Honor 7s vs Huawei Y6 (2018): An Entry-level Smartphone Battle

The Honor 7S launched this year on May 28, 2018, in Pakistan. This smartphone is part of Honor’s entry-level smartphones. On the other hand, the Huawei Y6 (2018) is the successor to last year’s Y5 2017. It arrived here in the Philippines this April.

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Both devices are entry-level smartphones but which of the two is worth buying more? Let’s find out here.

Design

The Honor 7s sports a metal frame with a black plastic back. It measures 146.5 x 70.9 x 8.3 mm and weighs 142g. The smartphone has thick bezels at the top and bottom. As for the Huawei Y6, its construction is a bit similar to the Honor 7s since it also sports a plastic back. The Huawei smartphone measures 152.4 x 73 x 7.8 mm and weighs 150g. Both smartphones do not feature the infamous notch. In addition, the two devices don’t have any physical or capacitive buttons since they sport on-screen buttons.

Moving on to the rear part of the devices, both of their horizontally aligned dual rear cameras are located at the back at the top-left corner.  Their rear parts seem to have a really similar design although unlike the Honor 7s, the Huawei Y6 doesn’t have any antenna lines. On the other hand, the specs of the Huawei Y6’s rear camera is stated at the back and it also includes a sensor next to the LED flash. Another difference would be their placement of brand logos. The logo of the Honor device can be seen at the middle while the logo of the Huawei smartphone is found on the bottom part.

The usual power button and volume rockers can be found on the right side of the smartphones with the SIM trays on the top left side of the phone.

At the bottom of the Honor 7s, you’ll find a USB 2.0 port and a sensor. As for the Huawei Y6, its bottom part houses the speaker grille and the USB 2.0 port. Both of their 3.5mm audio jacks can be found at the top of the handsets.

The design of the two smartphones is really simple but modern-looking. Both of their backs are made of matte plastic so they aren’t easily smudged by fingerprints.

Display

The Honor 7s features a 5.45″ FullView display with a resolution of 720 x 1440 pixels and an aspect ratio of 18:9. On the other hand, the Huawei Y6 sports a 5.7″ S-IPS LCD display with a resolution of 720 x 1440 and an 18:9 aspect ratio.

Their screens were bright enough and both devices had a good color representation. The color also didn’t change when viewed from different angles. We tried taking some shots outside and we didn’t have any issues with looking at both screens.

Camera

Both smartphones seem to feature the same specs for their rear and front cameras. The two devices sport a 13MP rear camera with phase detection autofocus and an LED flash. They also have a 5MP front camera supported by its own LED Flash. Although they have the same camera specs, they might still produce shots with different qualities.

To fully determine the quality of the two smartphone’s camera, we took some shots in various scenarios.

This first sample shot was taken on our veranda. As you can see, color-wise, the Honor 7s managed to get an accurate image. On the other hand, there were some parts that ended up blurry and lacked detailed. This can be seen on the buildings.

This is the same shot but with HDR mode.  The shot turned out more vibrant and brighter than the previous one although it lost more of its details. In addition, the clouds in this photo looked like it was post-processed.

Compared to the Honor 7s shot, this image is brighter and the colors are able to stand out more. It is also more detailed. One reason may be because of the Honor 7s’ slow shutter speed.

Of course, we also tried using the HDR mode in the previous shot. There wasn’t that much of a difference between the two shots although upon closer inspection, the HDR-infused photo is more vibrant.

In this sample shot, the Huawei Y6 produced the brighter image. Detail-wise, both photos did good although there are some parts in the background that came out blurry. Unfortunately, in the Huawei Y6 shot, the space at the left side ended up becoming over-exposed. The Honor 7s is the shot that was closest to real life here.

Once again, the Huawei Y6 shot is brighter than the Honor 7s. Since the Honor 7s produced a darker image, it also made it hard to make out some of its details based on the greenery.

Unlike the previous shots, the two photos here had the same amount of brightness. Unfortunately, the images ended up becoming over-exposed on the left side. It seemed as if the contrast was more focused on the tree’s trunk making the leaves look dull in comparison. On the other hand, the greenery at the side still looked vibrant.

The Honor 7s looked brighter in these sample shots although it also made it contain some over-exposed parts. Detail-wise, the Honor 7s image won since it contained more contrast and the details was easier to see here. The colors are also more accurate on the Honor 7s shot.

