Dubai: The Honor 9 smartphone is the successor to Honor 8 and it is a blend of Honor 8 and Huawei Mate 9 or Huawei P10.
Honor has been improving its design, specs with every flagship phone and Honor 9 is the culmination of that effort. It is aiming to be the best mid-range device in the market and it can take on other flagships as well.
The 5.15-inch device with a 1920 x 1080 resolution is powered by octa-core 2.4Ghz HiSilicon Kirin 960 processor, which also powers Mate 9 and P10, and coupled with either 4GB or 6GB of RAM and 64GB or 128GB ROM. The hybrid–style SIM tray supports up to 256GB microSD card.
It weighs 155 grams. The device feels more premium than its previous flagships.
The phone does not have the on-screen navigation buttons and instead offers gestures into the capacitive home button. The build quality is good and offers most of what the flagship does and cost much less. The screen is much brighter than Honor 8 and produces much brighter colours and details.
It has a 428 pixels per inch (ppi) density screen, much better than Apple iPhone 8’s 326ppi and iPhone 8 Plus’s 401ppi.
It runs on Android Nougat software with Emotion UI 5.1 skin on top of that. It offers lots of customisation that other phones don’t come with.
What really stands out is the shiny glass design on the rear with curved edges, similar to Samsung S7 edge, and it diffracts light at various angles to create a great effect that catches the eye.
The fingerprint sensor is embedded into the home button and it is very fast and accurate. It will wake and unlock the device in one move.
After using devices with more than six inches, Honor 9 feels small in hand and sits comfortably.
Gaming on the device is excellent due to the powerful processor with smooth gameplay and no lags.
Coming to cameras, the rear houses a 20MP monochrome sensor working in tandem with a 12MP colour shooter but without the Leica branding. The phone can take photos using both sensors, and combine the images.
It sports f/2.2 aperture with phase detection autofocus, 2x lossless zoom and dual-LED (dual tone) flash.
The 2x hybrid zoom feature lets you seamlessly zoom between the two cameras. It is not available when you shoot in 20MP auto mode, but can be used if you opt to shoot in a smaller resolution.
The dual lens produce very good snaps with decent lighting as well as in lowlight conditions when compared to single lens cameras. The images show accurate colours, high detail level and good dynamic range but the monochrome camera is the best.
There is also Pro mode for those who want to tweak things further. If you’re a photography fan, you’ll likely find the Pro mode useful and enjoyable. In Pro mode, you also get extra options like the ability to save images in both RAW and JPEG formats.
The camera has tons of features and the newly added is the ‘Portrait’ mode. It combines the fake bokeh effect — basically blurring the background of an image — and beauty mode effects we’ve seen in the past on other Huawei devices into a single effect. If you’re planning to take photos of people on either the front or back camera, tap the little portrait logo and you’ll enter the new mode.
I really liked this mode as photographers can take professional photos and it is really worth in monochrome colour.
The f/2.2 aperture isn’t the brightest in the market but it still takes decent snaps in lowlight conditions.
I would recommend turning on the auto HDR option, which is pretty smart. When HDR is needed, the camera does a good job in boosting the shadows without blowing the highlights.
As there is no optical image stabilisation, you may struggle a little when shooting videos. It can record 4K videos at 30 frames per second and 1080p at 60fps.
Honor has added extra modes and the most noticeable is the 3D Creator and 3D Panorama. In 3D Creator, moving the camera slowly around the face while shooting will take photos from different angles to create a 3D model.
3D Panorama enables you to spin around and take a photo that you can then scroll around on your phone.
The front houses the 8MP with f/2.0 aperture and has beauty mode and bokeh feature. The front camera can capture HD video.
The 3.200mAh battery will last for a day for heavy users, around 20 hours between charges. With power-saving features, it can run more than a day.
In my video rundown test, it lasted around 10 hours of video playback, around 12 hours of web browsing and 19 hours of talk time, which is pretty decent.
The SuperCharge technology takes close to two hours to charge from zero to full and zero to 40 per cent in just half an hour.
It is available in glacier grey and sapphire blue colours. The 4GB RAM and 64GB storage capacity device are priced at Dh1,599 while 6GB RAM and 128GB is priced at Dh1,999.
For
Attractive design
Affordable
3D creator and 3D panorama modes
IR blaster
One-button home control
Cons
Single speaker
No OIS
Fingerprint magnet
Camera’s aperture is low
Glass back can be slippery
