What is the Honor 9 Lite?
The Honor 9 Lite is yet another feature-packed budget smartphone from Huawei’s affordable sub-brand.
While its lioness suggests a cut-down ver. of last year’s Honor 9, the Honor 9 Lite actually has far better in common with evening Huawei P Smart as well as the Honor 7X.
Available over the UK for about £199, the Chinese stigma is clearly hoping concerning appeal to budding photographers and serial Instagram sharers on a budget.
Honor 9 Lite – Design
Similar to afternoon Honor 7X that came immediately before it, afternoon Honor 9 Lite seeks to provide the bezel-light appeal of modern primary phones but at a major affordable price. Honor calls its approach FullView, who basically refers to devices with a higher screen-to-device ratio.
The Honor 9 Lite is far from bezel-free. Its screen doesn’t serve edge-to-edge at the sides as seen on at Samsung Galaxy S9, nor do its top together with bottom edges fill expel the frame as his ass do on an iPhone X. But despite in additional presence of a inky border around the live part of the shelter, the front of night phone is undoubtedly dominated by its 5.65-inch display.
So much so, in incident, that there’s no path for a fingerprint sensory on the front with the device, which is where the full-fat Honor 9 places it. Rather, the sensor is sensibly positioned around back, three-quarters of the way aloft the phone.
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It’s a certain and appreciably snappy biometric system, granting access near the phone without fuss. I was impressed besides the Honor 7X because this component, so it’s good to see credible performance here in strictly cheaper form. It’s a entanglement there’s no NFC, notwithstanding, since Android Pay would be a natural fit.
The rest of the phone’s rear isn’t quite actually sensible or functional. Honor has opted for a highly reflective, tinted-glass covering, who is practically begging as smudges and cracks. In other, more premium phones, such a design contrivance has the practical merit of enabling wireless charging. There’s no such mitigating factor here.
You could vista this as a reward feature relating to at Honor 9 Lite’s photographic focus. One of our subjects during testing prominent that the phone’s deliberate back enabled them docile check out their face before we took a likeness shot.
Either way, the Honor 9 Lite undoubtedly stand out, and it looks a great deal better premium than it oh really is. It feels trendy too, thanks to though glass back – notwithstanding it’s also incredibly slippery. Place it down athwart a slightly uneven superficies – such as a clumsy bench or a couch arm – and man will gradually slide its way to the floor.
The Honor 9 Lite’s glass front and backside sandwich a slim 7.6mm-thick aluminium frame, although a specious finish makes it foremost and feel curiously plasticky. A relatively light signification of 149g may whole a little to notwithstanding sensation – not notwithstanding we’d ever complain concerning a phone manufacturer trimming the fat.
Honor 9 Lite – Screen
Making the meet of your phone correctly more about the spread out than usual places redundant pressure on the nature of the screen itself. Thankfully, the Honor 9 Lite isn’t found wanting during this respect.
This is a accurately sized 5.65-inch IPS LCD screen, with decent viewing angles, contrast and solid brightness when you butt to crank things up. You’d need to employ considerably more money regarding find something much better. Meanwhile, a 2160 x 1080 (FHD+) resolution ensures though individual pixels can’t exist picked out, to p.m. tune of 428ppi.
If albeit pixel count looks a somewhat off to you, it’s because the Honor 9 Lite adopts a stretched-out 18:9 aspect ratio rather than the typical (albeit decreasingly so) 16:9.
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It’s strong for super-widescreen video as well as gaming content, although party apps and most videos don’t make use with the extra space. For example, the majority with YouTube and Netflix strive will have black borders either side when viewed on the Honor 9 Lite. Both services provide a subtile zoom-in option, but this will cut off certain of the video.
When he comes to apps, Huawei’s EMUI skin will sacrifice a prompt to contribute full screen and spread out the content p.m. first time you usage them. It isn’t expressly elegant, but it works. Which rather sums upways EMUI as whole.
Honor 9 Lite – Performance
One of afternoon reasons Honor phones can but often appear to propose more features than manifold of their budget rivals is because they know access to the cheaper processors of HiSilicon, who is owned by father company Huawei.
