip Snapdragon 435, that’s big.LITTLE model of SP 430. The phone is powered by a quad-core 1.4GHz processor with Cortex-A53 cores. To handle graphics and gaming importantly on the phone, the chip features Adreno 505 GPU. Y7 Prime has a 3GB of RAM which is impressive on this mid-ranger.
Interestingly Y7 Prime has 32GB of internal storage which is also a plus point for a mid-range phone. Galaxy J7 Prime only has 16GB which is quite lower to handle heavy games usually take storage in gigabytes. When talking about games, Snapdragon 435 is good in this mid-range smartphone to play games as smooth as you wish your phone to play. It uses its powerful cores to give as better performance while playing games as possible. Subway Surfer, NFS No Limits, Asphalt Xtreme and Modern Combat 5 were the title that the phone was trialed on. All of them were played really well considering the price range of Y7 Prime.
Benchmark scores can tell you where it stands among its class. Y7 Prime was tested with AnTuTu 6, Geekbench 4, Basemark OS II and Basemark X. You can check the following scores in respective order.
We also test the phone on Vellamo for categorized scoring in different fields like web browsing, single core and multi cores.
Battery Performance
Battery on the other hand is the major factor of Y7 Prime, as Huawei is using it for marketing purposes. So you can easily bet that battery could be the most amazing thing in Y7 Prime. 4000mAh is first meant to be a power bank that can charge other devices as well. But we, here, are supposed to let Y7 Prime consume all the power juice to see how it performs with that power. The power – which is advertised as good amount of backup time the users will have with Y7 Prime.
Company rates the phone to give 20 hours of video playback and 15 hours of browsing. We are looking at a phone that can give you extensive backup time easily for over 1.5 days – with standard usage over 4G/LTE. The standard usage actually includes all-day calling, texting, moderate browsing over WiFi, social apps including twitter, facebook etc and moderate camera usage. A little more extensive usage could still give over 24 hours on one full charge. One thing that I noticed GPS navigation and camera usage get the phone warm more than usual.
[nextpage title=”Camera – Photos and Video Quality”]
Camera
Huawei Y7 Prime sports a 12MP rear camera with 1.25μm pixel sensor. Larger pixels are supposed to get more light, and lets you take great quality photos even under low light conditions. Sure it’s not the only thing in photography, many other things are involved to make a produce a good image. The sensor has Phase Detection Auto Focus (PDAF) which is very common now. It allows you to focus on your subject faster – Huawei claims that Y7 Prime does the job in 0.3s.
On the picture quality, Y7 Prime seems a good performer with quite low noise and better image detail. Foliage on the trees are impressively detailed in good light but it’s equally poor in a little low-light conditions. White balance, on the other hand, is very inconsistent during the dusk.
The camera performed little better indoors but noise levels are sure increased. White balance was good in most conditions but image detail was not as good as in outdoor shots. Artifacts were impressively not present.
Outdoor Shots
In these shots, only the white balance is something which is not right. It’s not consistent even when shot the same scene after only a little shake of the camera – to tell it to concentrate again.
Indoor Low Light
Low light shots weren’t that bad, however the noise levels are a pain. You won’t expect any better from this price range either. Color rendering is fine, just according to the scene. Image detail is lost due to increased noise.
White Balance Issue
As told above the auto white balance is not that intelligent to get the picture from the scene you see with your eyes. Look at the following photos – Left one is auto capture, while the right one was captured with manual white balance set at cloudy, while the day was fully bright under sunlight. The picture on the right reflects the actual temperature on the time it was shot.
Front Camera
8MP front camera on Y7 Prime features beauty mode, that helps remove blemishes and improves brightness. Front camera is just average and results much noisy shots even in bright daylight.
Panorama
Huawei’s camera work really good with panoramas, that’s something that I always appreciate. It’s smooth to work, fast and accurate with binding and less errors.
[nextpage title=”Conclusion and Verdict”]
Conclusion
Mid-range smartphones aren’t usually impress with their features when you look at them. But if you compare them with the competitor’s offering, you can tell which devices is better for which feature. Y7 Prime in this case is actually much better even when you look at it alone.
Forget the comparison with a Galaxy J7 Prime – it’s expensive and less feature rich than Y7 Prime. Nokia 6 could be a good contender against Y7 Prime with respect to the build quality, performance and price but you’d prefer to have feature rich EMUI 5 software layer.
Huawei Y7 Prime spent a really good time and survived almost every trial. Most important factor is the battery which seems to be completely in sync with software optimization. Huawei has done a good job building this phone in the lower mid-range price category.
If you were thinking to buy Y7 Prime, have a green chit from my side. You can go and get one. Or you can wait for a comparative review of Nokia 6 in coming days.
Huawei Y7 Prime – Photo Gallery
