There is still much more testing to do, but so far the Honor 70 seems like an excellent mid-range smartphone with dual main cameras that punch well above its price point.

With dual main cameras, intriguing video modes and a large battery, is Honor’s latest offering the best mid-range smartphone? Find out in our Honor 70 review.

The Honor 70 is the latest smartphone from the Chinese manufacturer. It was announced alongside the Honour 70 Pro and Honour 70 Pro+ back in May 2022 and to date has only been on sale in China. The device is now getting an international launch and is available in the UK (but not the Honor 70 Pro or Pro+).

The Honor 70 is the most basic model in the new 70 range, but it still has some impressive specifications, such as 54MP Super Sensing Main Camera alongside a 50MP Wide-Angle and Macro 2-in-1 camera. Its 6.67-inch OLED can produce more than a billion colours, and new SuperCharge technology lets you restore the battery to 60% in just 20 minutes.

With a host of video features, including an innovative new Solo Cut mode, the Honor 70 is aimed squarely at vloggers and content creators as a mid-range option.

The Honor 70 price tag in the UK will be £479.99 for the version with 128GB of internal storage, while the Honor 70 price rises to £529.99 for the 256GB option.

The device is available now. You can purchase the 128GB version from Amazon and a range of retailers, while the 256GB option is only available from mobile companies Vodafone and Three.

The Honor 70 is available in Crystal Silver, Icelandic Frost, Emerald Green, Midnight Black colour options.

The Honor 70 series of smartphones debuts Sony’s IMX800 image sensor in the devices’ rear camera arrays. In the Honor 70, this rear setup consists of a 54MP Super Sensing main camera equipped with an f/1.9 lens with All Pixel Autofocus. This sits alongside a 50MP Wide-Angle and Macro 2-in-1 122° Ultra Wide camera. There is no telephoto camera on the Honor 70. Instead, the third camera is a 2MP depth sensor.

On the front of the device is a 32MP selfie camera that allows for HDR Selfie Portraits.

The Honor 70 shoots 4K video at 30p and Full HD at up to 60p. There’s also a Slow-Motion video mode and a Multi-Video option for recording split-screen movies. WHat’s more, a new Solo Cut mode allows you to auto-track a person without moving your phone.

As you’d imagine, all the usual shooting modes are there: Aperture, Portrait, Night, Pro. Other interesting options are Time-Lapse, HDR, Super Macro and High-Res

The Honor 70 is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 778G+ chipset, with 8GB of RAM and its GPU Turbo X helps deliver higher frame rates for video and gaming while promising lower power consumption.

The Honor 70 is also the first non-flagship phone to use the company’s Honor Image Engine, which employs computational photography software to sharpen images and give them a lift. It’s this software that drives the new Solo Cut mode, helping to keep your moving subject in focus. Solo Cut will maintain focus even if your subject leaves the frame and comes back. The AI is able to do this by noting identifying characteristics, such as clothes.

Inside the device is a 4800mAh battery that promises long life and charges at up to 66W. Honor says that the phone can charge from nearly empty to 60% in just 20 minutes, making it one of the fastest on the market.

The Honor 70 also runs on Android.

The device weighs just 178g despite boasting a large 6.67-inch OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. The display has curved edges and is incredibly slim at 7.91mm for a device this large.

In your hand, it’s got a nice premium feel. The backside is made of aluminium and the cameras are mounted on dual metal rings. There’s also a flash within this dual housing.

Overall, it looks and feels higher quality than most mid-range smartphones in this bracket. One thing that would be nice, however, is water and dust resistance. The Honor 70 is not IP68 rated.

The Honor 70’s OLED display, however, really does explode with colour. Images look fantastic on the 6.67-inch OLED display. It’s a Full HD display, not 4K, but for most people this will be enough resolution for casual everyday photography and content consumption.

In my tests so far, the Honor 70 has lasted a full day on a charge, even with some heavy use. This is down to its large 4800mAh battery offsetting the power consumption of that large OLED display.

Personally, I don’t like displays with curved edges. I find they’re difficult or awkward to tap or swipe along the edges, but the Honor 70 has been very responsive. Swiping through the shooting modes and scrolling through my images was very easy and natural.

My Honor 70 review is still ongoing, but I was pleasantly surprised at the outset at how fast the phone charged and how soon I could start using it. Not even charging it via the mains, I plugged it into a portable solar panel I have and it was ready to use in no time.

It’s also nice to see Google services back. Even though the Huawei P40 series smartphones had some of the best cameras around, not being able to utilise the vast network of Google apps and services made the devices difficult to use in your daily life for anything but photography.

I haven’t got to full put the Honor 70 camera through its paces yet, but first impressions are that its dual main cameras punch above the phone’s price point. They capture some nice detail, and images look great when zoomed in.

Colours so far look a little flat, but I have a lot more testing to do. I have been impressed by the Honor 70’s AI. It’s done a great job at recognising my scenes.

There is much more to come, but here are a few sample shots I’ve taken so far with the Honor 70.

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