Huawei’s latest Y-series device, the y7p huawei, has arrived on our shores. Priced just under PHP 10k, it sports a 6.39-inch hole-punch display, triple cameras, Kirin 710F chipset, and a 4,000mAh battery. While we’ve done an in-depth hands-on of the Y7p, we spent some more quality time with this device to take it for a full spin. Check out our review below.
Design and Construction
The Huawei Y7p comes in two colors, namely Midnight Black and Aurora Blue. Our unit here is in the latter, and we must say, its 2.5D visual effect is pleasing to look at. The rear of the smartphone shows off a metallic-like gradient color when it catches the light. Upon first glance and touch, the Y7p seems to be made of glass, but actually, it’s a polycarbonate material. The build does give it a slight premium feel, though.
Upfront, the Y7p’s display has slim bezels all over, apart from the chin that’s thicker than the rest. Huawei has incorporated a hole-punch front camera placed on the upper left corner and has nicknamed this type of display as a “Punch FullView Display.”
Over the rear, the Y7p has a triple camera setup placed on the upper left corner. The camera bump slightly protrudes from the smartphone’s body. Due to that, the Y7p wobbles when set on a flat surface. The circular fingerprint scanner is also located on the rear.
On the left, we get the dual SIM tray and the dedicated microSD card slot.
Meanwhile, located on the right is the volume rocker and the power button. The placement of the buttons is just right, and they’re both clicky as well.
Located up top is the secondary microphone.
Last but not least, housed at the bottom are the primary microphone, 3.5mm audio jack, and a micro USB port.
Display and Multimedia
For display, the Y7p sports a 6.39-inch panel, with an HD+ resolution. It would’ve been nice to have an FHD+ resolution for this device, seeing its screen-to-body ratio. However, since the Y7p is a device sitting between entry-level and mid-range, the HD+ resolution is expected. Despite the limiting resolution, color reproduction is quite satisfying, and the details appear somewhat sharp as well.
Audio-wise, the Y7p has a single downward-firing speaker. It can get loud and fill up a room at maximum volume. Highs and mids are present, but the lows dip in and out once in a while. Still, the audio sounds passable, although it can get distorted at times.
Cameras
The Huawei Y7p has a triple rear camera setup, composed of a 48MP main, 8MP ultra-wide, and 2MP snappers. Meanwhile, residing in the hole-punch module upfront is an 8MP shooter.
Images produced by the primary rear camera looked decent, with the right amount of detail and sharpness to them. The colors look acceptable under ample lighting; however, they have a muted tone to them under low-light situations. Wide-angle photos have a subtle fisheye effect, while the colors appear muted as well. Portrait-wise, the subject-background separation is present, and it’s reasonably good.
As for selfies, the photos produced have a slight amount of noise to them. The sharpness of the details aren’t the best, but not they’re not terrible either. They’re pretty useful for social media posting. Similar to the rear cameras, the front camera’s subject-background separation also looks decent.
For video, the Y7p can shoot up to 1080p at 30fps. Focus lock is rather terrible, and as with most cases, we recommend using a tripod or monopod for stabilization.
OS, UI, and Apps
Out of the box, the Y7p runs on EMUI 9.1, based on Android 9 Pie. An important thing to note here is that the Y7p does not have any Google Mobile Services installed in it. Instead, the device has Huawei Mobile Services, and it comes with a host of apps, including AppGallery, which is pretty much the Huawei version of the Google Play Store. As there’s no GMS, apps like YouTube, Facebook, Google Drive Office Suite, and the like aren’t pre-installed in the device. If you’re looking for those apps, you would need to find ways to install them on your own.
The Y7p’s navigation options include a three-button style or a gesture-based one. For app arrangement, it has the standard home screen style or a drawer-style one.
As for storage, the Y7p is only available in one configuration, which is 64GB. Out of the 64GB, about 56GB is usable. No worries, though, as it has a dedicated microSD card slot and can be expanded up to 512GB.
Performance and Benchmarks
Under the hood, the Y7p is armed with a Kirin 710F chipset, paired with 4GB RAM. We ran the Y7p though several benchmarks and yielded the following results:
AnTuTu – 158,204
Geekbench 5 – 321 (Single-core), 1,337 (Multi-core)
3D Mark – 930 (SSE – OpenGL Es 3.1)
PCMark – 6,289 (Work 2.0)
AndroBench – 292.9 MB/s (Read), 205.69 MB/s (Write)
Navigation, swiping through apps, web and social media browsing, and such ran smoothly and without any issues. You might want to take caution, though, when running multiple apps all at once. Gaming-wise, we encountered some limitations; while we were able to play CoD Mobile and Asphalt without much stutters or frame drops, the graphics were set to the lowest level.
For biometrics, the Y7p has a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner and face unlock. Both work pretty well, and we didn’t encounter any issues testing them out.
Connectivity and Battery Life
The usual connectivity features such as 4G LTE, WiFi, and Bluetooth are all present in the Y7p. We also didn’t encounter any issues when using location-based apps. As mentioned earlier, the Y7p has dual SIM slots and a dedicated micro SD card slot; you can use two SIM cards and need not sacrifice any of them for a micro SD card.
Measuring up the battery life of the Y7p, we put it through PCMark’s battery benchmark test. The Y7p’s 4,000mAh cell totaled 19 hours and 21 minutes. With its 10W charger and micro USB port, it took us about two hours to charge it in full.
Conclusion
The Huawei Y7p is a pretty decent smartphone that sits right between the entry-level and the mid-range segment. For its price tag of PHP 9,990, you get a visually-pleasing smartphone, triple-rear cameras that produce good images, a sufficient battery life, and a reasonably competent performance. However, the Y7p has one big issue that isn’t easy to ignore, and that would be its lack of Google Mobile Services. Sure, there are ways to work around that issue and Huawei, after all, does have HMS, it’s still an issue that’s quite cumbersome to deal with.
If the lack of GMS doesn’t deter you from getting the device, then go right ahead and cop the Y7p as it’s still a pretty good device. Although, if you’re uncertain in dealing with all that no GMS issue, you may want to consider other smartphones such as the Realme 5 and the Honor 20 Lite, that are in the same price range as the Huawei Y7p.
Huawei Y7p specs
6.39-inches HD+ (1560 x 720) display
Kirin 710F 2.2GHz octa-core CPU
Mali-G51 GPU
EMUI 9.1 (Android 9 Pie)
4GB RAM
64GB storage
Expandable up to 512GB via micro SD
48MP f/1.8 main + 8MP f/2.4 ultra-wide + 2MP f/2.4 triple-rear cameras
8MP f/2.4 hole-punch front camera
4G LTE
WiFi 802.11 ac
Bluetooth 5.0
GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo
3.5mm headphone jack
Rear-mounted fingerprint scanner
4,000mAh battery w/ 10W charging support
micro USB port
76.13 x 159.81 x 8.13mm
176g
Midnight Black, Aurora Blue
What we liked:
Good-looking design
Rear camera quality
Modest battery life