The HONOR X7d is officially here in the Philippines, starting at an aggressive price of P7,299 (around $125) for the 8GB/256GB version, while the beefier 8GB/512GB model we reviewed lands at P9,999 ($171).

Obviously, this isn’t the fastest, flashiest phone you can buy for the money, but that’s okay, because the HONOR X7d has a completely different mission. It’s pitched directly as a handset that’s built for the everyday grind and boldly trades bleeding-edge specs for features that actually matter in the hustle. Stuff like exceptional toughness, marathon battery life, and peace of mind in any weather.

After putting it through the wringer, here is our verdict on the phone that puts durability first, above all else.

Made especially for road warriors

The HONOR X7d’s signature feature might be its toughness. HONOR has given it the full promotional blitz, marketing its “all-angle water resistant” design backed by a proper IP65 rating for protection against dust and low-pressure water jets. This, combined with the carry-over SGS five-star drop protection from its predecessor, means this one’s built for the unexpected.

We can personally confirm that the HONOR X7d lives up to the splash-resistant hype. Our unit took more than a few hits during the local launch at an out-of-town water park. We’re talking accidental splashes and getting totally misted, yet it kept functioning perfectly. Better yet, the promised wet-hand touch feature works like a charm. Even with damp fingers, the screen remained responsive.

@revuphilippines “We’re splash-ready. Are you?” Get your own #HONORX7d for as low as P7,299! Swing by www.revu.com.ph for full details. #RevuDotComDotPH #AllAngleWaterResistant #HONORPhilippines #HONORPH @HONOR Philippines @monch @Alora Uy Guerrero ♬ original sound – Revu Philippines

The HONOR X7d lives up to the splash-resistant hype!

This resilience speaks directly to the smartphone’s target demographic: the TNVS drivers, couriers, and motorcycle riders who rely on their screen for navigation and bookings in any weather.

Take note, though — and we probably have to stress this — IP65 is splash resistance, not immersion. Moreover, those IP ratings degrade over time due to wear and tear. Don’t mistake this for a rugged phone you can dunk in the pool for a selfie months down the line. Still, the peace of mind is excellent. Any device that can survive a clumsy fumble or a sudden downpour earns brownie points with us.

As for the hardware aesthetic, our Desert Gold unit looks sophisticated. The frosted backplate handles fingerprints well, and the gold ring around the camera module — a clear nod to a certain fruit-logoed rival — gives it a premium pop.

On the audio front, the standard headphone jack is a no-show, but the HONOR X7d compensates with volume. The smartphone packs a stereo dual-speaker system featuring a 400% high-volume mode. This feature is less about fidelity and more about function, effectively turning the phone into a loud, portable boombox for group listening or noisy environments. Just know that pushing the volume past the normal limit introduces significant distortion and tininess.

The display and camera are where the HONOR X7d starts showing its budget DNA. Up front, you get a 6.77-inch TFT panel, a retread from the previous generation. While the HD+ resolution is not ideal on a screen this large — it lacks the crispness rivals are offering at this price point — it’s adequate for everyday social media and web browsing.

Thankfully, the display can crank all the way up to 120Hz, delivering buttery-smooth scrolling and animations that might mask the lower resolution. The company also ensures decent outdoor visibility, with the panel delivering a peak brightness of 850 nits. We’ve had a chance to test it outdoors, and we can confirm that the screen remains readable even under direct sunlight, which could prove vital for road warriors.

The camera system is another area of compromise. The HONOR X7d sports a familiar dual-camera setup on the back, headlined by a large 108-megapixel main sensor doing all the heavy lifting. The secondary 2-megapixel depth sensor is, to be blunt, mostly there for show. You’re essentially dealing with a single, useful rear camera. Don’t go looking for ultrawide or telephoto capabilities here; they simply don’t exist.

The main sensor punches above its weight, though. In our testing, the 108-megapixel shooter proved capable, capturing good detail, producing pleasing colors, and handling dynamic range well, thanks to a surprisingly effective HDR mode. Even in low-light situations, this model manages to hold its own, and the ability to switch between 1x and 2x zoom even in Night mode is a handy bonus.

Moving to the front, the 8-megapixel selfie camera is exactly what you expect. It will get the job done for casual selfies and clear video calls, especially in well-lit environments. Just don’t expect it to blow you away with stunning detail or low-light prowess.

Sample shots

2-day battery life? Try 2.5 days

HONOR didn’t just meet expectations for battery life this year; the company blew past them. The HONOR X7c already boasted a chunky 6,000mAh cell, but the HONOR X7d ups the ante to 6,500mAh. That’s a serious power bank tucked inside the phone, and based on our testing, it pays off massively. The battery features dual-cell tech, too, which reportedly improves heat management. The company even claims this battery is engineered to stay healthy and durable for at least five years.

Combined with that efficient Qualcomm Snapdragon 685, the X7d is an absolute marathon runner. An hour of YouTube, streaming at full 1080p resolution with the brightness at a comfortable 50%, only saw the battery drop by 4%. Even better, kicking off a demanding game like GRID Autosport for a half hour only cost us 9% of the charge. And the PCMark numbers back those anecdotal tests up. The battery-rundown test clocked our unit at an impressive 18 hours and 22 minutes of screen-on time. In the real world — browsing, streaming, and scrolling social media — we were easily hitting two full days between charges.

