Introduction
The Huawei Ascend P7 is the sequel to the ultra-thin P6, the phone
that proved, beyond any doubt, Huawei's ability to create visually
appealing handsets. The new model builds on the original with a 5" 1080p
screen, superior camera and chipset, plus a number of other
improvements.
Huawei Ascend P7 official pictures
The defining feature of the Ascend P6 was the 6.2mm thin body (touted
as "the thinnest smartphone") and a faux metal back. The new Ascend P7
can claim neither of those things as it's thicker (7.1mm) and has a
glass-covered back. But what a double textured finish indeed! One to
fall in love with!
There is metal framing, and the whole thing is sandwiched between two
layers of Gorilla Glass 3 - especially welcome on the front, where the
new 5" IPS screen of 1080p resolution is well worth protecting. Even
without having the P6 and P7 side by side, we instantly appreciated the
extra clarity afforded by the higher pixel density.
Enough teasing the new specs, here are the other ups (and downs) of the Huawei Ascend P7.
Key features
- Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE; penta-band 3G with HSPA; LTE Cat. 4
- 5" 16M-color 1080p IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen with Gorilla Glass 3, usable with gloves
- Android OS v4.4.2 KitKat with Emotion UI
- Quad-core 1.8 GHz Cortex-A9, Mali-450 GPU; 2GB of RAM; Huawei Kirin 910T chipset
- 13MP autofocus camera with LED flash, 1080p video recording @ 30fps
- 8MP front-facing camera, 1080p video recording, selfie panorama mode
- Dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct and DLNA
- GPS with A-GPS and GLONASS
- 16GB of built-in storage (12GB available to user)
- side-mounted microSD card slot, hot-swap
- microUSB port with USB host, USB OTG
- Bluetooth v4.0
- FM radio
- Standard 3.5mm audio jack
- Accelerometer and proximity sensor, compass
- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
- 2,500mAh battery
Main disadvantages
- Chipset benchmarks poorly
- Thicker than its predecessor
- Non-exchangeable battery
- Below average loudspeaker performance
The Ascend P7 takes photography seriously, especially selfies. The
front-facing camera has an 8MP BSI sensor and features modes like face
enhancement and selfie panorama. The camera on the back is sourced from
Sony and is a 13MP shooter with 1080p video capture.
Huawei has also popped in a new chipset that brings more processing
power and LTE support. Another plus is that the company claims to have
fixed the overheating issues thanks to a more advanced manufacturing
process. The phone comes with Android 4.4.2 KitKat with the most recent
Emotion UI, while its P6 predecessor is still on Android 4.2.2 Jelly
Bean.
Huawei Ascend P7 at ours
The new chipset is still based on Cortex-A9, which is normally a
notch below Qualcomm's Krait-based offerings, never mind the higher
clock speed in the P7. Having seen the four Cortex-A7s do well enough in
the Moto G though, we shouldn't be quick to judge on core architecture
alone.
Follow us through the next pages where we explore the Huawei Ascend P7 in detail.
