HONOR 7C delivers dual-camera, face unlock, and 18:9 display on a budget

Honor is bringing yet another feature-packed budget smartphone to the U.K. with the HONOR 7C. The HONOR 6C successor, which launched in China last month, is expected to hit the market by the end of April for £169.99 (~$242).

The HONOR 7C features a metal unibody design with 2.5D tempered glass and an overall thickness of just 7.8mm. It also sports a 5.99-inch FullView display with an 18:9 aspect ratio and 1440 x 720 resolution. While the affordable phone comes in Gold in China, U.K. consumers will only be able to grab the phone in Blue or Black.

On the rear, the device features a dual-lens camera with a 13MP and 2MP combo with Phase Detection Auto Focus which supports wide aperture Bokeh-style shots, panorama, and HDR. The front-facing camera, meanwhile, is an 8MP shooter that sits alongside a “smart softlight” LED with up to three brightness settings for taking selfies at night.

The other key selling point for the 7C is the inclusion of HONOR’s face recognition software for unlocking the phone hands-free. HONOR says the tech examines 1,024 feature points on a person’s face and takes just 0.87 seconds to unlock the phone. Unfortunately, the feature will not be available at launch and will instead be rolled out in an OTA software update in May. As a backup, HONOR has included a fingerprint sensor on the rear.

As for the rest of the specs, the HONOR 7C is powered by Qualcomm’s octa-core Snapdragon 450 SoC backed by 3GB of RAM, and a 3,000mAh battery. The 32GB internal storage can be expanded up to 256GB thanks to a three card slot with space for two SIMs and a microSD card. In addition, the 7C runs the Android Oreo-based EMUI 8.0 out-of-the-box and supports a dual Bluetooth connection.

HONOR has been incredibly busy in recent months and shows no sign of slowing down. The HUAWEI sub-brand announced the wider availability of the 7C today alongside the even-cheaper HONOR 7A. Its latest flagship, the HONOR 10, is expected to break cover in May.

As for the 7C, it’s hard to grumble at a sub £200 phone that has both a dual-camera and (eventually) face unlock. While the lack of NFC and USB-C—the 7C sports a regular USB 2.0 port—may put some off, the 7C should please those looking for an entry-to-mid-range device with a packed feature set and decent specs.

We’ll keep an eye out for any news regarding wider international availability for the 7C and will update this post when we hear more. What do you think of the HONOR 7C? Let us know in the comments.