Huawei Honor 9

For years, Huawei wasn’t a player in the mainstream phone market. The Chinese smartphone manufacturer struggled in the mid-tier market, that is until they found a winning formula with the Honor lineup. Their Honor 9 phone hopes to encourage more people to change over by offering a great price.

But does it offer enough bells and whistles to convert people? Let’s find out!

Its even hard today for flagship phones to stand out from the crowd in terms of design. Most sport the same rectangular design with rounded edges.

While Huawei introduces nothing revolutionary in terms of its basic shape, reviewers were impressed, calling the Honor 9 eye-catching. The curved rear panel offers a reflective, shiny finish that diffracts light when held at different angles.

The drawback to this “cool” factor is its handling. Many reviewers found it incredibly slippery. Some said it would slide on flat surfaces due to the glass back.

It comes in a variety of colors, such as bright yellow, white, black and gray.

Its relatively thin profile and lightweight of 155 grams makes it easy for experts to use one-handed and slip into their pockets.

Unlike other devices, the Honor 9 sports a smaller 5.15 inch, 1080p display. The small size translates to higher pixel density. As expected, reviewers were impressed with the screen’s sharpness. They also liked its decent color reproduction and overall brightness.

Huawei didn’t skimp on performance either. The Honor 9 comes equipped with an octa-core processor (4 x 2.4GHz and 4 x 1.8GHz) and 6GB of RAM.

While it might not be as fast as the OnePlus 5 in benchmark tests, critics found it snappy in real life testing even when pushing it by multitasking. Naturally, they also had no issue playing graphics intensive games either.

Equipped with a 3,200mAh battery, the Honor 9 got most critics through a full workday with moderate usage. For heavier usage – watching videos and playing games – they could eke out around 5 hours of screen time.

You’ll find a dual-lens camera on the rear of the phone. The 20MP camera takes pictures in monochrome while the 12MP captures color. In theory, the use of these dual lenses captures more detail.

The overall picture quality and shutter speeds impressed critics. In good lighting, their images came out sharp, vibrant and well-exposed.

Lower light pictures, however, suffered from some noise. Plus, since it doesn’t come with optical image stabilization, they found many of their pictures ended up very blurry.

Despite some minor issues, most reviewers would recommend the Honor 9, especially because of its price tag.

Tech Radar states, “Honor has managed to create an all-around great handset that offers all you’d like in a phone in an attractive, easy-to-use and top-of-the-range package.” Android Authority adds, “The Honor 9 certainly ticks a lot of the right boxes: great performance, dual cameras, sleek design, and an IR blaster!”