Huawei has plenty of strong offerings at almost every price range in 2017. They have the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro for flagships, and Nova 2i for mid-range. For the lower tier, they have the Huawei Y7 Prime. Is this a solid daily driver for under Php10K? Find out in our review.
Table of Contents
Out of the box, the Huawei Y7 Prime looks like your typical Android smartphone. It has a 5.5-inch HD IPS display with curved glass dominating the front which is then bordered by the thick top and bottom bezels.
Above the display are the earpiece, sensors, and 8MP front camera. Down below is the Huawei badge. There are no capacitive keys as the device uses on-screen navigation buttons.
At the left is the hybrid SIM tray, while on the right are the volume and power/lock keys.
At the top are the 3.5mm audio port and secondary microphone. Down at the bottom is the micro USB port, and a couple of slits for the main microphone (left) and loudspeaker (right).
Flip it on its back and you will see the 12MP rear camera, LED flash, and the fingerprint scanner.
In the hands, the Y7 Prime feels solid in the hands with no creaking parts. The frame is made of plastic but the backplate is metal. Although thick at 8.35mm, it’s comfortable to hold thanks to the curved sides and still feels light despite the 4,000mAh battery.
The Y7 Prime sports a 5.5-inch In-Cell display with HD resolution or equal to 267ppi. Mounted on top is 2.5D curved glass with a screen protector pre-installed.
The screen feels like a downgrade especially if your eyes are accustomed to Full HD resolution and above, but it’s not ugly to look at and will suffice for basic tasks. On the bright side, the colors are accurate with wide-viewing angles and it is very legible when used outdoors.
If you want to tweak the display, you can adjust the color temperature, font size, or activate Eye comfort mode to filter out blue light for reduced visual fatigue, especially at night.
As for the loudspeaker, it lacks bass, and the loudness could use some boost, but it’s clear and crisp which is good enough for hands-free voice calls or casual listening to music or watching videos.
The Huawei Y7 Prime runs on Android 7.0 Nougat with EMUI 5.1. Like the Nova 2i, it uses multiple home screens by default, but the user has the option to use an app drawer. It employs 3D-like icons instead of flat ones, but they’re still nice to look at.
Inside the settings, the user can customize the combination of navigation buttons, activate the Floating Dock, MirrorShare, and gesture controls. It also has its own Theme Store if you want to further customize the look of the interface.
Pre-installed apps are present like Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Booking.com, CNN, and Flipboard, which can be uninstalled if you’re not going to use them. The rest are Huawei’s native apps as well as Google’s.
Storage-wise, the Y7 Prime has 32GB of onboard storage with 24.60GB left for the user. It supports microSD cards via the SIM 2 slot, and USB OTG.
When it comes to imaging, the Y7 Prime uses a 12MP sensor as its main shooter and an 8MP sensor for selfies. Features include Pro mode, HDR, Time-lapse, Slow-mo, Audio note, Document scan, Panorama, and Beauty.
Like with most smartphones, it performs well when shooting in bright conditions as images produced are sharp with accurate colors. Quality degrades when shooting indoors as it is susceptible to noise, especially the front camera. Check out the samples below.
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As for video recording, it maxes out at Full HD resolution at 30fps. Quality is also good, but the phone doesn’t have image stabilization, so videos can be shaky if you’re not holding it still.
Powering the Y7 Prime is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 octa-core processor clocked at 1.4GHz, Adreno 505 GPU, and 3GB of RAM. This is the same configuration that is powering the Xiaomi Redmi 4X and LG Q6. It’s not as snappy as flagship hardware, but its capable of handling basic tasks including multitasking and gaming. We played Honkai Impact 3 and Mobile Legends in their highest settings, and it ran without lagging or crashing. Check out the benchmark scores below.
The Y7 Prime is equipped with Dual-SIM support, 4G LTE, WiFi, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS, and Fingerprint sensor. While it has the basic connectivity features, it’s sad to see that it doesn’t have a Gyroscope.
