One of the newest Honor smartphones available in the Philippine market is the Honor 9X. Though we’re already spoiled with pop-up cameras by other mobile brands, it’s refreshing to see that Honor finally dropped a phone that sports this feature, delivering a notch-less full-screen display.
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| Honor 9X Review: Your Next 'Xtraordinary' Phone? |
The Honor 9X also boasts impressive features that make it competent at its price point. Thinking of getting a new phone? Read our review to see if the Honor 9X is really worth considering. Let’s start!
PHYSICAL:
The Honor 9X looks expensive despite its affordable price tag – thanks to its glass body and aluminum framing. Consumers can get it in two color variants: Sapphire Blue and Midnight Black. The latter is perfect for users who prefer simpler device, while the former matches those who want to standout.
Our team received the Sapphire Blue model, which has a flashy appearance as its back flaunts an X pattern called Dynamic X design. The pattern becomes more visible when light strikes on it, too. What we also like about the handset is that its body didn’t attract much fingerprints and smudges when we used it without a protective case.
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| Sapphire Blue |
Having a huge body, its curved back allows us to hold the device with a solid grip, although one-hand usage isn’t really advisable.
Its front, on the other hand, is dominated by a huge 6.59-inch notch-less screen. But unlike its competitors, it still has slightly thick bezels and chin. We’ll talk more about its display later.
Meanwhile, its right side accommodates its power/lock button and volume keys, while its left portion is unoccupied. Its mic and card tray are located on top, while its main mic, speaker, 3.5mm audio jack and USB-C port are sited at the bottom.
Its back panel houses its triple rear cameras, LED flash, fingerprint scanner, and its branding.
DISPLAY:
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| 6.59-inch FHD+ display |
Honor equipped the 9X with an immersive 6.59-inch screen with an FHD+ 2340 x 1080 resolution. The device offers an impressive 91% screen-to-body ratio, made possible by its pop-up camera mechanism. This allows users to enjoy watching videos without getting distracted by a notch or hole-punch camera.
The Honor 9X can elevate your viewing experience, as it features accurate colors. Details are sharp, too. However, there were instances when we had a hard time using it outdoors under direct sunlight. It’s still manageable, though.
SOFTWARE:
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| Android 9 Pie with EMUI 9.1.1 |
The Honor 9X is loaded with Android 9 Pie OS with EMUI 9.1.1 skin on top. Consumers don’t have to worry because it supports Google services, hence, you can easily download your usual apps like Google, Gmail, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and more. Speaking of, it comes with numbers of pre-installed applications, including Google native apps.
Meanwhile, similar to other EMUI devices, the 9X has no app drawer. So, you have to create folders if you want to organize your apps in its home screen. Navigating the phone, on the other hand, is easy while its interface is also clean and simple.
In terms of its security option, Honor settles for a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner, which is fine considering its price. It is responsive throughout our test, too. It’s just unfortunate that it has no Face Unlock for a more secure experience.
PERFORMANCE:
The Honor 9X is powered by a Kirin 710F processor complemented with Mali-G51 MP4 graphics, 6GB RAM, and 128GB expandable storage. We didn’t expect much about its performance, but of course, we assumed that it would work fine throughout the test. To give us a preview, we ran it on various benchmark apps, and here are the results:
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| Benchmark Scores |
- AnTuTu – 185,944
- PCMark Work 2.0 Performance – 5,793
- 3DMark – 887 (Sling Shot Extreme – OpenGL ES 3.1)
- Geekbench – 318 (single core)
- Geekbench – 1,319 (multi core)
The Honor 9X can give off decent performance when handling heavy mobile activities, such as multitasking and gaming. It can run games like Call of Duty Mobile, PUBG, and Mobile Legends, but we noticed that it lagged several times as it worked best at lowest graphics level.
If you won’t mind its gaming performance, we could say that it’s still a capable phone. It didn’t freeze when we’re switching from one app to another, noting that multiple apps were running on the background. Moreover, we never had a problem using it as our main driver, which is tapped for basic communications, continuous social media browsing, and light gaming.
CAMERA:
Honor geared the 9X with a triple rear camera setup, consisting of a 48-megapixel main shooter, 8-megapixel ultra-wide lens, and 2-megapixel sensor. For selfies, it is banking on a 16-megapixel pop-up snapper.
Sample Photos:
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| Indoor |
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| Outdoor |
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| Food |
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| Macro |
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| Standard |
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| Wide |
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| Selfie |
The 48-megapixel sensor only works in Pro mode, hence, you’d just get 12-megapixel images when shooting standard photos. To be honest, its camera performance is quite underwhelming for its specs on paper but it’s still acceptable.
On portrait mode, its main camera can do better than its selfie snapper. Ultra-wide shots, on the other hand, really allowed users to include more frame but photos became distorted because of its fish-eye effect. Night mode produced images with visible noises, too.
Nevertheless, its default mode has decent quality, which can be social media-ready as well. With good lighting, images are fine with vibrant colors and deep contrast.
See Also: Honor 20 Lite Now In Stores Nationwide For Php9,990
CONNECTIVITY:
The Honor 9X comes with basic connectivity features, including 4G LTE, Bluetooth 5.0, GPS, and WiFi. All these functioned well during our tests, plus we also never had a problem dealing with our signal reception. Its GPS is accurate, too.
Other connectivity features include its 3.5mm audio jack, and USB-C port.
BATTERY:
Honor armed the 9X with a large 4,000mAh battery. Tapped as our main driver, the device could run for almost 11 hours before it reached its low battery percentage. As a background, our daily mobile activities include basic communications, heavy social media browsing, and casual gaming.
Unfortunately, the device has no fast charging solution. With this, it took us almost two hours to fully charge the phone.
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| Honor 9X |
VERDICT:
The Honor 9X is a good device to consider if you don’t usually play games with heavy graphics. At its price point, there are numbers of handsets with better camera performance than the 9X, too.
However, for people who love watching videos, the Honor 9X can surely elevate your viewing experience – thanks to its full screen display. It can also accompany you on your daily mobile tasks as it has a long battery life.
Moreover, the Honor 9X has a solid body with a premium-like design.
Consumers can score the Honor 9X for only Php12,490.
So, are you getting one? Let us know what you think in the comment section below.
Honor 9X Specs (Philippines):
- Dual SIM, supports LTE connectivity
- 6.59-inch IPS FHD+ (2340 x 1080) capacitive touchscreen
- Dimensions: 163.1 x 77.2 x 8.8mm
- Weight: 206 grams
- Android 9.0 Pie with EMUI 9.1
- 2.2GHz 64-bit octa-core CPU, Kirin 710F chip, Mali-G51 MP4 GPU
- GPU Turbo 3
- 6GB RAM
- 128GB storage, expandable up to 512GB
- 48MP f/1.8 + 8MP ultrawide + 2MP f/2.4 depth dual rear cameras
- 16MP f/2.2 front camera
- Multimedia Player
- 3.5mm audio jack
- WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
- Bluetooth 4.2 LE
- USB-C with OTG function
- Sensors: accelerometer, light, orientation, proximity, gyroscope, sound, magnetic, pressure
- Fingerprint sensor
- Battery: 4,000mAh non-removable
- Colors: Sapphire Blue, Midnight Black
- Price: Php12,490