Honor 9 Lite review

Honor and Huawei want to cover every market segment with a large number of devices. Honor didn’t have a particularly cheap medium range phone in its lineup so here comes the Honor 9 Lite, the brother of the Huawei P Smart (Check on Amazon.com).

Read more: Huawei P Smart 2019 review: larger, smarter and more beautiful

Package

Inside the package, we find a 5V/2A power adapter and a USB/micro-USB cable.

Build and Ergonomics

The Honor 9 Lite is a beautiful smartphone. This is probably on its own a great reason to choose it. It has a matte metal frame, while the back is made of a glossy and quite reflective glass. The design is similar to that of the Honor 9 and that in this price range it is practically unheard of. This smartphone has a more sought after look than all of its competitors. In hand, the device is well-balanced thanks to its weight (149 grams) and a profile that isn’t slippery. It is very slippery, however, when you put it on its back, so be careful.

Hardware

The hardware is basically identical to that of its bigger brother the Honor 9. We have a 2.36GHz HiSilicon Kirin 659 octa-core processor, with a Mali T830 MP2 GPU, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal memory, expandable via microSD. The smartphone is also a dual SIM, but you will have to choose between a secondary SIM or a microSD card since the slot is shared. Connectivity-wise we find: LTE up to 150 Mbps, Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.2 and NFC. It also sports FM radio. The fingerprint reader is placed on the back, it is easily reachable and unlocks the phone very quickly. The speaker is located at the bottom of the phone and it’s average at best.

Cameras

The Honor 9 Lite is equipped with two dual 13-megapixel cameras, both accompanied by a second 2-megapixel camera, whose sole purpose is to calculate the depth of the scene at the moment of the shot, in order to apply a blur or other effects. The quality of the photos is average, but for many buyers of such a cheap smartphone, it will probably be even more than what they would expect. Image quality and shooting speed are good. We were just a little disappointed by the color rendering which was a little bit inaccurate.

The videos are also above average and the same goes for the front-facing camera.

Display

The Honor 9 Lite is equipped with a large 5,65″ IPS display that has an 18:9 format which allows for better use of space. The resolution is Full HD+ (2160×1080 pixels). You can also scale down the resolution to save a bit of battery. The brightness is good and the automatic adjustment works quite well.

Software

The Honor 9 Lite runs Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box with the EMUI 8.0 custom skin on top. It is not the most snappy phone in circulation, but for the price, we can’t complain at all.

Autonomy

The 3000mAh battery does its job really well. You will be able to arrive at the end of the day with average usage.

Final verdict

The Honor 9 Lite in its price range is the best buy. Not only does it have all the merits of other mid-range smartphones, but it is definitely one of the best looking in its segment.