After a series of many leaks and revelations, Huawei’s sub-brand Honor on Monday launched a new mid-ranged flagship smartphone, dubbed as the “Honor 9” in the Chinese tech market. The new Huawei Honor 9 is the successor to the company’s Honor 8 smartphone, which was launched in October last year. The new Honor smartphone comes in three different variants based on their RAM and internal storage capacity: The 4GB RAM with 64GB internal storage variant of the Honor 9 will be available at a price tag of CNY 2,299 (approx. Rs. 21,800), the 6GB RAM along with 64GB of internal storage will cost CNY 2,699 (approx. Rs. 26,000), while for the 6GB RAM with 64GB of internal storage variant, you have to pay CNY 2,999 (approx. Rs 28,500). The Huawei Honor 9 has been launched in China in four attractive body colour options including Amber Gold, Gray, Blue and Black. The smartphone will be made available for purchase starting 16th June (Friday) via Huawei’s official online store, Vmall.com as well as the Chinese e-commerce platforms- JD.com, Tmall.com, Lynx and more. The main highlights of the Honor 9 are its 20MP + 12MP dual rear camera setup, fast processing unit and Android 7.0 Nougat based EMUI 5.1 UI skin.
Huawei Honor 9 Design:
In terms of design, the Huawei Honor 9 sports a sleek and glossy metal unibody design with a metal frame all around giving it an overall premium look. The new Honor 9 also features a front-mounted fingerprint scanner, that is housed underneath the physical Home Button of the device. The volume rockers as well as the power/lock buttons are placed on the right-hand edge of the smartphones and a 3.5mm audio socket is placed on the left bottom edge of the device. The speaker grilles are seen at the bottom edge of the handset along with a USB Type-C port sitting in the middle. The rear panel houses a 20MP + 12MP dual rear camera setup with a LED flash module, while the top front panel features an another 8MP selfie camera and an earpiece.
Huawei Honor 9 Specifications and Features:
In terms of specifications, the Huawei Honor 9 sports a 5.15-inch full HD 2.5D curved glass display with a screen resolution of 1080×1920 pixels (428ppi pixel density). The device is powered by a 2.4GHz Kirin 960 octa-core (4×2.4 GHz Cortex-A73 & 4×1.8 GHz Cortex-A53) processor coupled with Mali G71 MP8 GPU to handle the graphics. In terms of memory, the Honor 9 is backed by a 4GB/6GB of RAM and 64GB/128GB of internal storage, which can be further expanded up to 256GB via a microSD card. Talking about its software front, the Huawei Honor 9 runs company’s proprietary EMUI 5.1 custom UI skin, based on Google’s latest Android 7.0 Nougat operating system. The device also features an IR Blaster (Infrared Sensor) that can be used as a remote to control third-party electronics & appliances like set-top boxes, audio consoles, TVs, fans, air conditioners or DVD players.
In terms of optics, the new Huawei Honor 9 houses a dual rear camera setup that comes combined with 20-megapixel monochrome sensor and a 12-megapixel RGB sensor. The rear camera features also include Phase Detection Autofocus (PDAF), f/2.2 aperture, 2x lossless zoom, HDR, dual tone LED flash and support 4K UHD video recording at 30fps. On the front, there is an 8-megapixel front-facing shooter with f/2.0 aperture for capturing selfies and making video calls. The front camera is capable of recording 1080p Full-HD videos at 60fps.
In terms of connectivity, the Huawei Honor 9 supports single-SIM (nano-SIM)/dual-SIM dual standby using the hybrid SIM configuration (nano-SIM + nano-SIM/microSD) slot. Connectivity options on the device also include 4G voLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth 4.2, NFC, GPS/A-GPS/Glonass, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a USB-Type C port for superfast charging and data transfer. Sensors on the device include Fingerprint (front-mounted), Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Ambient Light sensor, Digital Compass sensor, and Proximity sensor. The Honor 9 is fuelled by a decent 3200mAh non-removable battery. Dimension wise, the handset measures at 147.3 x 70.9 x 7.45mm and weighs 155 grams.
