Huawei' sub-brand Honor has launched a new smartphone- the Honor 9 in its home country China. The Honor 9 is the successor to the company's much popular Honor 8 released last year with dual cameras at the back. The Honor 9 shares a lot of similarities with its predecessor, especially in the design aspect. Let's take a quick look at what improvements does the Honor 9 bring on paper.
Design
The Honor 9 is made of metal and glass, same as the Honor 8. The dual camera is still present at the top rear left of the phone. However, the significant change is the fingerprint scanner placement, which is now present in the home button of the phone. To be frank, Huawei is all over the place with the fingerprint scanner placement on their phones- the Honor 8 and Huawei P9 scanners can be seen at the back, whereas the Honor 9 and Huawei P10 has a scanner integrated into the home key.
The Honor 9 is made of metal and glass, same as the Honor 8. The dual camera is still present at the top rear left of the phone. However, the significant change is the fingerprint scanner placement, which is now present in the home button of the phone. To be frank, Huawei is all over the place with the fingerprint scanner placement on their phones- the Honor 8 and Huawei P9 scanners can be seen at the back, whereas the Honor 9 and Huawei P10 has a scanner integrated into the home key.
Also, the Honor 9 has a 3D glass at the back, making the device look different in various angles, same as the recently announced HTC U11.
Display
Coming to the display, the Honor 9 has a compact 5.15-inch Full HD panel with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels, carrying a pixel density of 424 PPI. The screen has a protective layer on top, and it's a 2.5D curved glass.
Hardware
The Honor 9 is fuelled with the Huawei's in-house Kirin 960 SoC, which is an octa-core chip with four Cortex A73 cores clocked at 2.4 GHz and the other four Cortex A53 cores clocked at 1.8GHz. The graphics in the phone will be taken by Mali G71 GPU.
The SoC comes accompanied with a 4GB of RAM with 64GB of internal storage, and there's another variant with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. The storage is expandable up to 128GB via a microSD card.
Camera
The highlight of the Honor 9 is its dual rear cameras. The Honor 8 was one of the best camera smartphones at an affordable price point. The Honor 9 rocks a 20MP Monochrome sensor at the back along with a 12MP RGB sensor. There' support for LED flash, laser autofocus, PDAF, and f/2.2 aperture. An 8MP front-facing camera will power your selfies and video calls. The rear camera is capable of recording 4K videos, while the front camera can handle 1080p videos.
Connectivity and Software
The handset comes with all the necessary connectivity options such as 4G LTE, VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, USB Type-C, and NFC support. The device boots Huawei's EMUI 5.1 based on top of Android 7.0 Nougat. The EMUI comes with a host of features such as advanced power saving mode, multi-window mode, and so on.
Battery
The device has a 3200mAh battery with support for fast charging technology. The Kirin 960 SoC is a power-saving chip. So, expect a great battery life with the phone.
Pricing and Indian Availability
Following the footprints of its predecessor, the Honor 9 comes in four colour options- Blue, Amber Gold, Gray, and Black. The 4GB RAM + 64GB storage options costs 2699 Yuan (approx. Rs. 25,600), whereas the 6GB of RAM + 128GB storage variant retails for 2999 Yuan (approx. Rs. 28,400). The device will be available in China from June 16. The device will be launched in India later this year, maybe in August or September. Furthermore, Huawei confirmed that it would be launching the Honor 8 Pro smartphone in India very soon.
