Review: The Stylish Honor 70 Smartphone Arrives in SA
Honor has been upping the ante with its phone releases as of late, and the Chinese company has introduced its newest flagship device, the Honor 70, aimed at videographers, bloggers, and photography lovers. However, with the smartphone camera battle in full swing once again, is it a contender worth considering?
Spec-wise, the device includes a 6.67-inch display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G Plus chipset, 8GBs of RAM, 256GBs of storage, and a 4,800 mAh battery. So, from a hardware perspective, you really do get a high-powered device that will not only manage but excel at all functions without giving a hiccup.
The display itself is an OLED FHD+ 2,400 x 1,080 screen, which is incredibly vivid and delivers crisp visuals, and the fact it wraps around the edges gives you a real borderless experience when viewing media. 120Hz refresh rate makes scrolling and swiping feel effortless and nippy, giving you a pretty seamless experience when jumping between camera shots and social media, which is likely what you’ll be doing most on the Honor 70.
In terms of the cameras themselves, it features a Dual Main Camera that comprises a 54MP IMX800 Super Sensing Main Camera with a large 1/1.49-inch IMX800 Sensor and a 50MP Ultra-Wide & Macro camera. The shots are admittedly very impressive, with a high level of detail, great low-light capabilities, and a fairly accurate colour correction, giving you a true-to-life image, rather than an oversaturated one which many smartphones tend to deliver.
The Honor 70 also debuts the company’s Solo Cut mode, which lets users easily produce vlogs that spotlight a specific person in a group through built-in Person Re-identification Technology. If you’re a vlogger who likes to capture two shots simultaneously, this dual video streaming capability will come in handy, but will probably be quite superfluous for most users. It’s a nice touch though for those who are in the video-making business.
Of course, the Honor 70 can’t be discussed without mentioning its eye-catching design. The Honor 70 is available in two colours: Crystal Silver and Midnight Black, but the Crystal Silver is clearly the point of focus for the company, delivering a bejewelled-looking back plate. It’s also exceptionally thin, boasting a thickness of just 7.91mm with a weight of just 178g; so this really is the quintessential sleek fashionista phone on the market.
The device is also the first Honor N series smartphone to run the company’s new Magic UI 6.1, which is an unintuitive and straightforward overlay on Android 12, which will be immediately familiar to longtime Android users, and doesn’t throw too many curveballs in terms of operating. It rests on a lot of swiping gestures to chop and change between screens, but if you want to revert to the ole ‘three button menu’, that’s obviously there too.
For its price, and what you get, the Honor 70 is one of the flagship devices on the market that gives a lot of bang for its buck. It’s gorgeous, has the specs to back up the looks, and comes with a very adaptable camera system.
The Honor 70 is available in South Africa at a recommended price of R13,999.
