We take a look at Huawei’s latest flagship!

Today, Huawei sent over their current flagship, the Ascend P7. The Ascend P7 is currently the most affordable flagship in the market from an international brand, coming in at just Php Php 20,990. The price certainly is compelling, but does the rest of the package follow suit?

Huawei Ascend P7

• 1.8 Ghz quad-core HiSilicon Kirin 910T
• 2GB of RAM
• 5-inch full HD display, Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection, 1920 x 1080 resolution
• 16GB internal storage, expandable up to 32GB microSD
• 13-megapixel rear camera, f/2.0 Sony BSI sensor, LED flash
• 8-megapixel front-facing camera
• 3G, LTE
• WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS
• 2,500 Li-Po battery
• 139.8mm x 68.8mm x 6.5mm
• Android 4.4.2 KitKat

Initial Impressions: It’s certainly a head turner, but lacks oomph

The Huawei Ascend P7 is one of the nicer looking flagships currently out in the market. Its overall design actually reminds us of Sony’s own Xperia line of smartphones, which isn’t really a bad thing. The phone uses a glass back that covers a nice mesh design, while a metal band surrounds the side of the phone.

The volume rocker and power button are located on the right side, along with the microSD card slot and the SIM slot. Both these slots require a small pin to eject out of the phone. The 3.5mm jack and USB port are located on the top and bottom, respectively.

Much like the Ascend G6, the P7 has a big focus on selfies, and has the same enhanced selfie taking features that’s present on the cheaper, plastic G6. The P7 uses a 13-megapixel camera with a Sony BSI sensor and a big f/2.0 aperture as its main snapper, which should mean that the P7 will be able to take decent snaps under low light.

Unlike most flagships, the Ascend P7 uses Huawei’s own homegrown processor in the form of the HiSilicon Kirin 910T to power it, which is a quad-core processor running at 1.8GHz paired with 2GB of RAM. While the processor posted decent benchmarks in AnTuTu, the performance is a bit lacking when compared to other flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S5 and the LG G3, for example. In the Ascend P7’s defense, we haven’t noticed any kind of lag during our brief time with the device.

Like the Ascend G6, the P7 uses a custom UI made by Huawei which is laid over Android 4.4. The UI takes away your app drawer, and adds a bit of additional functionality by incorporating additional power saving modes, new themes, etc.

That’s it for this hands-on.