Honor 700 Review: Rear Screen Confirmed, Periscope Still a Leak

Confirmed vs unconfirmed: the Honor 700 at a glance

Honor takes the wraps off its 700 series in China tomorrow, November 13. The headliner is the Honor 700 Pro with its Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 and 9,000mAh battery. The more interesting phone for most buyers might be the base Honor 700 — the model that finally gets the two features that used to separate it from its Pro sibling: a periscope telephoto camera and a rear display.

Honor has confirmed the design, the colours, the memory configurations and the rear screen. Almost everything else — the chipset, the battery capacity, the camera sensors, the charging speed and the price — is still a leak. So this is a pre-launch review in the honest sense: what we know, what we think we know, and what Honor is still keeping to itself.

Design & Build Quality

The Honor 700 series is a complete redesign of Honor’s numbered line, and the base model gets the same treatment as the Pro. The back is dominated by a square camera plateau, and inside it sits a square secondary display — the same party trick that Xiaomi’s 18 Pro and 17 Pro Max popularised. Honor’s promotional material shows it handling time widgets, animations, notifications, and a live viewfinder for selfies shot with the main rear cameras. A teaser also hints it can show heart rate and blood oxygen, though Honor hasn’t confirmed how that would work.

The front is a flat panel with slim, uniform bezels and a hole-punch cutout for the selfie camera. All three models come in Blue Tone, Cold White, Clear Sky and Pink Mist. The redesign is the story here: the Honor 600 had no rear screen at all, and the 700 moves a square secondary display inside a square camera plateau.

Honor hasn’t published the weight, dimensions or IP rating for the base 700. The Pro is listed with IP68/IP69K, so the base likely lands in the same ballpark, but that’s an assumption, not a fact. Pre-order buyers in China get a 365-day replacement promise plus a year of insurance for the front and rear screens — a sensible safety net for a phone with two glass panels to crack.

Display

The leaks point to a 6.57-inch flat OLED with 1.5K resolution (1264 x 2728) and a 120Hz refresh rate — the same panel as the Pro, and the same size and resolution as last year’s Honor 600. The Pro’s listing adds 3840Hz PWM dimming, HDR Vivid and an 8,000-nit peak brightness figure. That peak number is a marketing measurement taken in isolation, not a sustained full-screen value, so treat it as a ceiling rather than a typical brightness.

The rear display is tipped at 1.72 inches. Honor shows it being used as a viewfinder for selfies, which is the genuinely useful case: you get the 200MP main camera’s quality instead of the front camera’s. The leaked support for mini games and notifications is the part that will drain the battery, and Honor hasn’t said how much it costs you.

Performance

The base Honor 700 is tipped to run the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4, a cut-down flagship chip that sits above the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 in the Honor 600 but below the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 in the 700 Pro. That’s a meaningful upgrade over the predecessor — the 8s Gen 4 should handle gaming and multitasking without breaking a sweat — but it isn’t the top silicon, and Honor is asking you to accept that for the lower price.

Memory configurations are confirmed: 12/256, 12/512, 16/256 and 16/512GB. The base model actually gets a 16/256 option the Pro doesn’t list, which is an odd but welcome quirk. No storage type has been disclosed, so we don’t know whether it’s UFS 4.1 like the Honor 600 or something slower.

Camera

The 200MP main camera is expected across the range. The base model adds a periscope telephoto — the leak that matters most, because the Honor 600 made do with a 12MP ultrawide and no telephoto at all. The Pro’s periscope is a 50MP 3.5x unit; the base’s resolution hasn’t been disclosed, so assume it’s smaller and manage your zoom expectations accordingly.

Both the 700 and 700 Pro are tipped to support a clip-on 200mm teleconverter, an accessory Honor already sells for its Magic9 flagship. That’s a genuinely unusual feature for a numbered-series phone, and it could make the base model’s telephoto far more versatile than its specs suggest. The selfie camera is unconfirmed for the base; the Pro uses a 50MP unit.

Battery & Charging

Battery capacity is tipped at about 9,000mAh, which would be a big jump from the Honor 600’s 7,000mAh and one of the largest cells in any numbered-series phone. One leak described the Pro’s 9,000mAh as the biggest in the series, which suggests the base may land slightly lower — treat the 9,000 figure as a series-wide estimate, not a confirmed base-model number.

All three models passed China’s 3C certification with chargers rated at up to 80W, so wired charging should match the Honor 600’s 80W. Wireless charging is unconfirmed for the base; the Pro is tipped at 50W with reverse wireless. If the base misses out on wireless charging, that’s the kind of cut that only shows up when you set the phone down at night.

Software

The 700 Pro’s Geekbench prototype ran Android 17, and its spec listing shows MagicOS 11 with up to six major OS updates. The base model will almost certainly launch on the same software, but Honor hasn’t confirmed it. If the six-upgrade pledge carries over, that’s a strong commitment for a phone at this level, and it matters more than the chipset for people who keep their phones for three or four years.

Pros and Cons

Price & Availability

Honor has not announced a price for any of the three 700 models, and it has not said whether the series will be sold outside China. That second point matters more than usual: the Number series has a strong track record in the Philippines, so a China-only launch would be a real loss for local buyers.

For context, the Honor 600 launched here at ₱28,999 for the 8/256GB version, ₱32,999 for 12/256GB and ₱37,999 for 12/512GB. The 600 Pro sat at ₱49,999 for 12/512GB, and the 600S started at ₱19,999. If the Honor 700 base lands anywhere near the 600’s ₱28,999 starting price with this spec sheet, it would undercut most of the numbered-series rivals it has to beat.

Should You Buy This?

Buy it if

• You want the Honor Number series’ battery life and now a periscope telephoto
• You would actually use the rear display as a selfie viewfinder
• You want a 6.57-inch flat OLED without paying Pro money
• You keep phones for years and value a long update pledge

Skip it if

• You need the fastest chipset — the Pro’s 8 Gen 5 is the one to wait for
• You want confirmed wireless charging and an IP rating
• You’re outside China and need a phone that’s actually available
• You don’t care about a rear display and would rather spend less on the Honor 600

Final Verdict

The Honor 700 is the most complete base numbered phone Honor has made in years. It takes the two features that used to define the Pro — the periscope telephoto and the rear display — and makes them standard, then backs them with a bigger battery and a stronger chipset than the Honor 600.

The trade-offs are the same as always: the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 instead of the 8 Gen 5, and a spec sheet that Honor hasn’t finished confirming. The battery capacity, the telephoto resolution, the IP rating and the price are all still leaks, and they could all move before tomorrow’s launch.

For most buyers, this is the smart pick in the series. The Pro is the better phone on paper, but the base 700 looks like the one that makes the most sense — assuming Honor prices it sensibly and brings it to the Philippines. The Honor X9e Pro 5G showed what the brand can do with a big battery and a rugged build, and the 700 is the natural next step for the numbered line.

If you’re shopping in the ₱30,000 bracket, wait for the official price and the Philippine launch. If the Honor 700 lands near the Honor 600’s ₱28,999 starting price with this spec sheet, it’s the phone to beat — and the Xiaomi 18 Pro rear-display experiment and the Motorola Edge 70 Max are the two phones it has to beat.