Huawei Honor 7 review: Rags to riches

Benchmarks

The Huawei Honor 7 is powered by the home-brewed HiSilicon Kirin 935 chipset, identical to the one ticking inside the Huawei P8. It is equipped with a total of eight Cortex-A53 processors, four clocked at 2.2 GHz and another four at 1.5 GHz. On paper, this looks like quite an adequate setup by current standards.

But, the real problem with the custom Kirin 935 is that it features a far-less powerful GPU than those by the competitors. The Mali-T628 MP4 is hardly a powerhouse and can potentially hurt the graphics performance of the phone significantly.

For some reason AnTuTu, GeekBench 3 and BaseMark OSII 2.0 were incompatible with the Honor 7, but we'll update the scores as soon as the compatibility is fixed.

We kick things off with the all-round Basemark OS II test. Here, we get a first glimpse of the Honor 7 falling short in overall scores. The result is most-likely due to the already mentioned poor GPU, which drags down the otherwise excellent number-crunching power of the eight core processor setup. The last-year Snapdragon 801 does noticeably better than the newest Kirin 935 chip.

Basemark OS II

Higher is better

• LG G Flex2
  1601
• HTC One M9
  1526
• Xiaomi Mi Note
  1370
• Motorola Moto X (2014) Lollipop
  1173
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  1147
• HTC One (M8)
  1126
• Huawei P8
  1056
• Huawei Honor 7
  1038
• Meizu MX4 Pro
  922
• Samsung Galaxy Alpha
  915
• Huawei Honor 6
  863
• Huawei Ascend Mate7
  830
• Huawei P8lite
  600

Let's check the CPU scores breakdown. While the single-core performance turned out uninspiring, all eight cores combined are a real threat to the competition.

Basemark OS II (single-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy Alpha
  2579
• Xiaomi Mi Note
  2559
• LG G Flex2
  2528
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  2510
• Motorola Moto X (2014) Lollipop
  2499
• HTC One (M8)
  2428
• HTC One M9
  2401
• Huawei Ascend Mate7
  2334
• Huawei Honor 6
  2279
• Huawei Honor 7
  2251
• Huawei P8
  2111
• Meizu MX4 Pro
  1891
• Huawei P8lite
  1443

Basemark OS II (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy Alpha
  15096
• Huawei Ascend Mate7
  15012
• Huawei P8
  14046
• Huawei Honor 6
  13916
• Huawei Honor 7
  13708
• Huawei P8lite
  11873
• Motorola Moto X (2014) Lollipop
  10320
• HTC One M9
  10128
• HTC One (M8)
  9860
• LG G Flex2
  9758
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  9646
• Xiaomi Mi Note
  9590
• Meizu MX4 Pro
  7399

The same, however, definitely can't be said about graphics performance. The chipset's performance is really modest in this department. But we already knew this from the Honor 6 predecessor, which employs the same GPU.

The 1080p offscreen scores are quite poor compared to the latest Adreno units and on par with the Huawei's recent phones. The onscreen scores are steady and look a tad better, very close to Adreno 330 GPU inside the Snapdragon 801 lineup.

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• LG G Flex2
  49
• HTC One M9
  49
• Samsung Galaxy Alpha
  31.3
• HTC One (M8)
  28.4
• Xiaomi Mi Note
  28
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  27
• Motorola Moto X (2014) Lollipop
  27
• Meizu MX4 Pro
  26
• Huawei Honor 7
  17
• Huawei Ascend Mate7
  16.4
• Huawei Honor 6
  16
• Huawei P8lite
  10
• Huawei P8
  10

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• HTC One M9
  23
• LG G Flex2
  22
• Samsung Galaxy Alpha
  13.4
• Meizu MX4 Pro
  13
• Motorola Moto X (2014) Lollipop
  12
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  12
• HTC One (M8)
  11.1
• Xiaomi Mi Note
  11
• Huawei Honor 7
  9.2
• Huawei Honor 6
  8.1
• Huawei Ascend Mate7
  8
• Huawei P8
  5.4

GFX 2.7 T-Rex (onscreen)

Higher is better

• HTC One M9
  50
• Samsung Galaxy Alpha
  48.4
• LG G Flex2
  48
• HTC One (M8)
  30.1
• Motorola Moto X (2014) Lollipop
  29
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  28
• Xiaomi Mi Note
  28
• Huawei Honor 7
  19
• Huawei Ascend Mate7
  17.4
• Meizu MX4 Pro
  17
• Huawei Honor 6
  17
• Huawei P8lite
  16
• Huawei P8
  10.7

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy Alpha
  25.3
• HTC One M9
  24
• LG G Flex2
  22
• Motorola Moto X (2014) Lollipop
  13
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  12
• HTC One (M8)
  11.9
• Xiaomi Mi Note
  11
• Huawei Honor 7
  9.3
• Huawei Honor 6
  8.7
• Huawei Ascend Mate7
  8.5
• Meizu MX4 Pro
  7.8
• Huawei P8
  5.7

The BaseMark X GPU benchmark also puts the Huawei Honor 7 a hair better than its Kirin siblings, but it's still at the bottom of the chart with those.

Basemark X

Higher is better

• HTC One M9
  19848
• LG G Flex2
  19360
• Xiaomi Mi Note
  13075
• HTC One (M8)
  12396
• Motorola Moto X (2014) Lollipop
  12190
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  11798
• Samsung Galaxy Alpha
  11065
• Huawei Honor 7
  9377
• Meizu MX4 Pro
  9111
• Huawei Ascend Mate7
  6501
• Huawei P8
  6307
• Huawei Honor 6
  4868
• Huawei P8lite
  3648

Throughout those previous tests we though some of the lower scores might be due to poor OS optimization. Huawei has cut off a lot of the original Android Lollipop and has replaced it with proprietary apps and services. The stock browser performance confirms our suspicions, so you might want to use Chrome or other alternative.

Kraken 1.1

Lower is better

• LG G Flex2
  4621
• Samsung Galaxy Alpha
  4911
• HTC One M9
  5500
• Huawei Ascend Mate7
  5567
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  5968
• Motorola Moto X (2014) Lollipop
  6260
• Xiaomi Mi Note
  6382
• Huawei Honor 6
  6937
• Meizu MX4 Pro
  10193
• HTC One (M8)
  10296
• Huawei Honor 7
  11493
• Huawei P8
  11867
• Huawei P8lite
  16743

BrowserMark 2.1

Higher is better

• LG G Flex2
  2086
• Samsung Galaxy S5
  2066
• HTC One M9
  1681
• Motorola Moto X (2014) Lollipop
  1562
• Samsung Galaxy Alpha
  1364
• HTC One (M8)
  1069
• Huawei P8lite
  981
• Huawei Honor 7
  825
• Huawei Ascend Mate7
  795
• Huawei P8
  764
• Xiaomi Mi Note
  748
• Huawei Honor 6
  745

Just like with the P8, the Honor 7 benchmark performance is a mixed bag, probably suffering from the choice of custom hardware. This, however, is only part of the story. Kirin chipsets have historically been bundled with rather meager GPU's and this one makes no exception.

You can expect stellar octa-core processor performance, and the 3GB RAM will surely make multi-tasking look like a hassle-free job. But the disappointing graphic performance will reflect on high-quality video playback and a lot of graphics-intensive 3D games. If you are a gamer, the Honor 7 should not be among your top considerations for sure.