Honor 70 Hands-on Review: Flagship Visuals in a Midrange Phone

Launched at IFA 2022, the Honor 70 is a mid-range phone that caught our eye for good reason. Honor made an intriguing decision: instead of making all its features mid-range, they used flagship grade components for certain features, compromising it with less stellar features to keep the cost down. We have summarized its features in our IFA coverage, but how does this play out in real life? We spent some time with the Honor 70 to find out more.

Flagship Grade Display

It's one thing to read about the Honor 70's display specification on paper, but to see it is quite something else. The 6.67 inch OLED is impressively large, and the curved edges make the bezels seem almost non-existent. Holding the Honor 70 in the hand really does feel like you're only holding a frameless display. It's quite an eye candy.

The bright color scheme and 120 Hz buttery-smooth animation of the screen further pushes the impression of this being a premium phone. When scrolling left and right, the icons simply roll off the sides, down the curves and into nothingness - a mesmerizing visual effect. The combination of a fluid UI animation and the premium display hardware offers a user experience that I would not expect from a mid-range phone like this.

Fast User Interaction

Despite not having the TOTL processor - a Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G Plus - a deliberate choice to keep the cost far lower than flagship phones, the Magic UI 6.1 (based on Android 12) is very responsive and is hardly inferior to other top phones on the market. This allows for power users to work fast on the Honor 70, especially for fast typing on this phone.

Anyone who has read my phone reviews before will know that screen unlocking reliability and speed has always been one of my obsessions. I believe to work fast with a phone, you can't have an unlocking process that takes longer than a split second or works only 9 times out of 10. It has to be fast, it has to always work without needing a second attempt.

So when I saw that the Honor 70 uses an under screen fingerprint scanner, I fought hard not to let my past experience cause prejudice. Afterall, I've yet to find an under screen scanner that could meet my reliability and speed demands. After using the Honor 70 for a while, I would not say that it can exactly match a dedicated fingerprint scanner, but I can say it's really, really close. I rarely need to do second attempts, and the unlocking is almost instantaneous. I continue to look forward to the day when the performance fully matches a capacitive scanner, but before then - I'd be happy to settle with the performance of Honor 70's scanner.

Built like a Premium Phone

Other than the display, the rest of the phone also looks like something that belongs on a flagship phone. Especially the glass back of the phone is a mesmerizing Emerald Green that glistens and changes color depending on the angle I look at it from, like the scales of an exotic fish. What's even better is that the frosted finish almost completely hides any sort of fingerprint, keeping it looking clean and aesthetically pleasing all the time.

Dual 50MP+ Rear Cameras

The other feature on the rear of the phone as expected are the camera bumps, which these days are basically the fingerprint of smartphones. Three camera modules and a flash are visible, set into two identical circular camera bumps.

Usually, especially when it comes to mid-range phones, you get one high pixel count main camera, and the other - usually the wide angle camera you'd usually expect a significant drop in resolution. However, the Honor 70 features one a 54MP IMX800 Super Sensing Main Camera, and the other is a surprisingly high pixel count 50MP Ultra Wide and Macro Camera. This means you're getting not one, but two high megapixel cameras on a single phone, allowing for high quality shots both with the main and the ultra wide.

One of the functions that I liked on the Honor 70 camera is aperture mode, which simulates from F0.95 to F16, making use of the depth camera - the third camera on the rear. Even though the depth of field effect is done through composition and simulation, the software blurring effect combined with the hardware allows for much more accurate edging, even better than pure software based blurring effect like Google's powerful GCam.

Another surprising feature is the video recording, which can go up to 4K resolution at 30 FPS without any glitching - something not many mid-range phones can do. It also has an interesting feature that can activate and record simultaneously from both the front and rear facing cameras, so that both the scenery and photographer can be featured in the same video.

Even the front facing camera is a higher-than-usual 32MP, in a punch-hole centrally located. The Honor 70 is therefore also well equipped for Zoom meetings, vlogging and selfies.

Super Charger

The Honor 70 comes with a 66W Honor SuperCharge adaptor, which leaves even flagships like Samsung S22 Ultra in the dust, which tops out at 45W. In real life usage, it still took me around one hour to charge the phone from almost empty to full, however it has an insane speed for top-ups: going from 0-60% in around 20 minutes.

Its powerful wired recharging out of the box is probably why it dispensed with wireless charging, reasoning with the same logic as OnePlus who till this day swears off any sort of wireless charging for their flagships. One trick that the Honor 70 has up its sleeve though is the 5W wired reverse charging, something that will come in handy in topping up accessories like wireless earbuds.

Final Verdict

In order to be categorized as a mid-range priced phone, Honor 70 had to cut some corners: there's no mention of Gorilla Glass or unibody alloy frame for example; you won't find stereo speakers, and it's not using the latest Snapdragon CPU. However, it shifts its focus on other features to make up for it: The 120Hz 6.67" OLED display, highly responsive unlocking and screen, fluid like UI, dual flagship grade rear camera and a 66W SuperCharge charger.

The Honor 70 introduces an interesting balance of features that distinguishes it from other mid-range phones that are mediocre all-rounders while specializing in none. If to you, having a TOTL display, camera set and fast workflow is top priority, the Honor 70 can satisfy all these needs, without going for a flagship that would cost double or more. We're awarding the Honor 70 with the IBTimes Exceptional Value badge.

David is a tech enthusiast/writer who is often on the move and is on a mission to explore ways to make his overhaul flights more enjoyable. This is a contribution to an ongoing IBTimes review series on gadgets for Business Travelers.