HONOR 70 Unboxing, Review Philippines: Close To A Flagship

HONOR 70 Unboxing, Review Philippines: Close To A Flagship

Review Verdict: Fans of HONOR who wants something more affordable than the Magic4 Pro while still offering flagship features have a great option with the HONOR 70 in the Philippines. The cameras and display are flagship-tier, and its overall build is one of the best we’ve seen for any 2022 mid-range phone so far. 

Pros

  • Great camera performance
  • Very premium build
  • Top-notch display

Cons

  • Only a single speaker
  • No OIS

 

HONOR 70 Review Philippines Specs

  • Snapdragon 778G+ processor
  • 8GB RAM
  • 256GB internal storage
  • 6.67-inch Full HD+ OLED display, 120hz refresh rate, DCI-P3, 10-bit color, HDR10+
  • 54-megapixel f/1.8 IMX800 main camera with PDAF, 50-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera with AF, 2-megapixel depth sensor
  • 32-megapixel selfie camera
  • 4G, LTE, 5G
  • WiFi, Bluetooth 5.1, NFC
  • In-display fingerprint scanner
  • 4800mAh battery
  • 66w charging
  • Android 12, MagicUI 6.1

HONOR further cements its return in the Philippines with the HONOR 70, its offering in the premium mid-range segment. With features that you’d usually find on top-end, flagship devices, the HONOR 70 looks to be a great offering, slotting right under the Php 30K segment.

Unboxing and Packaging contents

Consistent with all of HONOR’s products, you get a white box for the HONOR 70, along with straightforward branding in front of it. Inside the box, you get the phone itself, documentation, SIM ejector tool, silicone case, USB-C cable, and the 66w SuperCharge charging brick.

Design

While the Magic4 Pro is HONOR’s top-end offering in the Philippines, the HONOR 70 just feels as premium with a frame that feels like aluminum and glass for the back panel. Unlike the Magic4 Pro, however, the HONOR 70 weighs 30 grams lighter and feels much better on the hand with its much gentler curves–despite both phones sporting curved displays.

The rear camera modules of the HONOR 70 remind us of a phone from another brand, and they house three cameras all-in-all: a 54-megapixel IM800 main camera, 50-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens, and a depth sensor.

Looking through the HONOR 70’s button and port layout, you have the volume rocker and power button on the right side, and the SIM card tray, USB-C port, and loudspeaker at the bottom.

Display

As a true premium mid-range offering, the HONOR 70 gets a 120hz curved AMOLED display that has a punch-hole for its 32-megapixel shooter. You get a top-notch display with the HONOR 70, as it supports HDR10+ content, along with Widevine L1 for Full HD streaming on Netflix. We also love the vibrant colors and deep blacks of the AMOLED panel–and the colors remain consistent even at the panel’s curved sides.

If there’s one thing that the HONOR 70 fell a bit short of, that is the fact that you’re only getting a single bottom-firing speaker. Considering that a number of mid-range offerings are offering stereo speakers as standard, we hope that HONOR is taking notes and hopefully add quality stereo speakers for the 80 series.

Cameras

The main standout feature of the HONOR 70 is its cameras. Aside from a 50-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera (which is a rarity on the mid-range segment), the HONOR 70 also has a 54-megapixel IMX800 main camera. The sensor is 1/1.49-inch in size, which is bigger than the flagship Magic4 Pro’s IMX766 primary camera (that one is a 1/1.56-inch sensor). You also get 1.0um pixels on the HONOR 70’s primary camera that bumps up to 2.0um pixels in 4-in-1 pixel binning mode, giving it more than enough performance for the phone to excel in low-light conditions.

While you don’t get OIS, the HONOR 70’s image quality can match up with higher-end phones, and the high imaging resolution of the ultra-wide-angle camera helps in making photos look consistent with the main camera’s performance. Low-light performance is one of the best we’ve seen on a mid-range phone, as details are well-preserved without going too much with sharpening.

For video recording, the HONOR 70 can shoot Full HD in 60FPS and 4K in 30FPS. HONOR even added extra features like multi-video and Solo Cut to make the HONOR 70 an all-around phone for creating content. Solo Cut is the HONOR 70’s most unique feature, where it utilizes the AF tracking feature to put emphasis on a specific subject in the video, allowing you to shoot the entire scene and the specific part of the scene you love to capture.

When it comes to selfies, the HONOR 70’s 32-megapixel selfie camera gets a good amount of detail with minimal post-processing, keeping skin tones as natural as possible.

Internals and Battery Life

Powering the HONOR 70 is a Snapdragon 778G+ processor that’s paired with 8GB RAM and 256GB internal storage. The processor is a higher-clocked version of the Snapdragon 778G, and is a good choice for its price point.

While it trails behind newer mid-range processors like MediaTek’s Dimensity 8100, the Snapdragon 778G+ is still a very capable processor, especially when it comes to gaming.

Based on the results we got from GameBench, we were able to get 44FPS on Genshin Impact at the game’s highest graphics settings while enjoying a decent 82% overall stability. The same can be said with our experience playing Tower of Fantasy with the HONOR 70, where we were able to get 44FPS with 100% overall stability when the game was set to Extreme UHD 45FPS.

While the HONOR 70’s 4800mAh battery is a tad smaller than the 5000mAh batteries we’re accustomed to, we were able to clock in 12 hours and 25 minutes of battery life with PCMark’s battery benchmark test, which should translate to more than a day of usage before you’ll need to top it up.

Wrap-up and Conclusions

The HONOR 70 is one of the better upper mid-range phones being offered in the Philippines, and can even pass as a proper “lite” version of the Magic4 Pro. While it lacks features like stereo speakers and OIS, the HONOR 70 has one of the best cameras for its price segment, along with a stellar curved AMOLED display.

HONOR 70 Review Philippines Price

The HONOR 70 is priced at Php 26,990. Those who will pre-order at any partner stores and at the official Lazada store of HONOR from October 18 to 28 and place a pre-order fee of Php 1,000 will get a JBL Flip 5 speaker with their purchase.

Share:

Facebook
Twitter

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *