The Honor 70 is a noteworthy new offering for anyone looking for a thin, svelte smartphone. you might mistake it for a high-end option. It feels unique thanks to the curved glass and slim profile, and the AMOLED display looks stunning. Honor has improved the photo and video quality this time around with a new 54MP Sony camera sensor, the follow-up to last year’s Honor 50 (a good phone with a terrible camera). For further versatility, it is combined with a 50MP ultra-wide camera that also functions as a high-resolution macro camera. The phone has a striking appearance, with a back that features a sparkling diamond pattern in addition to reflection. We are here with our Honor 70 review you can read.
This may seem a little gauche to some people, especially those who prefer their unremarkable black phones, but the overwhelming amount of compliments it garnered during our testing makes that difficult to do. We also like to draw attention to the device’s long-lasting battery. As we’re so accustomed to seeing expensive phones with underwhelming battery lives, if anything, this feature marks the Honor 70 as a mid-range rather than a luxury phone. The Honor 70 is classified as a mid-ranger since it cruises through a day of use, but we’re content with that label. We do need to draw attention to something.
On paper, the Honor 70 doesn’t appear to be anything that different from the Honor 50, which it replaced. The main camera on the new phone has a lower resolution than the one on the previous one, and the charging speed, screen resolution, and front camera are identical on both. The new phone’s chipset is only the “Plus” version of the older one’s. The Honor 70 genuinely seems like an upgrade in every area, and the specs sheet doesn’t do the user experience justice. The phone feels speedier than its older sibling, and the cameras are notably better.
Honor 70 review: Design
The Honor 70 has a gorgeous design. The front appears to be almost entirely made of screen, the sides gracefully taper in, and the phone has a very small profile. We’ve been testing the frosted Emerald Green variant, which is offered in Crystal Silver, Midnight Black, and Emerald Green, and it effectively repels fingerprints. Even though it lacks the IP68 water-resistant certification, Although, intriguingly, Honor chose a plastic frame for the phone rather than a metal one, the Honor 70’s glass front and back give it an instant richness.
The phone weighs just 178g thanks to plastic construction, which makes it significantly lighter than the 240g iPhone 13 Pro Max and the 210g Pixel 6 Pro. While the phone’s thin 7.9mm profile looks excellent on paper, the tapered corners make it appear even narrower in person. When combined with the huge 6.8-inch screen, this results in a commanding footprint. Because they are excellent at deterring fingerprints, we’d choose either green or silver. Having said that, each of the three comes with a case to keep your Honor 70 spotless.
Honor 70 review: Display
The Honor 70 has a 6.8-inch screen, which is more than sufficient, but the phone’s display is made even more stunning by how thin its bezels are. When we first swiped through the setup procedure and interface, reminiscent of a Samsung Galaxy Note phone, it felt like we were using a $1,000 flagship. The Honor 70’s AMOLED 10-bit screen’s silky 120Hz refresh rate contributes to this flagship-type experience. Additionally, it is touch-responsive and HDR10 capable (but not Netflix certified). More midrange features slipped in when we tested the Honor 70’s screen.
While Honor hasn’t released any official brightness figures, it competed head-to-head with the Oppo Reno 8 Pro, hitting almost 900 nits in auto brightness under bright sunshine. On a sunny day, it should be simple to make out even though it isn’t the greatest in its class. However, you’ll need to turn off manual brightness because it peaked at about 450 nits. In fact, by swiping in from either side, the curves make it simpler to employ Android’s back gestures.
Honor 70 review: Software
Honor’s phones have Google apps, in contrast to those of its former parent company Huawei. Honor phones were initially subject to the prohibition, but you can now use the Play Store, Maps, Gmail, and other services. The phone is powered by Android 12 with Honor’s MagicUI installed on top. The MagicUI is primarily a graphical modification, with a cheerful (but maybe childish) appearance, however there are also some design changes.
Honor’s software appears quite constrained in compared to other companies’ Android forks given how fiercely other businesses compete to provide enhancements and distinctive features. It’s not necessarily awful, but MagicUI doesn’t offer as many distinctive features as Samsung’s One UI or Xiaomi’s MIUI.
