When you hold the Honor X70 for the first time, you won’t believe it costs under $250. I have the red version in my hands right now, and it’s stylish, well-built, and luxurious appearance, especially with that leather-like back cover and rose gold frame, gives off a real luxury vibe.
Its design is flat and simple, but because of its large size, holding the phone can be a bit tricky. The leather back cover is of really good quality, and when you tap it with your nail, it doesn’t feel cheap at all. The camera island is designed to be large and covers a big part of the back. There is a gold ring around this island, and its combination with the back color doubles its charm.
The phone’s frame is glossy plastic, which makes it a magnet for fingerprints and smudges. There are no buttons on the left side, but on the right, you have the power and volume buttons. The power button placement is good, but the volume buttons are a bit higher than usual. At the bottom, we have a speaker, a Type-C port, a SIM tray, and a microphone. At the top, there is a secondary speaker outlet and another microphone.
Honor used aluminosilicate glass to protect the X70’s front panel. Being flat makes swiping a bit less smooth, but it makes installing a screen protector much easier. There’s a selfie camera sitting in a punch hole at the top of the display.
The optical fingerprint sensor is located under the display. Its placement is a bit low, but its performance is fast and accurate.
In terms of durability, the Honor X70 is head and shoulders above many phones. Besides IP68 and IP69, it even has IP69K, which is the highest standard for water and dust resistance. According to Honor, this phone can survive in water up to 6 meters deep, withstand high-temperature water up to 85 degrees Celsius, and even endure continuous high-pressure water jets. What’s more interesting is that it survived a continuous 24-hour salt spray test. Honor says this phone passed the water ingress test over 10,000 times, which is a really huge number.
If you are looking for a phone that gives you peace of mind regarding durability, the Honor X70 is one of the most complete options, and you can get it in black, white, green, and red. Depending on the color you pick, it’s about 7.8 to 8mm thick and weighs anywhere between 193 and 199g.
Well guys, I think in the design and build section, considering its price, this phone not only lacks nothing but actually offers a lot. I really loved the design of the Honor X70, and I don’t think you can find any flaws in it.
Display & Audio
The Honor X70 has a 6.79-inch AMOLED panel with tempting specs on paper. But let’s see how it performs in reality.
To test the display’s color accuracy, I set it to normal mode and default color temperature, tested it with a ColorChecker, and found that the Honor X70 shows colors a bit exaggerated. It isn’t great for professional work like photo or video editing, but it’s attractive for daily use and watching content.
Screen’s refresh rate easily switches between 60, 90, and 120Hz. In dynamic mode, which automatically changes the refresh rate based on the content, I noticed it locks at 60Hz in most apps and scenarios, which is a bit annoying, and you don’t feel total smoothness. Fortunately, you can specify the exact refresh rate for each app individually in the settings.
The X70’s screen brightness is on par with flagships. I tested the brightness in a few different conditions and realized it’s really high, and you won’t have any problem seeing content even outdoors under direct sunlight.
Display brightness control uses PWM technology. Honor claims this panel’s frequency is 3840Hz. In my test, I saw that’s exactly the case. The frequency is very high, and even in long-term use, the display won’t cause eye fatigue or burning at all, even if you are sensitive.
If we ignore the display’s average color accuracy, I think the screen is really awesome. Keep in mind you have to be very professional to even notice this lower color accuracy. Overall, I liked its display, and I think it has so many advantages that you can easily overlook its average color accuracy.
The Honor X70 has stereo speakers, and as I mentioned in the design section, there is one speaker at the bottom and another at the top. The volume is really great, especially when you max it out and the 400% high volume mode activates. In this mode, mid and high frequencies play very well, and sound separation is acceptable. The speaker’s performance in low frequencies is good too, but not so much that I’d praise it. I should also say that when you max out the volume, the bass fades a bit.
Battery & Charger
The X70 packs a giant 8300mAh battery, and Honor included an 80W charger in the box, which gives you peace of mind right from the start.
I put the phone under heavy pressure to test the battery. With 2 hours of playing Call of Duty it dropped 18%, 2 hours of watching YouTube videos took 6%, and 2 hours of web browsing took another 6%. In total, during this heavy 6-hour usage, it only lost 30% of its charge.
On the other hand, the 80W charger took it from 0 to 47% in half an hour and only needed 69 minutes for a full charge, which is truly excellent for a battery this big.
Well, I don’t think I need to explain how amazing this phone’s battery is. It’s funny, I actually got frustrated trying to drain the battery to 0 just to run the charging speed test because it simply wouldn’t die! Long story short, the Honor X70’s battery life is so good that you can count on it for more than two days with medium or even heavy use.
Processor
Honor used the Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 in the X70. It’s a chip that doesn’t seem very powerful when you read its specs on paper. However, it is completely smooth for daily use. I even played Call of Duty on this phone, and it performed well, and I didn’t see any lag in the game at all.
Just know that this phone’s chipset isn’t meant for heavy pushing. But no matter how low its power might be, its stability is extremely high, and that’s a positive point for a phone built for everyday use.
Camera
On the back, the Honor X70 only has one main camera with a 50MP sensor and an f/1.9 aperture. It focuses using PDAF technology and supports optical image stabilization too.
Its selfie camera has an 8MP sensor with a 26mm focal length and an f/2.0 aperture. Those were the camera specs, now let’s talk about the output.
Main camera’s photos have really good color accuracy, the colors are natural, and the white balance is usually set accurately. The only flaw you could point out is that the dynamic range isn’t very strong, and you might see some clipping in the bright parts of the photo. You’ll mostly notice this if you look really closely, though.
The image sharpness is very good, which you totally notice when you crop the photo. Of course, if you go for full-resolution photos, the sharpness drops and it gets a watercolor effect.
At night, however, the main camera truly shines. The main camera’s output is very clean, bright, and eye-catching. The night photo processing algorithm is surprisingly similar to Honor’s flagship phones. It removes noise very well without sacrificing details. The colors are incredibly accurate, the brightness level is excellent, and light sources are controlled perfectly. Overall, I can say that the main camera’s night photos are beyond expectations.
Recording video with the main camera during the day has acceptable quality. The sharpness is good, colors are natural, and it has an accurate white balance. The only negative point is that the stabilization doesn’t work in 4K mode.
The Honor X70’s selfie photos have good dynamic range and sharpness, but the white balance usually isn’t accurate, and colors lean towards the cooler side. At night, the selfie photo sharpness drops drastically unless you take the picture using the flash or the screen light.
Selfie camera videos aren’t that great though, because the white balance isn’t accurate and there’s no stabilization. Still, the sharpness is fine for a 1080p video.
