Huawei has had a good run in India with their Honor series. They have managed to carve out a market rather well for their phones. Their earlier two releases Honor 6X and Honor 8 have been decent performers. Earlier this month Huawei launched Honor 9i.
Honor 9i - The New Phone from Huawei
Honor 9i fits in the mid range phones with a price tag of Rs 17,999. There are some cool features on offer. Dual cameras on both sides is one of the highlights of the smartphone. Packed in a metal unibody design it has a great display
Other features include a 8-core Kirin 659 chipset with a 4X64 RAM/ROM internal storage expandable upto 128 GB. Huawei claims its OS Android 7-based EMUI 5.1 learns on the user's behaviour with time increasing predictability "making it a device that really understands its owner and acting on this knowledge to improve performance". The battery is 3340mAh which the company claims lasts upto 20 hours.
What's Great
Quad Camera
This phone is great news for photography enthusiasts. There is a lot you can do with the camera. The rear and front cameras are 16-megapixel camera and 13-megapixel respectively. There is also a 2-megapixel secondary sensors on both sides to capture depth information and to enable portrait mode. There is 45-degrees projection, making every shot a 'cover shot under butterfly lightning'.
Overall the camera is great and one of the highlights of Honor 9i. The 13 MP dual-lens front camera incorporates studio-level smart selfie toning flash and delivers remarkable bokeh effect. The 16 MP dual lens back camera produces richer pictures with vivid details for a more sophisticated photography experience.
Good Display
Honor 9i has a great display with a 5.9-inch FullView screen. The aspect ratio of 18:9 combined with FHD+ resolution (1080x2160 pixels) is one of the high points of the phone.
Balanced Price
Honor 9i i priced at Rs.17,999 and that's a great balance between features available and pricing.
What's not great
Average Performance
In Honor 9i Huawei uses its mid-range Kirin 659 processor with 4GB RAM. It works fine to begin with until you notice the pauses between apps. I feel Huawei could have done better in this department. Having said that you can't call it bad performance either but somewhere in the range of just average performance.
Not so great battery
3340mAh gives just about average performance. If you are a high user you may barely be able to get through the day.
The Last Word
Honor 9i is a gorgeous looking phone which scores rather well in the looks department. The 18:9 aspect ratio combined with the four cameras with some awesome camera features make it a photography enthusiast's delight. Last I heard Huawei was about to conduct Photo Workshops on Honor 9i. Somewhere that is confidence you can get in the camera of Honor 9i. I do wish Huawei gives more focus on the battery though.