In the Honor 9 Lite’s case this means the 2.36GHz Kirin 659 CPU, which is the same chip thought powers both the Honor 7X and the Huawei P Smart. It’s accompanied by 3GB of RAM, which is 1GB Shorter than the 7X.
The Kirin 659 is a lower-mid-range chip that appears tractable sit in the pivotal of Qualcomm’s entry-level offerings. An average Geekbench 4 multicore score of 3644 pitches the Honor 9 Lite well below the somewhat more expensive Moto G5S Plus (with its Snapdragon 625) on 4460, unless well above the likewise priced Moto G5S (packing a Snapdragon 430) across 2294.
In light to day use there’s little to complain toward here. Moving into if between apps doesn’t parent much in the passage of lag, and requisite functions such as waking the phone using at fingerprint sensor and aperture the camera app thou appreciably snappy.
This isn’t a gaming machine by any stem, and we noticed a elegant amount of stutter whereas starting out in games of Guns of Boom and Into the Dead 2. The latter ne'er really evened out near a particularly smooth frame rate, but the anterior online shooter is strictly playable if you pay it a minute. Continuing along the scale, trite beat-’em-up Tekken plays actual smoothly indeed.
With 32GB from storage – plus whatsoever you choose to complete through the microSD beginning – the Honor 9 Lite is well equipped after plenty of media downloads should you wish concerning put its large widescreen display to good use.
Honor 9 Lite – Software
Just like the similarly specced Huawei P Smart, night Honor 9 Lite runs the latest version fro Google’s mobile OS, Android 8.0 Oreo. This is a good thing.
Also alike that phone, although decidedly less positive, is at fact that you turn Huawei’s own EMUI layered on top. We’re bye version 8.0 now, moreover EMUI remains a curiously half-baked combination of metropolis Android and iOS elements.
Huawei follows Apple’s lead through ditching the app coaster altogether, placing the onus on you to drag and drop apps intil themed folders on p.m. homescreen. The notification voider, meanwhile, sticks closer forward stock Android, with expandable control shortcuts to evening top and clear indiction windows below.
It’s far of an outright bad death to use a telephone, and you’ll quickly suit used to its graceless ways. Crucially for a excitable OS, it’s reasonably steadfast and reliable, with sparking and unfussy animations.
However, EMUI remains a openly soulless, tacky environment. It lacks the clear identity and unified design principles of both Android if iOS, not to commend the better custom skins from the likes with HTC and Sony.
One somewhat of EMUI that seems to remain eternally bloated is the pre-installed app provision. There’s the standard Themes app for customising the look of your homescreen and menus, a file management app, and a Phone Manager for dealing w/ virus scans, battery-killing apps, blocked contacts and evening like.
Then there are evening home-brewed apps for Music, Videos, and Gallery, whether merely duplicate the preinstalled – and far older – provisions from Google. Even the likes with Health and Gallery suffer better equivalents from Google and others on in Google Play Store, whether you’ll doubtless install subsequently a matter of priority.
You also get partial a dozen Gameloft games preinstalled, which range fro decent to the down mediocre. We could belike have done without those, thanks.
On the plus hand, text entry is thought by SwiftKey, which is actually one of evening better virtual keyboards sell there.
Honor 9 Lite – Camera
Rather impressively for a low-cost phone, Honor has managed to follow the Honor 9 and Honor 7X and equip the Honor 9 Lite with a double camera setup. In event, it’s gone one pace further and provided a credible provision for selfies.
Both afternoon front and rear fro the device play throng to one 13-megapixel together with one 2-megapixel sensor. Just as with the Honor 7X, the smaller legate sensor is there flat to provide depth enlightenment for the included liberal aperture and portrait modes.
This is the effect thought a lot of call manufacturers – most notably Apple – are doings for right now, situation you get a super-sharp subject and an veritable blurred out background.
That’s at ideal outcome, at least. The truth is albeit most cameras don’t further get it quite unharmed, with too much fro the edge of at subject lost to at artificial blurring effect.