If you’re not as glued to your screen as we are, you can likely stretch that mileage to three days. Bottomline: This is the kind of no-anxiety battery life that genuinely changes habits. More importantly, it is crucial for who HONOR is selling the X7d to: the TNVS drivers, couriers, and motorcycle riders — the people who depend on their phone screen staying alive for navigation, communication, and booking services from dawn to dusk. The HONOR X7d’s marathon performance is a feature they can literally bank on.

Now, for the inevitable tradeoff: slower charging. The brand sticks with the same respectable 35-watt wired charging over USB-C as before. Given the sheer size of the 6,500mAh cell, going from zero to full will take over two hours. On the plus side, you only charge a smartphone like this once every 48 hours — maybe less. It’s a reasonable price to pay for freedom from the wall socket.

A storage beast, not a speed demon

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 685 is the same 4G silicon we saw in last year’s X7c. This chip isn’t here to win any speed races; it’s a veteran workhorse designed for longevity, not raw processing grunt. With its 6nm architecture and efficiency-first core setup (four operating at 2.8GHz for the heavy lifting, four at 1.9GHz for everything else), the Snapdragon 685 has been engineered to do one thing, basically: not draining your battery quickly.

For the most part, that promise holds up. Day-to-day use is solid, thanks in large part to the 120Hz refresh rate doing a lot of the heavy lifting. We rarely hit major snags or stutters even while juggling a couple of background apps. And while it’s definitely not a power user’s dream, our review unit manages to keep graphically heavy games like GRID Autosport running well enough for a casual session.

Tossing in an older chip is a classic budget move — it saves money. HONOR clearly chose the Snapdragon 685 to keep the price down in this brutal budget category. Opting for a more powerful processor here would have inevitably pushed the price up. So while we wish the company had gone for something newer and faster, it’s an understandable tradeoff.

It’s a compromise we can live with. You can, too — provided you temper your expectations. If your idea of “gaming” is anything more than passing the time, you might need to revisit your budget.

Benchmarks

For us, the bigger story here is the storage. HONOR shipped us the 8GB RAM/512GB storage model. A cheaper 256GB version is out there, but take note that since the HONOR X7d ditches the microSD slot, you are locked into whatever capacity you buy. That said, this 512GB version is essentially the only one you should consider.

That massive storage capacity effectively turns this one into a multipurpose device. It’s no longer just a handset; it can pull double-duty as a ruggedized portable hard drive that fits in your pocket — one that runs Android, to boot — saving you the cost and hassle of buying a separate, external drive.

The benefits stack up, too. Having more native storage means less reliance on cloud services — great if you’re concerned about monthly fees, privacy, or just getting stuck somewhere with slow mobile internet. Instant file access from the phone’s storage is a speed boost you’ll notice every day, blowing away the convenience of pulling files from the cloud. Come to think of it, that higher storage capacity is probably a far more useful spec than a slightly faster chip would have been in the grand scheme of things.

AI that’s literally a button press away

Predictably, the HONOR X7d also comes with a bunch of AI features that really try to simplify your day-to-day smartphone use. There’s the familiar Magic Portal, a potential time-saver. If you see a piece of text, such as an address, an image of a product, or a phone number on your screen, you can long-press and drag it to the edge. The AI instantly recognizes the content and brings up a “portal” with shortcuts to the most relevant apps — like dragging an address straight to Google Maps.

AI Subtitles provides real-time captions for videos, while AI Translate can handle real-time spoken translations, making it perfect for face-to-face conversations or translating text you point your camera at, like a menu or a street sign. Finally, there’s AI Writing, a free tool you can use to polish your text. It can help you summarize long articles, refine your tone, or even expand on a simple idea you thought of while taking a shower.

Tying all this together is a rare hardware addition in the form of a dedicated AI Button on the side. You can set it to mundane tasks like clearing background apps or taking a screenshot, but the fact that it can be configured to immediately launch Gemini or any other app makes it extremely valuable. It even works while the screen is turned off. Kudos to HONOR for including this surprisingly handy, customizable physical shortcut that we found ourselves using a lot.

Final thoughts

Ultimately, the HONOR X7d doesn’t ask you to check every box on the spec sheet — it only asks you to check the boxes that matter most: Can it survive? And can it last? The answer, thanks to the giant 6,500mAh battery and the road-ready IP65 and SGS-certified chassis, is a yes.

This phone is purpose-built for its intended audience. We’re talking about the road warriors whose livelihoods depend on their screen staying active, responsive, and, more importantly, in one piece. The HONOR X7d is a testament to the fact that in the budget world, a durable, long-lasting workhorse is often far more valuable than a slim and fragile, albeit slightly faster, status symbol.

HONOR X7d specs

• 6.77-inch TFT LCD display, HD+ resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, 850 nits brightness
• 6nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 685 4G processor
• Adreno 610 GPU
• 8GB RAM
• 512GB expandable storage
• Dual 108-megapixel main, 2-megapixel depth rear cameras
• 8-megapixel front camera
• Side fingerprint reader
• 6,500mAh battery with 35-watt fast wired charging
• IP65 rating
• MagicOS 9.0 based on Android 15
• Colors: Desert Gold, Meteor Silver, Velvet Black

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