Honor 9i Brief Review, Ratings, Pros Cons, Specs, Cases & Covers

Honor 9i Brief Review and Pros Cons:

Honor 9i is the latest smartphone in India from Huawei/Honor. This device has already been launched in other countries with following names: Huawei Maimang 6, Huawei Nova 2i, Huawei Mate 10 Lite. So Honor 9i is the 4th name of this device. We have no idea what Honor is trying to do here.

At first look Honor 9i looks like a premium device. The build of the phone is solid and it feels good in the hand. We have a 5.9-inch full view display with Full HD+ resolution. Even with large 5.9-inch display the size of the device is similar to other 5.5 inch devices because of the small bezels.

The aspect ratio of the display is 18:9 which we have seen earlier in flagships like LG G6, LG V30 and midrange phones like LG Q6 and Vivo V7+. The display is sharp with good viewing angles and it looks beautiful overall. The display is covered with 2.5D glass. 

The Honor 9i comes powered by 2.36 GHz Octa-Core Kirin 659 processor, which is a powerful processor capable of handling all the normal multitasking swiftly. The Kirin 659 scores around 63800 in Antutu benchmarks which is equivalent to the score of Snapdragon 625 which scores around 63100.

The multitasking Honor 9i assisted by 4GB of RAM. It comes with 64 GB of internal memory. Plus there is a MicroSD card slot which can be used to increase the storage by up to 256GB. The slot is hybrid so you can either use 2 sims cards or 1 sim card and a MicroSD card. We hate the concept of hybrid slot because it limits the functionality of the device.

The USP of the device is the camera setup. Honor 9i is a first-ever phone that supports both dual rear camera and dual front camera, The rear camera is a 16MP + 2MP dual camera while the front camera is a 13MP + 2MP dual camera. the dual camera setup allows additional effects to be added to the photos clicked. Both camera setups have an RGB camera sensor and a monochrome camera sensor. Details are captured from both cameras to make images sharper. Plus, they help to give a bokeh/depth effect to your pictures. In our initial tests, the camera performance of both front and back cameras looked impressive. Portrait shots had sharp edges of the object in focus with blurred background. With initial impressions, we can say that it looks like the best camera experience in this price segment. We will test it out under outdoor and indoor conditions and post a full review on our blog soon. 

Honor 9i also supports the feature as seen in Honor 8 where the image background can be blurred even after clicking the image. This feature is really good as you can blur the background to your liking after taking the picture. 

For security, the back of the phone supports an active fingerprint sensor just below the vertical rear camera setup while LED flash in integrated into the Antenna band. The fingerprint sensor is fast and responsive and you are not going to face any issues with it.

The Honor 9i runs EMUI 5.1 which is a skin based on Android 7.0 Nougat. EMUI has some useful customizations like drawing an S for a long screenshot to capture an entire web page, tap twice with one finger for a screenshot, and tap twice with two fingers for screen recording. These small features can be very useful.

The handset supports 3340mAH battery which should be sufficient for more than a day for normal usage. 

Overall, Honor 9i looks like a very balanced device with nice dual cameras on both sides. If you like to take selfies then you should consider this device. Even if you do not click selfies, the premium build, beautiful display, lag-free performance makes it a great option in this price range.

Honor 9i in black colour looks great. It wasn't available before but it is available now. Buy Honor 9i Black from Flipkart.

Other options in this range include Mi A1 and Moto G5S Plus. We think Honor 9i is a better option because of better processor, better and larger display and dual front camera which is not there in other devices. You can take a look at the review of Mi A1 here and Moto G5S Plus here

User Reviews of Honor 9i:

If you would like to read the reviews given by customers who bought Honor 9i, check out the links below

Read Honor 9i User Reviews on Flipkart