What's good
- Sharp and accurate display
- Good battery life
- Smooth performance
- Detailed and vibrant pictures
- Beautiful, reflective back panel
What's bad
- Slippery - slides on flat surfaces
- No optical image stabilization
For years, Huawei wasn’t a player in the mainstream phone market. The Chinese smartphone manufacturer struggled in the mid-tier market, that is until they found a winning formula with the Honor lineup. Their Honor 9 phone hopes to encourage more people to change over by offering a great price.
But does it offer enough bells and whistles to convert people? Let’s find out!
Its even hard today for flagship phones to stand out from the crowd in terms of design. Most sport the same rectangular design with rounded edges.
While Huawei introduces nothing revolutionary in terms of its basic shape, reviewers were impressed, calling the Honor 9 eye-catching. The curved rear panel offers a reflective, shiny finish that diffracts light when held at different angles.
The drawback to this “cool” factor is its handling. Many reviewers found it incredibly slippery. Some said it would slide on flat surfaces due to the glass back.
It comes in a variety of colors, such as bright yellow, white, black and gray.
Its relatively thin profile and lightweight of 155 grams makes it easy for experts to use one-handed and slip into their pockets.
Unlike other devices, the Honor 9 sports a smaller 5.15 inch, 1080p display. The small size translates to higher pixel density. As expected, reviewers were impressed with the screen’s sharpness. They also liked its decent color reproduction and overall brightness.
Huawei didn’t skimp on performance either. The Honor 9 comes equipped with an octa-core processor (4 x 2.4GHz and 4 x 1.8GHz) and 6GB of RAM.
While it might not be as fast as the OnePlus 5 in benchmark tests, critics found it snappy in real life testing even when pushing it by multitasking. Naturally, they also had no issue playing graphics intensive games either.
Equipped with a 3,200mAh battery, the Honor 9 got most critics through a full workday with moderate usage. For heavier usage - watching videos and playing games - they could eke out around 5 hours of screen time.
You’ll find a dual-lens camera on the rear of the phone. The 20MP camera takes pictures in monochrome while the 12MP captures color. In theory, the use of these dual lenses captures more detail.
The overall picture quality and shutter speeds impressed critics. In good lighting, their images came out sharp, vibrant and well-exposed.
Lower light pictures, however, suffered from some noise. Plus, since it doesn’t come with optical image stabilization, they found many of their pictures ended up very blurry.
Despite some minor issues, most reviewers would recommend the Honor 9, especially because of its price tag.
Tech Radar states, “Honor has managed to create an all-around great handset that offers all you’d like in a phone in an attractive, easy-to-use and top-of-the-range package.” Android Authority adds, “The Honor 9 certainly ticks a lot of the right boxes: great performance, dual cameras, sleek design, and an IR blaster!”
What the Critics Are Saying...
- Abbas Jaffar Ali, James Peckham, TechRadarThe Honor 9 offers a lot of what the high-end flagship phones do right now, but for a much lower price. There’s no exciting, headline-grabbing feature here, but a great design, fantastic performance and lots of nice touches make this an all-round impressive and affordable phone.
- Florian Wimmer, NotebookcheckGorgeous case, good camera, decent battery life – we hardly find any reason for complaint with the Honor 9. If the SoC would not throttle under load, our recommendation would even become more clear, but even as it is, the Honor 9 offers a great price-performance ratio.
- Stephen S., PhoneArenaThe Honor 9 is an attractive option for international smartphone users who want a phone that's compact, a reasonably strong performer, enjoys solid battery life, and offers a decently nice camera – and all for quite a bit less than your typical flagship. There's no one stand-out area where the...
- James Peckham, TechRadarThe Honor 9 offers a lot of what the high-end flagship phones do right now, but for a much lower price. There’s no exciting, headline-grabbing feature here, but a great design, fantastic performance and lots of nice touches make this an all-round impressive and affordable phone.
- Alan Martin, AlphrThere’s a dearth of smartphones in the sub £400 bracket, and the Honor 9 fills the space nicely. It’s more powerful than the modular Moto Z2 and the Samsung Galaxy A5, and looks like a handset that costs twice the price. If £370 is what you have to spend, then look no fu...
Prices (Where to Buy)
Common Questions
We've got you covered! Download a free PDF copy of the Huawei Honor 9 user manual here.
Huawei backs up the Honor 9 with a 1 Year parts & labour warranty.
If your Honor 9 has problems and is still within its warranty period, you could contact Huawei support or the retailer you purchased the phone from. You'll find Huawei's contact information here. If your phone is off warranty and needs repair for a physical problem such as a broken screen or bad battery, you should visit an authorized service centre or a local phone repair shop. You can also connect with others in The Informr Community Forum to find and share answers to questions.
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