Soon after launching the Holly 4 smartphone in India, the Chinese smartphone manufacturer Huawei’s sub-brand Honor on Thursday announced the launch of its latest mid-range smartphone, christened as the “Honor 9i” at an event held in Goa, India. The new Honor 9i is very identical to the company’s recently launched Maimang 6 and Huawei Nova 2i smartphones in terms of specifications and looks. Carried a price tag of Rs. 17,999, the Honor 9i will be made available for purchase in India starting October 14 (Saturday) exclusively via e-commerce website Flipkart.com in Prestige Gold, Aurora Blue, and Graphite Black colour options. The key highlights of the smartphone are its dual front and rear cameras, a gorgeous 5.9-inch FullView display with an 18:9 aspect ratio and minimal bezels, and a powerful 3,340mAh battery.
In terms of design, the Honor 9i sports an all-metal unibody design and a metal frame all around, meaning that the device comes with a relatively premium build quality. The Honor 9i features onscreen navigation buttons and a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor, that is housed on the back panel of the device. The volume up-down keys and the power-key/lock button are all placed on the right-hand edge of the device, while a 3.5mm audio jack is placed on the very bottom edge of the phone. The speaker grilles are also seen at the bottom edge of the handset along with a charging port sitting in the middle. The vertically arranged dual rear camera setup is still positioned exactly the top portion of the rear panel, while the dual front-facing camera is fixed on the top right corner of the front panel.
Talking about its specifications, the Honor 9i flaunts a gigantic 5.9-inch Full HD+ display with a screen resolution of 2160 x 1080 pixels and a scratch resistance 2.5D curved glass coating on top. The full-view display has an 18:9 aspect ratio, minimal bezels and offers a stunning 83 percent screen to body ratio. In terms of power and performance, the Honor 9i is powered by a 2.36GHz Kirin 659 octa-core processor (4 x A53 cores at 2.36GHz & 4 x A53 cores at 1.7GHz), which comes paired with Mali T830-MP2 image processing unit to handle the graphics. In terms of memory, the smartphone is backed up by a 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage, which can be further expanded up to 256GB by using a microSD card.
Talking about its software fronts, the Honor 9i runs company’s own EMUI 5.1 custom UI skin, based on Google’s Android 7.0 Nougat operating system. The Android 7.0 Nougat-based EMUI 5.1 UI brings some gesture-based shortcuts like “draw an S” on the display to take a long screenshot, “tap twice with one finger” to take a screenshot, and “tap twice with two fingers” to record the screen. As we mentioned earlier, the smartphone also features a rear-mounted fingerprint recognition button for biometric security.
For photography, the Honor 9i features a dual rear-facing camera setup that comes combined with a 16-megapixel primary sensor with an LED flash module and a 2-megapixel secondary sensor. On the front, the smartphone houses an another dual front-facing camera setup, which is the main highlight of this device. However, the dual front-facing camera setup includes a 13-megapixel primary sensor and a 2-megapixel secondary sensor for capturing selfies and making video chats.
In terms of connectivity, the Honor 9i supports dual-SIM dual standby using a hybrid dual-SIM setup (Nano + Nano / microSD card). Apart from this, the device also offers various connectivity options including 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS / A-GPS, and a 3.5mm audio jack. On the battery front, the Honor 9i is fuelled by a high-density 3,340mAh battery. Sensors on the smartphone include Accelerometer, Proximity sensor, Ambient light sensor, and Fingerprint sensor (rear-mounted). Dimension wise, the smartphone measures 156.2 x 75.2 x 7.5 mm and weighs 164 grams.
At the same event, the Chinese vendor also announced its two budget tablets in India, namely, the Honor MediaPad T3 and Honor MediaPad T3 10. Both the tablets support 4G VoLTE and run Android Nougat out of the box. As for pricing, the MediaPad T3 has been launched in the country with a price tag of Rs. 12,999, while the MediaPad T3 10 has been priced at Rs. 14,999. However, both the tablets will also be sold exclusively via Flipkart.com. Apart from this, Honor also launched a new high-capacity power bank, 10,000mAh Quick Charge Power Bank. It has been priced at Rs. 2399 and will be available at a discounted price of Rs. 1,999 exclusively via company’s online store in White and Black colour options.
