Honor 7 Camera Review with Captures in Super Night Low Light Mode

Huawei has been constantly innovating and introducing new products every year, but unlike Samsung the company is growing higher every year with an increase in sales figures of their smartphones. And their brand Honor is doing better than any other sub-brand in the smartphone market right now. With the introduction of record breaking 10 million units’ sales of Honor 4X smartphone, the company is on the success path.

Earlier this month, the Chinese manufacturer introduced the Honor 7 smartphone in India, which is their successor to the Honor 6 smartphone of the last year. We have been using the device for quite a time now, and you might have read a detailed review of the device by us.

For those who are looking for the answer whether the camera on the new Honor flagship device is better than its predecessor. As well as does it beat the OnePlus 2, Meizu MX5 and any other camera phone in this range. We got you covered. Read on our camera review of the Honor 7.

Low-Light Captures with Super Night Mode

The Honor 7 sports a 20-megapixels Sony IMX230 sensor camera module on the rear side, along with dual-tone LED Flash. The camera sensor is capable of 21-megapixels, but the company has blocked it to work at 20MP only. The lens on the module has aperture number of f/2.0 which is quite good; this number means that how much light camera sensor can absorb so that images would be filled with detailed. Company claims that their rear camera offers the best low-light captures in the mid-range. Below in Low-light see some camera samples taken in dim and dark lighting condition.

The Honor 7 can take good low-light captures, particularly in the dim light, but when it gets darker the camera output starts to lose details, and it can hardly fight that in the normal mode. The HDR mode does helps up to a point but to go further mile you have to use the Super Night mode. While shooting it shows that there would be a lot of improvements, but, unfortunately, I couldn’t able to get a clear shot because it takes at least 15 seconds to the processor. Yeah, that’s a lot of time to keep the phone in still position. It can only be done using a tripod.

What Super Night does is that it takes a video and merges them together with some software enhancement before producing the final output. The Super Night mode images that you see are captured while using the device on Tripod. Some images in the normal and HDR modes were not able to focus the object, we don’t think it is exactly a focusing issue, but was mostly about because of very dark lighting condition. And that’s when I suggest you start using the Super Night mode, it insanely improve the captures in dark light conditions. I recommend this using only in dark conditions, other times the HDR mode should be enough to capture details. Remember, it also changes the resolution of images in this impressive mode.

While it might not be the fastest in terms of launching the camera, as that crown is with Galaxy Note 5, but it has the quickest autofocus of 0.1 seconds as claimed by the company. But if we are really to compare the focusing of these two camera phones, then I’d say it’s almost a tie, which is more than a win for a flagship device despite the big price difference between these two devices.

The Phase Detection Auto Focus aka PDAF technology is used on the camera sensor to offer faster focusing. This helps in capturing the moments as fast as possible and not missing them later. Because photos are memories and one needs them to cherish life moments.

The device packs some of the most impressive modes we have seen, other than the HDR, All Focus and few other familiar modes we thought it has a lot to offer. Especially, there is a food mode aptly named as the good food mode. The more interesting thing is this mode is placed in the interface as one of the main modes besides photo and video modes. While to turn ON other modes you have to go to the menu button and tap on them, but sometimes it’s just easy to swipe. Full marks for the intuitive thinking.

Natural Light Captures

In the broad daylight the rear camera is impressive; you can see each and every detail. The focusing is as advertised, although, it does seem to have little issues when taking macro shots. The autofocus just doesn’t seem to handle it as fast as for the average distance shots. Sometimes there was oversaturation in the during the daylight capture. Though, the probability of having this issue is quite less, and that’s why I was not much worried about it. Some things I’m sure about this camera is that the final outputs would look impressive (as you can see in our gallery), and it would not let you down at the time of the need.

The maximum video quality available on the Honor 7 is the 1080p video recording, even though the camera module is capable of recording 4K content, the Processor on the device doesn’t support encoding of more than 1080p. Talking about the quality of the video, it was on par with other smartphone cameras in the same range. Even though, there is no (Optical Image Stabilization) OIS present the shakes doesn’t affect as much as they do in any other average smartphones. For videography, the device has modes like Timelapse, slow motion and recording in HDR. All of them work like a charm.

The front facing camera on the Honor 7 is of 8-megapixel resolution, and I would say that it left quite a spectacular impression. Talking some specifics, the sensor on front boasts 26mm wide angle lens. You can take the selfie at the dinner table and not worry whether all family members fit in one selfie.

I know selfies are the craze these days while there are many smartphones out there in the market that are dedicated selfie cams. But I wouldn’t recommend any of those because a smartphone should have a good package. Rather having a dedicated selfie camera phone, I prefer a good overall package. And you can’t get a better package of cameras than on Honor 7 in this range.

Verdict

The cameras on the Honor 7 are competent and capable; overall the set of features it offers is pretty incredible. Though, it isn’t a match for the current flagship devices like Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and LG G4. But we’d argue that low-light capability of the Honor 6 Plus and new Honor 7 is pretty similar. Considering everything it offers in the context of its price, this device is a steal. And on the final note to answer that above question, the camera on the Honor 7 is far better than what is found on the OnePlus 2 and the Meizu MX5.

Recommended Read: Honor 7 Review

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