Ascend P
series from Huawei is dedicated to the premium devices. Last year’s Ascend P6
proved to be a commercial success for the Chinese manufacturer and also claimed
the title of world’s thinnest smartphone. Ascend P7 is no different ─ It builds
upon the success of its forerunner while trying to rectify the drawbacks.
Ascend P7
was unveiled in Paris earlier this year and was launched in MENA region last
month.
This phone
is available all over Pakistan at a price of Rs. 47,000. It is currently sold
in black, white and pink colors along with one year warranty of Airlink
Communication.
Design:
Ascend P7
features a very similar design to last year’s P6 with a few minor changes, it’s
a slightly bigger and a thicker. However the basic layout of the device remains
unchanged ─ brushed metal band on three sides and plastic bottom; however glass
replaces aluminium on the back.
P7 has a
5-inch LTPS IPS display with 1080p resolution (445ppi pixel density). The
screen is super sharp, quality and color saturation of images is very good.
Huawei
Ascend P7 offers great viewing angles and is fairly responsive. One thing you
will immediately notice is that this phone has very slim bezels and the frame
is quite short as compared to other 5-inch screen phones.
Above the
screen you’ll find the ear-speaker, notifications LED, light sensors and a
unique 8-megapixel camera for selfies, groufies and video calling.
Once again
Huawei has decided to put its name below the screen, apparently for no reason
at all. I would love this device to have no logo/text on the front, and just a
black slab.
The position
of volume rocker, power/unlock key and the SIM+memory card slots on the right
remain the same, except that the power key is now circular.
slots Ascend
P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
The 3.5mm
headphones jack now sits on the top of Ascend P7 with noise cancellation mic,
whereas the USB port is now on the bottom along with primary microphone;
previously these two ports were at very odd locations.
side free
Ascend P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
The backside
of this device is quite interesting, as compared to the aluminium back of
Ascend P6, the new device features toughened glass. There’s a 13-megapixel
primary camera along with LED flash on the back and loudspeaker at the bottom.
back1 Ascend
P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
Beneath the
glass there are 7 plates with micro design, resulting in beautiful bluish
texture when exposed to light. A shiny Huawei logo sits in the middle.
back texture
Ascend P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
The glass
back and Thermal Gel Cooling technique gets rid of heating problem to some
extent, but makes the phone quite slippery. You have to be extra careful while
handling this phone and try not to put it on Sofa armrests or on any uneven
surface.
The overall
design and the build quality of this phone is very nice. It weighs light (124
grams) and easy to hold. The glass on the back makes it quite comfortable to
hold for longer duration, but it is a finger print magnet.
A little
precaution for P7 users is that the camera’s anti-reflection coating may
attract some scratches over the time, though it doesn’t affect the image
quality. Make sure not to use “tissue paper” for cleaning the lens.
Operating
System & UI:
Ascend P7 is
the first device from Huawei to run on Android 4.4.2 KitKat along with the
latest EMUI 2.3 out of the box.
ui 1 Ascend
P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
Most of you
folks who have been following our reviews or have owned a Huawei phone may
already know about EMUI. It is a quite unusual customization of Android, with
no app launcher and everything is placed on the homescreen. The version 2.3 has
many visual and performance improvements. Now it is more fluid and brings some
new themes; most of which feature flat and minimal icons.
ui2 Ascend
P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
The new
version also includes a simpler interface, with big tiles and text. It is ideal
for people who are not comfortable using tiny icons. The phone dialer has been
improved and the keyboard is now embedded with swype feature.
ui4 Ascend
P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
Just like
previous versions, the notifications panel also incorporates quick toggles and
now brightness control is also embedded with-in.
In addition
to the soft keys on the bottom there is a new feature called Suspend button
which allows quick access to homescreen, back button and some other useful
apps. It’s pretty handy while using full screen applications or playing games.
Some other
additions include, motion control, notifications manager, harassment filter,
network administration and a neat “Mirror” application; which uses the front
camera and serves as a mirror.
ui3 Ascend
P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
The newest
version of EMUI has a significant focus on phone performance and power saving.
The default Phone Manager app notifies you when an application is consuming
battery in the background so you may quickly kill it. But this feature is quite
annoying as it constantly prompts you to close essential apps. However there is
an easy fix for this, just add the essential applications to the “Allowed
list”.
ui5 Ascend
P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
If you don’t
like the EMUI experience, you can always download a custom launcher (Apex, Nova
etc) from the Play Store and use it instead.
Hardware
& Performance:
Ascend P7
packs Huawei’s in-house 1.8GHz quad-core Kirin 910T CPU, coupled with 2GB of
RAM and 16GB of internal storage (you can expand it with an SD card and also
use SD card as primary storage).
ui final
Ascend P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
The
performance of this device is quite reasonable, you won’t feel any lag during
the normal operation of the phone, and it can run any resource hungry
application/game without breaking a sweat.
You can
watch 1080p videos and no matter how many apps you install and run on this
device it won’t get “slow”.
I was really
hopping that Huawei will use its latest octa-core processor in the phone. So
due to the hardware difference, it can’t beat the current flagships from other
manufacturers in terms of performance and doesn’t not score high on the
benchmarks.
