Now Huawei’s Honor brand has tried to give customers a more powerful option by introducing Honor 9 Lite. Let us tell you that this is an affordable handset that comes with four cameras. This is not the company’s first smartphone with four cameras, the company had also made a similar attempt through Honor 9i. However, this time the company has kept the price of Honor 9 Lite at Rs 10,999 and has given a new option for a larger market. The specialty of Honor 9 Lite is not limited to the camera only, its specifications are also worth considering. At first glance, this phone left a positive impression. Now it remains to be seen whether Honor 9 Lite is able to redefine the budget segment in terms of performance or not.
Honor 9 Lite design and build
Honor 9 Lite is very reminiscent of Honor 8. It was the company’s first flagship smartphone in 2016. Due to 2.5D curved glass, the back part gives a mirror-like feel. However, it has been clarified on Honor’s website that this effect is limited to Sapphire Blue and Glacier Gray variants only. No such effect will be found in Midnight Black. It is very similar to Moto X4. The glass of the display in the front is also curved. Due to this, the grip of the phone becomes good. However, there is a drawback of this feature as well. The phone easily slips in the hands and fingerprints also appear on it. The frame is made of plastic. This has been done to keep the price low. Due to this, the phone becomes light and many times you will feel that the phone is not in your pocket.
According to our wish, the SIM tray should have been of the same color as the rest of the phone’s body. But since it is not, it looks different. Apart from this, we have no complaints with the build quality and finish. The volume and power buttons are made of plastic, but their response is good. The SIM tray is hybrid. That means you can use two nano SIM cards at a time, or a SIM card with a microSD card up to 256 GB. The 3.5mm headphone socket and micro-USB port are at the bottom of the phone. The speaker grill is also placed here. Once again, Honor not using the USB Type-C port is disappointing. It seems that the company wants to limit this hardware feature to expensive phones only.
We really liked the display of Honor 9 Lite. You will get a full-HD + IPS panel. The screen is 5.65 inches and its aspect ratio is 18: 9. This type of display is now in trend. Due to the long display, the edges have become very thin, which increases the beauty of the phone. Despite this, there is a place for the selfie camera above the screen on the front panel and for the company logo at the bottom. The brightness of the panel is sufficient and the color reproduction is also fine. It is not easy to reach every edge of the long display with the fingers of one hand, but there are many gestures to help you. For example, you can open the notification shade by swiping down the fingerprint sensor. There is also a navigation dock, like Assistive Touch of iOS. One-handed mode will also be available.
The Honor 9 Lite has a circular fingerprint sensor on the back. It is fast in recognizing fingerprints. Apart from unlocking the screen, you can use the fingerprint sensor to protect apps and create a virtual safe for private files. This sensor can be used for a variety of gestures, such as taking photos, receiving phone calls or browsing photos. These gestures will work with any finger. In the retail box, you will find a charger, data cable, SIM ejector tool. The phone does not come with a headset.
Honor 9 Lite Specifications and Features
Despite keeping the price low, Honor has not compromised on the specifications of the 9 Lite. Many of its specifications are similar to those of the Honor 7X and Honor 9i, which are more expensive than it. The phone uses Huawei’s own octa-core Kirin 659 processor. There are two variants of the phone based on RAM and storage. One of these has 3 GB RAM and 32 GB storage. The second one has 4 GB RAM and 64 GB storage, which we have reviewed. While using the phone, we found that only 2 GB RAM works throughout the day. You will get 2 GB free all the time. Other specifications include FM radio, Bluetooth 4.2, Wi-Fi b / g / n, 4G VoLTE, USB OTG, ambient light sensor, proximity sensor, accelerometer and gyroscope.
Interestingly, the Honor 9 Lite performed better in benchmark tests than the Honor 7X and Honor 9i.
Like the recently launched Honor View 10, the Honor 9 Lite also runs Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box. However, the company’s skin EMUI 8 is present on top of the latest version of Android. It has a feature called Huawei Share which works like Apple’s AirDrop technology.
The Wi-Fi+ feature automatically switches between Wi-Fi and mobile data. This will depend on the connection status. When we restarted our router, the Wi-Fi+ feature of this phone started working. This feature was trying to check which internet connection is stronger between mobile data and Wi-Fi. Finally, after checking, it connected the phone to Wi-Fi.
The Settings app has a nice design. You can backup contacts, calendar, Wi-Fi credentials, SMS messages and call logs. However, it is not clear how much free storage you will get. You will not be able to backup data from third-party apps.
