PRICE WHEN REVIEWED
- Price TBC
HONOR 9 LITE REVIEW: HANDS-ON
There’s not let up in the smartphone market and Honor is moving on with yet another new handset to tempt those looking for a stylish phone and a moderate price. Here we take a close look at the Honor 9 Lite in our hands-on review.
Honor’s range can get a little confusing especially when you include Huawei, the firm’s parent company, devices into the mix.
So the Honor 9 Lite sounds like a cut down version of the excellent Honor 9 and while it is to some extent, it’s also a sort of mini or light edition of the Honor View 10 thanks to its 18:9 screen.
However, the device is closest – almost identical in fact – to the Huawei P Smart which has just launched on Vodafone. Honor’s version, though, will be a great way of picking up the same phone on a contract-free basis.
PRICE AND AVAILABILITY
Honor is known for making attractive phones with decent specs for a fraction of the price compared to rivals.
We were a little bit worried at first as although the Honor 9 is £399, it’s already available for under £300 so there was a chance the Lite version wouldn’t be much cheaper.
However, Honor has confirmed the official price as £199 which makes it fit into the budget range of the market. Very impressive stuff.
You can buy the phone starting 9 February in the UK from Honor and selected retailers including John Lewis, Amazon and Carphone Warehouse.
DESIGN AND BUILD
There’s no design overhaul when it comes to the Honor 9 Lite. It does indeed look like the Honor 9, one of our favourite mid-range phones ever, so uses the now familiar combination of glass and aluminium.
Honor’s current range of phones are very glossy and eye-catching thanks to the glass front and rear covers and the signature blue colour. The ‘mirror-like’ finish – on the blue and grey models – might be attractive in photos but quickly gets grubby with fingerprints and the like.
In design it actually looks like a successor to the Honor 9 due to a move to an 18:9 screen which is all the rage these days. That’s why it also looks similar to the Honor View 10 which is bigger.
That said, Honor has moved the fingerprint scanner to the back instead of squeezing it in below the display. This is pretty usual for an 18:9 smartphone and the sensor is neatly placed in the middle and away from the cameras.
The new screen means the Honor 9 Lite is a little taller than the regular model. It’s marginally thicker at 7.6mm but it’s actually lighter by 6g at 149g.
In the UK, the Honor 9 Lite is available in Sapphire blue, Midnight black and Glacier grey.
SPECS AND FEATURES
As mentioned already, the Honor 9 Lite is something of a combination of existing phones. Much is similar to the regular Honor 9 but the even cheaper newbie has the same 18:9 style screen available on the View 10.
That screen is 5.65in so it sits between the 9 and View 10 in terms of size. It’s a big screen considering the physical size of the handset. The resolution slightly higher than the 9 at Full HD+ 2160×1080 to accommodate the 18:9 aspect ratio and retain the 428ppi pixel density.
Overall the IPS screen is very nice offering decent brightness, an ‘eye comfort’ mode and the softer colours of an LCD panel. We’re very impressed for a phone at under £200.
It’s no surprise that the Honor 9 Lite has a lower grade processor than its compadres, with a Kirin 659 – as used in the Honor 7X – instead of the flagship level 960 or 970. It’s still an octa-core chip with decent speeds though and we’ve found it smooth enough after some hands-on time.
Other spec cuts are expected but getting 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage is perfectly acceptable and enough for most people buying a phone in this range. And there’s always the microSD card slot if you need to add more storage – up to 256GB more.
Using a memory card will take up the second SIM slot but this won’t bother most users. The Honor 9 Lite features LTE connectivity, NFC, 11ac Wi-Fi (on 5GHz) and GPS.
It doesn’t have the more modern reversible USB-C port but does have the more and more elusive headphone jack.
The fingerprint scanner on the back works well and can be used for various things other than unlocking the phone. These include taking photos, answering calls, stopping alarms, browsing photos and pulling the notification panel down.
Apart from having a ‘FullView’ display, Honor is really selling the 9 Lite on the basis that it has no less than four cameras. You’ll find a combination of 13- and 2Mp camera on the front and back.
Each pair works together to provide what’s commonly known as a portrait mode, where the 13Mp sensor captures the detail while the low resolution sensor is there for depth effect. Although the rear cameras are the same, they feature HDR and phase detection auto focus.
A few sample photos look decent enough but we’re not convinced just yet so come back once we’ve tested them out properly.
It’s understandable there’s nothing like wireless charging here and even no USB-C. There’s a 3,000mAh battery which is about average and Honor promises a whole day of usage. Some fast charging would be nice but perhaps that’s too much to ask at under £200.
SOFTWARE AND APPS
It’s great to see that the Honor 9 Lite comes with Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box. That’s the latest version which many of last year’s phones, even the Galaxy S8, haven’t been updated to yet.
Honor adds Huawei’s EMUI 8.0 on-top which used to be a big issue but the overlay has been improved over time.
These days it’s closer to stock, simpler and easier to use. You get the Google Now panel a swipe away from the homescreen, gorgeous lockscreen images that change every time you unlock and the option to customise the phone’s Theme.
On the downside, there are a few too many pre-installed apps including no less than six games and by default there’s no app draw. Luckily you can easily switch it on in the settings.
SPECS
Honor 9 Lite: Specs
- Android 8.0 Oreo with EMUI 8.0
- 5.65in Full HD+ 2160×1080 18:9 touchscreen, 428ppi
- Kirin 6590 octa-core processor (4×2.4GHz, 4×1.7GHz)
- 3GB RAM
- 32GB storage
- microSD card slot (up to 256GB)
- Dual lens rear camera – 13Mp + 2Mp, video up to 1080p
- Dual lens front camera – 13Mp + 2Mp
- Fingerprint sensor
- 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi
- Bluetooth 4.2 4G LTE
- Headphone jack
- Dual nano-SIM (uses SD slot)
- Micro-USB
- 3000mAh non-removable battery
- 72x151x7.6mm
- 149g
SHOULD I BUY HONOR 9 LITE?
The Honor 9 Lite might not have all the mod cons but it’s one of the cheapest phones around to offer an 18:9 screen with a bezel-free design. It’s an attractive phone and general specs are good, including no less than four cameras. At under £200 this could be the new best budget phone so come back for a full review soon.
Source: techadvisor.co.uk