Between the two shots, the Honor 7s produced the image that was closer to real life since the Huawei Y6 made the the output brighter. On the other hand, the Huawei smartphone gave the more detailed photo.

Surprisingly, the Honor 7s was the one that produced a brighter shot here. The subject even looked gray-ish instead of black, its original color. In terms of details and colors, the Huawei Y6 won here.

There isn’t much of a difference between the two shots in terms of its colors. Looking closer, you’ll notice that the Huawei Y6 had the more detailed shot. It also had the brighter output between the two.

We tried taking photos inside a dim-lit room. As you can see, the lights is brighter on the Huawei Y6 shot. This is more noticeable in the wooden part. However, the lights also looked a bit harsh because of its brightness.

Unlike the rpevious sample shots, the Honor 7s has the more detailed image here. The subject inside the globe is more noticeable along with the golden specs. It also produced the brighter shot.

We also tried taking photos of a human model. At first glance, the differences between the two pictures isn’t that noticeable but upon closer inspection, you’ll notice that the Huawei shot is more vibrant based on the colors of the leaves and the subject’s skin. The skin of the subject on the Huawei looked more lively due to its pinkish tone as compared to the subject’s skin on the Honor 7s shot which had a yellowish tone making the subject look pale.

Let’s move on to selfies, there wasn’t much of a difference between the two although the Honor 7s shot had more contrast which can be seen through the subject’s hair color. Once again, the subject’s skin had a pinkish tone on the Huawei shot whereas it has a yellowish tone on the Honor shot.

These were taken with beauty mode. The Huawei Y6 had the brighter image although it lost some of its colors making it look softer. On the other hand, The Honor 7s had more contrast and the photo looked more detailed. Both of the smartphones’ beauty mode look natural and it isn’t that noticeable.

Audio

For entry-level devices, both smartphones had decent audio. However, the two tend to produce a scratchy sound when on maximum volume. The Huawei device had the louder sound but the Honor smartphone gave out a clearer sound.

Battery

As for the battery juice of the two smartphones, with light usage both can last you through a day . The Honor 7s is packed with a bigger battery capacity having 3020mAh compared to the Huawei Y6 with 3000mAh.

The Honor 7s lasted almost a day of usage and it took 2 hours and 10 minutes to fully charge it from 20%. On the other hand, the Huawei smartphone also lasted a day of usage and it took 2 hours and 20 minutes to charge from 20 percent.

User Experience

Let’s talk about the smartphones’ security feature first. Between the two of them, only the Huawei Y6 had a face unlock feature. The face unlock in the Huawei device worked fast enough for an entry-level smartphone. Moreover, the smartphone didn’t unlock when the user’s eyes were closed.

The Honor 7s is powered by the Mediatek MT6739 coupled with a PowerVR GE8100 GPU and a storage variant of 2GB RAM + 16GB storage. Meanwhile, the Huawei Y6 is powered by the Snapdragon 425 and an Adreno 308 GPU with the same storage variant. Both of the smartphones’ storage are expandable.

We tested some benchmark tools and these are the results:

Honor 7s

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to download the benchmarking apps in the Huawei device so we had to base its results on other sources.

We also tried playing games with both devices. On the Huawei smartphone, we didn’t experience much of a problem during gameplay although the device became hot after a while. On the other hand, gameplay on the Honor 7s was slow and had a lot of lags. The game that we played was Asphalt 8.

Honor 7s

Huawei Y6 (2018)

As for additional features, both phones feature their own version of Gestures. The two devices also seem to have the same shortcut for taking a screenshot which is swiping with three fingers on the screen.

Verdict

For smartphones with a price tag around PHP 6,000, the two offer a good quality phone. The Honor 7s still doesn’t have a final Philippine price but it costs PKR 14, 499 (approx. PHP 6,374). As for the Huawei Y9, it is priced at Php 5,990.

In terms of camera capabilities, the Huawei is able to produce brighter images although there were times when the Honor 7s had the more detailed shots. It seems that the reason for the Honor 7s blurry shots is its slow shutter speed. Unfortunately, when we used the Honor 7s, we noticed that navigation was slow and it took a while before an application launched. This might frustrate some users who prefer having a fast smartphone.

Which of the two do you prefer? Comment your thoughts down below!