The price of Honor 9N in India starts from Rs 11,999. Its direct competitor is Asus ZenFone Max Pro M1, Oppo Realme 1 ,Review) And Moto G6 ,Review) is similar to the handset. Does this new Honor smartphone have the power to make its mark in the budget segment? Let’s find out…
Honor 9N Design
At first glance, the design of the Honor 9N attracts attention first. The back panel is made of glass and comes with a glossy finish. The horizontal dual camera does not protrude beyond the surface of the back panel. The antenna line is hidden. Due to these reasons, the back panel looks very clean.
The 5.84 inch display has a notch at the top which is quite small. There is no doubt that there is no consensus among customers about the display notch. Therefore, Honor has also given the option to hide the display notch in the settings menu. Actually, with its help, users can darken the area around the notch.
The smartphone is very compact. It is made for one-handed use. The curved edges and curved sides make the device feel good in the hands. But it also slips easily. Fingerprints are also visible on it due to the glossy glass back. The build quality is commendable. The phone feels strong in the hands. It fell several times during the review, but nothing happened to it.
The fingerprint sensor on the rear is fast and accurate. It can be used to take pictures, answer phone calls and slide out the notification panel. The good news is that these gestures can be performed using any finger, not just the one that has been registered for the security of the device.
The left side of the Honor 9N has a slot for the SIM tray. Here you have to choose between a second nano SIM and a microSD card. The right side has the volume and power buttons. These are a little smaller than we would have liked, but they are easy to reach.
There is a micro-USB port at the bottom of the phone. Along with this there is also a 3.5mm headphone jack and a loud speaker. It was disappointing to not see a USB Type-C port for data transfer and charging. Now USB Type-C port has started becoming popular and it is time that Honor should make this hardware feature a part of its budget handsets.
Honor 9N Specifications and Display
Honor 9N uses Honor’s trusted Kirin 659 processor. This is the same processor Honor 7X ,Review), Honor 9 Lite, Honor 9i ,Review) has also been used. The smartphone has three variants that touch different price segments. The starting variant is with 3 GB RAM and 32 GB storage, which is priced at Rs 11,999. We have reviewed the variant priced at Rs 13,999 which comes with 4 GB RAM and 64 GB storage. The third variant of the phone is priced at Rs 17,999 which comes with 4 GB RAM and 128 GB storage. Let us tell you that in the first sale on July 31, the 4 GB RAM and 64 GB storage variant of Honor 9N will be available. The company has not yet said anything about the availability of other variants.
Honor 9N has a 3,000mAh battery. It runs on EMUI 8.0 based on Android 8.0 Oreo. For connectivity, the handset includes Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, GLONASS, 4G VoLTE, Micro-USB port and 3.5mm headphone jack. There is no support for NFC. Two SIMs can be used at a time, but only one will work on 4G network.
The Honor 9N sports a 5.84-inch full-HD+ IPS display with a 19:9 aspect ratio. The front panel is dominated by the screen. But it is not a completely borderless screen. There is still a lot of bezel at the bottom. The display is one of the key features of this phone. The viewing angles are very accurate and the panel is bright, vivid and punchy. The 19:9 aspect ratio improves the gaming and multimedia experience.
Honor 9N performance, software and battery life
The Kirin 659 processor is a bit old. It cannot challenge the Qualcomm mid-range processors launched today in terms of power and capability. The Honor 9N handles normal tasks easily, such as web browsing and social media applications. But it lags when put under pressure. With many apps open in the background or dozens of tabs open in Chrome, we did miss the slightly weak processor. We often felt keyboard lag. During the review, the phone also slowed down at times. In today’s times, budget phones are becoming more powerful, so the slowdown of the Honor 9N is disappointing. In our experience, games like Subway Surfers ran fine. But there were complaints of frame rate drops in games like Asphalt 8.
The smartphone did get warm when pressure was applied, but not enough to cause discomfort. Call quality was crisp and clear. 4G connectivity was also very strong. The Honor 9N supports face recognition and this is done through the 16-megapixel front camera. It works fine in most situations. In good light, it unlocks the phone quickly. But it struggles in direct sunlight and insufficient light.
Honor 9N runs on Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box. Huawei EMUI 8.0 custom skin is used on top of it. At present, there is no information about giving Android P update to this phone. EMUI now gives much better response compared to the older version. Huawei claims that EMUI 8.0 version is 60 percent faster than EMUI 5.1. But it is still not as fast as stock Android or Oxygen OS.
Apps like Facebook Messenger, Truecaller and Netflix come preinstalled on the phone. The good news is that these can be uninstalled. To be honest, the number of unwanted apps on the Honor 9N is disappointing.
Like the Honor 9 Lite, the battery life of this Honor phone is very average. In our HD video loop test, the battery of the Honor 9N lasted for 8 hours and 40 minutes. This is also below the average performance of this market segment. In normal use, we found that the phone needed charging by 9-10 pm. Here by usage we mean running Google Maps for two-three hours, being active on social media apps like WhatsApp, Twitter and Instagram throughout the day, playing Asphalt 8 game for some time and occasionally using the camera for selfies and videos. There is no fast charging support. The phone’s battery takes about two and a half hours to fully charge.
Honor 9N cameras
Honor 9N has a dual rear camera setup. The primary sensor is 13 megapixels and the secondary sensor is 2 megapixels. LED flash is also provided. There is a 16 megapixel sensor on the front panel.
The camera app is designed intelligently. It also has a Pro mode where users get to control shutter speed, ISO, exposure, aperture and white balance. The AR stickers are fun and a great way to kill time. It can be used with both the front and rear cameras.
In proper lighting, the rear camera takes better than average quality photos. Photos come with decent detail and colours are also accurate. In wide aperture mode, you can set the aperture between (f/0.95 – f/13). This can be done before or after taking pictures. However, looking at the pictures taken in wide aperture mode, it seems like an attempt at Photoshop gone wrong. The pictures are not even of average quality. Edge detection was very average.
The camera performance is very poor in low light. Photos lack details and appear overly sharp. Noise is also visible and the phone is slow to focus. The front camera is also in a similar situation. It lags in low light but takes decent photos in adequate lighting. There is also a beauty mode that offers 10 levels of beautification and it works well. You can also take bokeh shots with the front camera. This is possible through software algorithms. Photos in this mode are of very average quality and the blur effect does not work many times.
You will be able to record videos up to 1080 pixels resolution with both the front and rear cameras. The quality of the recorded videos is quite average and the lack of detail is clearly visible, especially at night. The footage looks shaky due to the lack of electronic image stabilization.
Our verdict
The Honor 9N is a compact smartphone that comes with a vibrant display, a new design and Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box. The colour variants are very interesting, especially the Robin Egg Blue. On the other hand, the battery life is very average. The performance is also below average. The EMUI seems a bit messy and the cameras disappoint in low light.
If you want a sleek phone with a good display, then the starting variant of Honor 9N will prove to be a good deal. The other variants are a bit more expensive and we cannot recommend them to you. If you are looking for a phone in this price segment then Redmi Note 5 Pro ,Review) is a great all-rounder device and the Asus ZenFone Max Pro M1 is a total bargain. Oppo’s Realme 1 is also a good option. It comes with a more powerful processor, but lacks a fingerprint sensor.