Hardware and Performance
The Snapdragon 778G Plus in the Honor 70 is rather capable. This specific chipset is impressive to me because it is strong and quick. It is without a doubt, not a flagship processor, but most users do not require one. For what it’s worth, this phone performs better than the flagship Honor Magic 4 Pro, although we showed how severely Honor had limited the performance of that device. Tests and benchmarks show that this phone is undoubtedly quite powerful. Although it isn’t at flagship level, it is still powerful enough that you won’t notice most of the time that it falls short of flagship performance (and, ironically, looks to be on par with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in the Honor Magic 4 Pro).
When playing games, this will be the most obvious because the GPU will be the one that suffers the most. Additionally, we attempted to run our jank tests, but each time we attempted to export the results, the program crashed. The benchmarks above show that the phone performs admirably in terms of thermals and overall computing power. This phone essentially confirms that the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 is overkill for the majority of users. You won’t encounter any difficulties utilizing this phone for your typical daily activities.
Honor 70 review: Camera
This mid-range phone’s unexpected selling feature is that it introduces a brand-new Sony IMX800 camera sensor. The Honor 70 uses a 54MP sensor for its primary camera. This sensor has the benefit of being relatively large, which allows more light to enter for photographs, producing images that are brighter and more vivid. The AI processing of Honor also helps in this regard. Therefore, photos shot with the Honor 70 are attractive; this is a shockingly obvious improvement over the 108MP camera employed by the Honor 50.
The photographs are colorful, vivid, and bright especially in well-lit situations, but also, and surprisingly, in dim ones. As you can undoubtedly see in the camera examples below, the AI engine sometimes seems to be trying a little too hard to saturate photos. However, this wasn’t always apparent, and Instagram specifically wants that kind of picture.
Honor made the smart choice to ditch the 2MP auxiliary camera it utilized last year in favor of a 50MP f/2.2 ultra-wide one that also functions as a macro camera. Pictures from this camera are substantially darker and less colorful than those from the main camera, thus it doesn’t quite measure up. Snaps aren’t bad, but we advise using the primary camera whenever possible because the images captured with that camera look amazing.
Honor 70 review: Battery Life
However, the phone’s battery life is good and it can handle a lot. The Snapdragon 778G Plus is a fairly effective chipset, and when utilizing it, the phone doesn’t become very hot. Considering the amount of testing and other hard usage I’ve been subjecting this phone to, we have had extremely good battery life. we still managed to get close to five hours of screen on time after running a tonne of CPU Throttling Tests to drain the battery. This phone should last you the entire day, and in my experience as a daily driver, that is exactly what it did.
The 66W charging is rather quick and attempts to charge the phone to 60% in just 20 minutes. That’s incredibly fast, and given the phone’s efficiency as well, it will last you for a very long period if you suddenly need to charge your phone. However, we discovered that it doesn’t charge nearly as rapidly when the screen is left on. It appears that you can’t use your phone and use the 66W charging at the same time.
Price and Availability
The Honor 70 has a starting price of £479 in the UK, which is a small increase above the Honor 50’s starting price of £449. Although the prior only had 6GB RAM, this is for 8GB RAM and 128GB storage, so the price rise might be warranted. Honor hasn’t said whether the phone would be offered in those territories, even though the beginning price translates to $570 or AU$810 in those currencies.
Since Honor doesn’t sell its goods in the US, it seems improbable in this scenario. The Honor 70 goes on sale in the UK and the rest of Europe. This Honor phone, like prior Honor phones, is not intended for American users. Americans should instead look at the Pixel 6a and Galaxy A53, which are much simpler to find there.
Conclusion
The Honor 70 is a very capable all-around device that excels in all of the most crucial areas. The screen is great for playing games or viewing films since it is snappy and fluid, and the camera takes beautifully detailed pictures. My assessment is that the performance is more than adequate, if not remarkable in its field, and the battery is sufficient to last the entire day.
However, it’s inevitable that there will be some compromises in a mid-range device, and you’re unlikely to find alternatives that are as good as the Honor 70 for the same price. You might be a little let down by the lack of an IP rating or, for that matter, by the absence of a dedicated telephoto sensor.