But keeping
the price in mind, it delivers the best possible performance. P7 easily beats
the 2013 flagship devices including Galaxy S4 and HTC One (M7).
longshot1
Ascend P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
It supports
the latest 4G LTE network and quickly switches between 4G, 3G and 2G. This
phone features a dual antenna layout which allows better signal transmission.
The regular
and VoIP calling experience on this phone is spectacular. You won’t hear any
noise or echo during calls. The loudspeaker has comparatively low volume but
the ear speaker is just fine. This new device also features NFC and Bluetooth
4.0, which were missing in last year’s P6.
Have a look
at some of the benchmarks:
bench11
Ascend P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
bench21 Ascend P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet
[Review]
Camera &
Video:
The camera
department is certainly the best among all the features. Ascend P7 is packed
with a primary 13-megapixel BSI camera with single LED flash and an unusual
8-megapixel front facing camera for selfie-obsessed people.
camera rig
Ascend P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
The camera
applications remains almost the same, with minimal UI and easy to use
interface. However Huawei has added some new features including audio-note,
watermark and best photo.
The primary
camera features a 28mm wide angle 4th generation SONY sensor and f/2.0
aperture. The performance in both day light and indoors is very good. You will
get sharp photos with high details and vivid colors.
The low
light performance is also sufficiently good, but you’ll easily notice the
enhanced noise and grain in those photos.
cam ui
Ascend P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
Taking close
ups blur the background and keep the subject in focus by creating a shallow
depth of field. However the camera application doesn’t offer the latest Bokeh
effect feature found in most of the latest flagships. (Don’t worry you can use
Google Camera application, if you are too fond of taking Bokeh-ish DSLR like
photos).
The primary
camera is capable of recording 1080p videos in 16:9 aspect ratio @ 30fps. It
offers software image stabilization, which is not good as OIS. There are
comparatively less options to play with in video mode but it does the job well.
Huawei has
also introduced the Ultra snapshot feature with P7, which quickly takes a photo
when phone is on stand by double pressing the volume down key. Usually it takes
1.2 – 1.4 seconds to take the photo, but it doesn’t auto-focus and the quality
is a little low.
ultra Ascend
P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
Now let’s
talk about the front facing camera, which probably is the best secondary camera
to date. An 8-megapixel sensor is far better than the 1-2-megapixel sensors
used in most high-end phones.
The camera
is focused on selfies or should I says groufies, as Huawei included Panorama
Selfie option which take 3-different shots from different angles and then
stitches them. So there is no need to squeeze people while taking a selfie,
instead take a groufie.
The
secondary camera is also capable of recording 1080p video and it offers good
results during video calls.
Sample
Shots:
IMG 20140607
182943 1024x576 Ascend P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
IMG 20140623 140338 1024x575 Ascend P7:
Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
IMG 20140623 140037 1024x575 Ascend P7:
Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
IMG 20140614
135716 1 575x1024 Ascend P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
IMG 20140611 122145 1024x768 Ascend P7:
Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
IMG 20140607 184451 1024x576 Ascend P7:
Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
IMG 20140619
221553 1024x575 Ascend P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
IMG 20140607
174544 1024x771 Ascend P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
IMG 20140607
153021 1024x771 Ascend P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
IMG 20140623
140924 1024x575 Ascend P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
4x digital
zoom
IMG 20140607
163530 1024x771 Ascend P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
4x digital
zoom
IMG 20140623
140706 1024x576 Ascend P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
Front camera
Sample Video
Shot by Ascend P7
Battery
Performance:
battery
Ascend P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
Ascend P7 is
packed with a 2500mAh battery, which doesn’t seems too much on paper. The
actual performance depends upon your usage pattern.
battery1
Ascend P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]Huawei has included a dedicated
“Power Saving” application to optimize the battery performance. It
automatically adjusts the CPU and network usage to enhance the battery life.
There is
also an Ultra Power Saving mode which shuts down most of the phone functions
and according to company claims provide 24 hours standby on 10% charge.
In our
tests, the phone survived a single day on average usage, but using 3G internet
and running resource hungry applications limited the use to just 10-12 hours.
After a full
charge, I was able to play Asphalt 8 continuously for almost 3.5 hours, which
is actually quite good, but sometimes the battery quickly discharged.
Especially the last 25% seems to be very quick.
Most of
people charge their phones at night, so one day usage will be adequate for
them. Surprisingly the battery performance on standby is great, during 20 hours
on standby it only dropped to 1%.
Verdict:
Ascend P7 is
definitely the best phone from Huawei to date. It offers a premium design and
reasonable hardware along with satisfactory performance and a neat user
experience.
benchs
Ascend P7: Huaweis Best Phone Yet [Review]
The camera
and screen are the headlines, albeit it lacks in terms of hardware. However
keeping the price tag in mind you shouldn’t compare it with other flagships of
2014.
Speaking of
price, I feel that this phone is little overpriced. Eventually the price will
go down, but only if Huawei had launched it for PKR 42,000 or around; it could
have been the best choice for those looking for premium devices with-in their
mediocre budget.
There is a
lot to like about this phone and the combination of metal and glass makes it
more desirable than the plastic phones. If you could keep good care of your
phone, certainly this phone should be in your wishlist.
Do share you
opinion about P7 in the comments section below and if you have any related
questions don’t shy asking them.
0 comments:
Post a Comment