Honor 9 Lite performance, camera and battery life
Honor’s EMUI, which runs on Android Oreo, works well. But it is not as fast as stock Android. EMUI is quite different from Google’s Material Design language. But it looks good and works well. Despite having 4GB of RAM, the phone felt a bit slow while browsing the Settings app. However, we did not get this complaint very often.
The touch response of the display is good. We have no complaints with the call quality either. The processor is fully capable of maintaining a good multitasking experience. There was no problem in playing easy games. However, the frame rate dropped in games with powerful graphics like Asphalt 8. This phone heats up easily. For example, the upper part of the Honor 9 Lite became slightly warm when I downloaded an app from the Play Store and listened to songs along with it.
The phone ran very smooth in video playback with 1080 pixel resolution. Videos with higher resolutions also played smoothly. In the default video player, you will get the option to stretch the video screen.
Now let’s talk about the most important feature of this Honor phone. The primary camera on both sides of Honor 9 Lite is 13 megapixels. A 2 megapixel depth sensor is also provided on both sides. With its help, bokeh effect can be achieved. For this, you have to choose one of the portrait or wide aperture mode in the camera app.
Photos taken in daylight look good on the handset’s display. Autofocus is fast and details are clearly visible in landscape mode. However, the colours are a bit dull. Noise is visible in dark areas when you zoom in on the photos. In low light, the performance of the Honor 9 Lite is the same as other smartphones in this price range. Focusing becomes slow. Details are not clearly visible. Especially the edges become too sharp.
With the help of wide aperture mode, you get an aperture value of (F/0.95 – F/13), so that you can adjust the depth of field before and after taking the photo. However, in our investigation, the blur effect did not seem very effective, the picture blurred with F/2.0 aperture value looked like Photoshop. Similarly, portrait mode is also given in it, which works exactly like this. In this, you will not be able to apply the blur effect while taking a photo. Also, a toggle for bokeh is also given in it, but it is not very effective, because the photos already come with bokeh effect. The bokeh effect is better than the wide aperture mode, but the edges of the subject do not seem defined at times. Along with this, it also takes a lot of time to focus.
For photography enthusiasts, it has shooting modes like professional and panorama. Features like filters and HDR have also been added to the phone. Along with this, the phone will recognize your smile with ‘touch capture’ and your picture will be clicked automatically.
Talking about video recording, you will be able to record videos up to 1080 pixels. The video is recorded very mediocre. Since it does not have the feature of image stabilization, the video is recorded shaky. Photos taken in low light are not very clear. The quality of selfies taken from the front camera is better. The beauty mode along with the screen flash is attractive and you will be able to take good pictures even in low light. You will also be able to record videos up to 1080 pixels from the front camera. If you have turned on the beauty mode, then the maximum quality of the video will be 720 pixels.
Some gesture modes have also been provided for selfies. You will be able to take selfies using your palm or with your voice. Apart from this, if you hold the phone in your hand and say ‘cheese’ loudly, the gesture sensor will click your picture. Talking about portrait mode, the front camera is also of better quality.
Now let’s talk about the battery. In fact, in terms of battery, Honor’s previous smartphones 7X and 9i were not able to show anything special despite having a large battery. In our video loop test, 9 Lite played HD video for 10 hours and 3 minutes without stopping, which cannot be called very good.
We found that even after using Asphalt 8 for 10 minutes, the battery is dropping by 5 to 10 percent, which can be a matter of concern. There is no feature of fast charging in the smartphone. The 10 watt charger that comes with the phone takes an hour to charge 60 percent of the battery. To reduce power consumption, the user has been given the option to turn on/off the HD Plus screen resolution.
Our verdict
If we add price to the trend of 18:9 aspect ratio, then the cheaper variant of Honor 9 Lite is currently the best option in the market. The price of this variant is Rs 11,000. One thing to note is that currently Honor 7X is also available in the market, which may not have an additional camera but has a metal body, a bigger screen and a relatively bigger battery.
The 4GB RAM variant we tested is a little expensive for its specifications. The phone looks good but the battery power and camera quality are not very good. In the Rs 15,000 range, phones like Xiaomi Mi A1 (Review) and Moto G5S Plus (Review) are already available in the market. These phones may not have the big screens that are in vogue these days but in terms of performance, they are much more powerful than the Honor 9 Lite.
If you are not in a hurry, you can wait for the Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus, which was recently launched in China, to come to India and its price will also probably be around the Honor 9 Lite.