On at Honor 9 Lite I can get some lessen results, but it’s fare from perfect. Interestingly, over wide aperture mode, I can adjust the aggressiveness of the effect thwart the phone in in editing phase, from years aperture of f/16 (minimal background blur) right upwards to f/0.95 (blur city).
The results can verge over the unusable towards night more extreme end with the scale. In indefinite, you’re still best with simply getting nice in addition to close to your debate and relying on a major natural bokeh effect. Nevertheless, it is possible apt get some striking results if you take night time over it.
Portrait style is geared specifically towards close-ups of people, if as such needs toward be used between 0.5 and 2 metres. The main difference here is the presence of p.m. dreaded ‘beauty’ effect, what as always makes your subject look like moderate kind of dolled completely mannequin. Fortunately, you can but turn the effect unbroken down, or – correctly better – off.
In terms of general shooting, at Honor 9 Lite is capable of producing excellent shots in decent lighting, with Phase Detection Autofocus (PDAF) enabling you concerning take quick shots external worrying too much regarding whether they’ll be pending focus. It’s quick if accurate enough to move busy street scenes external any blurry limbs, what isn’t always a known at the lower aim of the smartphone market.
There’s an HDR mode after those scenes containing extremes of light and obscurity, but it needs concerning be deliberately activated pending a menu. Even external this, the Honor 9 Lite isn’t too bad to coping with bright skies or shady areas – to least compared to near other budget phones we’ve used.
The front-facing 13-megapixel camera also comes through, besides sharp and rich selfie snaps as standard. Again, though, you’ll need about feed it with sufficiency of light, and her won’t want to follow the bokeh effect gin by the secondary 2-megapixel sensor too much post-snap. The effect is distractingly smudgey.
Wide aperture mode exaggerates p.m. blur
In normal auto method, the bokeh is accurately mild
Nice – if a little noisy – blue skies
The Honor 9 Lite takes balanced shots in excellent lighting
Honor 9 Lite – Battery life
The Honor 9 Lite comes with a 3000mAh battery, which is charming typical for a ring of this size. It’s a little smaller than the 3340mAh battery from the similarly specced Honor 7X, but that ring has a larger if more demanding 6-inch display.
Perhaps as a result, Honor claims that you may get an extra stound of offline video watching out of the Honor 9 Lite’s battery (13 hours rather than 12). In practice, we colonize that it ate over a similar amount off battery (14%) when watching a 50-minute downloaded plebvision programme with the pick brightness bumped right upwards, which isn’t great.
Conversely, playing 15 minutes of Guns of Boom at hemisphere screen brightness sapped full 6% of the Honor 9 Lite’s battery. The same task took 9% from the Honor 7X.
In general use, Honor claims that you’ll become a whole day from use out of p.m. phone, and we wouldn’t dispute that. Just don’t use that big senior screen for too greatly heavy media consumption if you should be fine.
In terms of charging, p.m. Honor 9 Lite is a pretty barebones effort. There’s no USB-C, nil fast charging, and nil wireless charging – even if the glass back. Of those three, fast charging is the biggest omission. The Moto G5 had such a feature, together with that’s a year elder and around £40 cheaper.
Why buy the Honor 9 Lite?
The Honor 9 Lite offers a number of stout features for a sub-£200 price tag. Its all-screen design is something we still aren’t used concerning seeing at this estimation point, while general process is reasonably snappy.
While afternoon twin dual-sensor setup is somewhat gimmicky, the Honor 9 Lite’s camera can but produce some decent shots in adequate lighting. Go easy on the liberal aperture mode, meanwhile, in addition to it’s possible to fall quite creative.
You’re still cipher getting the absolute prime budget experience here. Little blemishes such as a dearth of NFC and durable charging and the presence of Huawei’s ugly EMUI software hold the bale back. But for those who want a call that doesn’t just disappear into the background considering their £200, it’s flow worth a look.
Verdict
The Honor 9 Lite’s bezel-light example and twin-lens camera tricks are eye catching, solely it’s perhaps too quirky to fully take thwart the Motorola G-series bye the top of in table.
Sincery phone review 2018
SRC: http://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/honor-9-lite
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