Huawei Honor 9 review: Double-glazed device
Huawei Honor 9 review – We liked it better when they were cheaper, but at least the Honor 9 exemplifies how you can now get the kind of features that were once exclusive to phones for half that amount.
The Honor 9’s price has fluctuated, but it’s nearly a hundred quid less than the OnePlus 5T, which is currently king of the mid-range models.
The Honor 9’s slim case, with curved glass front and back, comes in blue or a less gaudy grey, and feels quite glamorous, with a decent-sized 5.15in Full HD screen and fast-acting fingerprint reader. Huawei’s version of Android 7 (not the latest 8) runs smoothly on the eight-core processor, but not as smoothly as the 5T, showing a bit of lag and less impressive 3D games performance. The battery lasted a modest 11 hours 36 minutes in our video-playback test, though in normal use it easily lasted through a day.
The screen is bright with plenty of contrast, but colours were a bit off and its anti-glare polarising layer makes the image all but invisible with the wrong sunglasses. The dual cameras, similar to Huawei’s P10, are good but not great, with no optical stabilisation.
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The Honor 9 is a worthy rival to Moto’s Z2 Play, which has similar flaw’s but a longer battery life, and feels closer to the 5T than its price tag might suggest.
Huawei Honor 9 review: SPECIFICATIONS
5.15in 1920×1080-pixel screen • 20-megapixel and 12-megapixel rear cameras • 8-megapixel front camera • 64GB flash storage • MicroSD card slot • 802.11ac Wi-Fi • Bluetooth 4.2 • 3G/4G • 147x71x7.5mm (HxWxD) •155g • One-year warranty
Huawei Honor 9 review: VERDICT
It’s neither startlingly cheap nor strikingly advanced, but as a mid- priced option the Honor 9 is a good choice
Huawei Honor 9 review: ALTERNATIVE
Motorola Moto Z2 Play
Its modular design divides opinion and few will bother with its extra components, but it’s a stylish phone with long battery life