Mobile data is relatively fast as long as we’re connected to LTE, calls are loud and clear, while GPS is able to lock-in on our location using navigation apps like Google Maps and Waze.
The 4,000mAh battery is one of the main features of the Y7 Prime. With light to moderate usage, it can easily last almost two days. Throwing gaming into the mix, and we get up to a day and a half. You can extend its battery life by activating Power saving mode or Ultra.
Our video loop test, which includes playing a Full HD clip on loop in Airplane mode at 50% brightness and volume, yielded 14 hours and 37 minutes of playback, which is good. Charging, on the other hand, takes almost three hours, as it doesn’t support fast charging.
The Huawei Y7 Prime is a solid daily driver with capable specs and a big battery. It’s perfect for those who need a smartphone that can handle day-to-day tasks like heavy social media browsing, photography, and gaming without having to recharge every now and then. Compared to more powerful and more expensive devices, it’s not going to wow users, but for Php9,990, it certainly gets the job done.
Huawei Y7 Prime specs:
5.5-inch HD IPS In-Cell display, 267ppi
2.5D curved glass
1.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 octa-core CPU
Adreno 505 GPU
3GB RAM
32GB storage
microSD card support
12MP rear camera w/ LED flash
8MP front camera
Dual-SIM
4G LTE
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 4.1
GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS
Fingerprint sensor
Android 7.0 Nougat w/ EMUI 5.1
4,000mAh battery
153.6 x 76.4 x 8.35 mm
165 g
Gold, Silver, Gray
What we liked:
* Solid build
* Decent performance
* Long battery life
What we didn’t:
* Low-res display
* No Gyroscope
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Geric John M. Olivar says:
This is by far the best low end smartphone I’ve ever used in my life.
8.5 hours on gaming, almost 3 day battery life, excellent call quality, decent cameras, and lightning quick FPS, I can recommend this to everybody who wants a 2 day battery phone with decent specs. :)
Gabbito says:
Is this better than the LG Q6? Which shoukd I choose for my plan renewa?
Ran Hernandez says:
Depends on your prference. Both are powered by 1.4 Ghz Snapdragon 435 with upload speed of 300 mbps and dowload speed of 150 mbps.
If you’re looking for a phone with better resolution you might want to go with LG Q6 since it has 442 ppi compared to Huawei Y7 Prime with 267 ppi, which, for me, could be considered the minimun requirement for an HD resolution. LG Q6 also has Gyro sensor for VR apps.
On the other hand, if you are like me who prefers longer battery life, you might want to go with Huawei Y7 Prime which has 4000 Mah. Battery tends to last for approximately 2 days with out playing games, or 1 – 1.5 playing games. If you’re a heavy player, battery could last for about 8 hours (based on my usage). Having lower resolution also mens longer battery life.
Ran Hernandez says:
Very accurate review. I was skeptic with the brand before, I’ve been using my Huawei Y7 Prime for 3 weeks now, so far the unit is doing pretty good. Snapdragon 435 is not the fastest chipset, as it maybe considered somewhere in between a low end and a mid range chipset, but still packs a punch. It literally doubles the download and upload speed compared to Snapdragon 430.
Display and resolution is not bad, it gives crisp images, especially, under good light condition. Sensors are accurte. Although, gyro could have made it better.
Bottomline, Huawei Y7 Prime is a budget friendly smart phone that could easily compete with mid range smart phones.
GADREEL says:
Wow you still play Pokemon Go.
Joseph Estabillo says:
All that walking helps with my diabetes.
anjdroid says:
doesnt this overlap with the huawei gr5 and gr3 ?
Joseph Estabillo says:
I’ve had my Y7 Prime for over a week now, and it’s generally okay. Battery life is certainly satisfactory, and the interface is lag-free, especially when playing Pokemon Go. I have a few niggles though: it uses a hybrid slot, which means I only get to put it one SIM card and one memory card; it doesn’t have a front flash, which means I can’t make video calls in low-light; thr bundled earphones are notnof the in-ear design; and it doesn’t support automatic answer for incoming calls via Bluetooth headsets.