Classy metal body, HD screen, good cameras front and back, good battery life
Processor not as powerful as it could be
Huawei has been solidly building a reputation for itself as a reliable, get-what-you-pay-for kind of manufacturer, but with the Ascend G7 it's managed to find a good balance between strong specifications and sub-£200 price tag that should pique the interest of those looking for a great phone on a smaller budget.
Screen & chassis
With its metallic body and angled edges the Huawei Ascend G7 looks and feels like a classy handset. And at a smidgeon under 8mm deep it's easy to hold and use too, despite its 5.5-inch screen.
Nice to see the headphone jack is back on the top of the phone now too, rather than the bottom like it was on the G6.
The screen offers an HD resolution of 1,280x720 pixels (267ppi) which is a big improvement over the G6's sub-HD resolution. It's bright, vibrant (but not overly so) and viewing angles are very broad too. Sensitivity isn't a problem either -- it's a joy to use in other words.
Software & processor
The slightly quirky Huawei Emotion 3.0 user interface is here as expected -- you'll need to get used to the lack of an apps tray but otherwise it's perfectly serviceable. It doesn't really offer any improvements over raw Android, but some may see that as a bonus. Speaking of which, Emotion sits on top of the 4.4 KitKat version of Android, which isn't the very latest Lollipop but it's the next best thing and as good as we'd expect for a mid-range device at the moment.
The quad-core processor is clocked at 1.2GHz and backed by 2GB RAM, which seems pretty good on paper. Unfortunately we didn't find it to be quite as powerful and capable as we'd hoped. It seemed to dwell just a little too long when opening some apps, but maybe we've just been spoiled by some of the top-end models lately. Our usual AnTuTu benchmark test delivered a score of 19,324, which at least means it's up there with mid-range peers like the Samsung Galaxy A5, if far behind the likes of the HTC One M9 or Samsung Galaxy Note 4.
Photography
The 13-megapixel camera on the back comes with flash and autofocus as well as a few extras including HDR and panorama, plus you can add a watermark to your pics, which can be handy for tracing them online. The autofocus isn't always reliable but so long as you take a little care you can get some pretty decent pics out of it, with realistic if not overly vibrant colours and a good level of detail in good light. Nice to see there's a good quality 5-megapixel camera on the front too for better selfies.
There's 16GB of memory on board but you can add another 32GB via microSD card, which seems a bit stingy in these days of 128GB cards.
The battery has been beefed up considerably since the G6, vaulting from 2,000mAh to 3,000mAh and you can feel the difference.
We managed to get a little over two days of fairly heavy use out of it.
Conclusion
The Huawei Ascend G7 offers an impressive lineup of specifications for its price, with a large HD screen, quad-core processor and a couple of decent cameras -- all for under 200 quid.
Add in that classy metallic body and we're happy to declare it a bargain.
Software: Google Android 4.4 KitKat
Processor: Quad core 1.2GHz ARM Cortex A53
Memory slot: Yes
Display: 5.5in INCELL, 1280x720 pixels
Connectivity: Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0
Ports: microUSB, 3.5mm headphone jack
Camera: 13 megapixel, LED flash, autofocus, 5 megapixel front-facing camera
Video playback: MPEG-4, H.264, H.263, VP8, RV7-10, Xvid, WMV9
Audio playback: MP3, MIDI, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AAC-LC, FLAC, WMA2-9, RA
Radio: Yes
Battery: 3000mAh
Size: 154x77x7.6mm
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
