New Huawei Honor 7i phone delivers flippable camera for back-to-front shooting
Half the lenses, double the rotation
Not content to wait for its launch event at IFA in a couple of weeks, nor with the publicity from the number of Nexus 6 leaks it’s suffered, Huawei is bringing yet another quirky device to the smartphone stadium.
Announced in Beijing today, the Honor 7i features one particular feature which has been grabbing all of the attention: a flipping camera.
No, we’re not exasperated: the camera on the 7i actually sits on a stem which can flip on a hinge atop the device, meaning full 13mp f/2.0 selfies on the handset’s 28mm wide-angle snapper.
Superior selfies
With a dual-tone LED flash on the rear, Huawei’s latest handset can also utilise the screen as a light for evening self-shots, and should handle them more than capably with those 13 million pixels capturing your facial expressions.
Is it more gimmick than GoPro? Well, a swift, sharp fall with a flipped-out camera stem as the point of impact might be a tough test for the 7i’s more than unique shooting style.
Still, it more than serves the purpose of differentiating the latest Honor handset in the rectangles-of-glass mid-range mobile market, and certainly means self-portraits of superior style.
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7’s the charm
Beyond it’s rotate-o-cam and Snapdragon 616 core, the 7i’s specs are otherwise pretty much identical to the Honor 7. Packing a 5.2in 1080 display, 3GB of RAM and a 3,100mAh juice pack, the Honor also offers dual-Nano SIM capacity, 32GB of storage and a fingerprint sensor.
As yet, it’s not clear how widely available the 7i will be available nor how it might be priced globally – though that dual-SIM slot suggests it could be Asia-specific (particularly given the Beijing launch).
Still, with IFA just around the corner, the 7i has got us all excited to see what contraptions Huawei might be lining up to unveil.
Chris Rowlands
Freelance contributor 
