Honor 70 Review: The Honor 70 is a £479.99 (about $550) smartphone that features a new Sony IMX800 camera sensor but has the older Snapdragon 778G+ 5G gaming chipset. So, we took the Honor 70 out for a spin to find out if the smartphone is worth the somewhat hefty £479.99 price tag.
To be clear, the Honor 70 is a mid-range smartphone (some might say a premium mid-range phone) and as such, we didn’t expect it to perform or have the features of a flagship smartphone. But, our review of the Honor 70 shows that it has pretty awesome performance and its camera gives you some of the best photos you can get in this price range. However, the device is not all rosy as it surely has its few cons.
Honor 70 Review
The purpose of this Honor 70 review is to help you see how good each of the components of the phone is. We took a look at its display, design, cameras, software, battery, performance, etc to bring you this review.
Honor 70 Review: Display, Design, and Durability
The Honor 70 has a 6.67-inches curved OLED display. It has a 1080p panel that supports a 120Hz refresh rate and HDR10+. The phone weighs about 178g (6.28 oz) which by our standard is pretty heavy. Not heavy as to pull your pants down but you’ll definitely feel its weight in your pocket. Honor 70 is made of a Glass front and it has a plastic frame.
Honor 70 Display
The frame is very slim because both the front screen and back panel are curved. The smartphone also has very slim bezels because of its curved display. It has a 90.8% screen-to-body ratio and the screen is also pretty wide. If the phone had been water and dustproof it would have been the icing on the cake but sadly it has no official IP water and dust ratings. So, I’ll advise you to keep the phone from water and dust.
Honor 70 Display
The design of the Honor 70 looks really pretty. The back panel is shiny (retains fingerprint) and the curved front display looks really neat with its simple centered punch hole. On the rear, it has two rings that house the triple rear cameras and the Honor branding, and some texts.
The display of the Honor 70 is not only colorful but also bright and smooth, and responds really fast. You can feel the snappiness of the 120Hz refresh rate. Watching movies or playing games with the display is really cool as it gives you very good colors thanks to the 1080p OLED panel.
Honor 70 Review: Chipset and Performance
The chipset inside the Honor 70 is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G+ 6G. This is a gaming chipset that is built on TSMC’s 6nm process technology, features an Octa-core CPU, and a decent-performing GPU. This chipset has one prime Cortex-A78 core with a speed clocked at 2.5GHz. It also has three big Cortex-A78 cores and four small Cortex-A55 cores with speeds clocked at 2.40GHz and 1.90GHz respectively. This CPU is paired with the Adreno 642L GPU.
Playing game with the Honor 70
The CPU and GPU of this phone are really good. Playing graphics-intensive games on this phone was smooth. There were no lags or frequent throttling even when these games were set to the highest graphics settings. Another impressive thing about this chipset is its heat management.
During the game test of the Honor 70, the device was used to play GENCHIN IMPACT (set to the highest graphics settings) for 15 minutes without any overheating issues. The device did not drop framerates easily and it did not become hot. This means you can play games with the Honor 70 for a long time without issues.
Part of the reasons why the Honor 70 does well under heavy is because the Snapdragon 778G+ 5G chipset is power efficient and thus good at heat management. Another reason could be that Honor applied proper cooling mechanisms in the device and this helps cool the temperature of the phone down. A proper teardown video could reveal the details of the cooling mechanisms inside the device.
Honor 70 Review: Camera
The Honor 70 has three rear cameras and a single front camera. On the rear, it has a 54MP primary camera (the new Sony IMX800 sensor), a 50MP ultra-wide lens, and a 2MP depth sensor. On the front, it has a 32MP front camera that can record steady videos at 1080p resolution.
Honor 70 rear cameras
The photos and videos from the 54MP primary sensor of the Honor 70 are sharp, bright, and colorful. It has a decent HDR and the white balance is good. The 50MP ultra-wide lens is also very good and can quickly detect objects. The portrait and night modes in the Honor 70 are really good.
The overall experience of using the cameras of this phone is pretty decent. You can click good photos and shoot nice videos but you won’t get any stabilization feature when taking photos. However, there is a gyro_EIS (electric stabilization) when you’re recording videos. And there are lots of camera features you can choose from when using the cameras.
Honor 70 camera features
Some of the camera features include the PRO mode, High-RES, Slow Mo, Super-Macro, HDR, Multi-Video, Stickers, Panorama, etc. While recording a video in landscape mode, you can touch and focus on the object to record the video in story or TikTok format. This way, you get two videos saved and you can use the latter on the TikTok app.
Honor 70 Review: RAM, Storage, and Software
Honor 70 comes in 8GB or 12GB of RAM. These RAM options are paired with 128GB or 256GB of internal storage. It has no space for a MicroSD card slot and this means you can not expand the storage. It is also important to note that the storage options you’ll get might vary depending on your region/country. But the base models start at 8GB RAM and 128GB of storage.
Honor 70 Software
Honor 70 boots Magic UI 6.1 based on Android 12 out of the box. This phone will be getting up to two years of major software updates and three years of monthly security patches. So the phone will be upgraded to Android 14. You can download and install apps from the Google Play Store as the phone has support for Google Mobile Services. The software experience of the phone is neat and very interactive like the EMUI from Huawei.
Honor 70 Review: Battery and Charging
Powering the Honor 70 is a 4,800mAh battery and it has support for 66W wired fast charging. You can charge this phone from 0 to 100% in about 45 minutes. A single charge of the battery can last you for the whole day but if you’re playing games frequently and always on your phone, you can get about 8 to 9 hours of use.
Other features available in the Honor 70 are an optical under-display fingerprint scanner, NFC connectivity, GPS, Bluetooth 5.2, Wi-Fi Direct, etc.
Honor 70 Review: Price
The price of the Honor 70 starts at £479.99 (about $550) for the base model with 8GB RAM + 128GB of storage. Granted, there are lots of phones you can consider in this price range and maybe you might just want to consider the Honor 70. But before you do, below is our conclusion about the device.
Honor 70 Review: Conclusion
The Honor 70 is, by all means, a good smartphone but for its price, there are pretty much other alternatives. For example, the Nothing Phone 1 has the same chipset and supports wireless charging, and is cheaper than the Honor 70. But when you factor in all the features that the Honor 70, it might be worth the somewhat hefty price tag.
The Honor 70 has good cameras, a nice display, a sleek design, a long-lasting battery, a good-performing chipset, good audio quality, and a neat software experience. But, it is not water/dustproof, has no wireless charging, and this makes it somehow an expensive smartphone considering the available options from other phone brands.