Honor 9 Lite debuted in India a few weeks ago on the back of a lot of hype, thanks to its quad-camera feature, sparkling shiny looks and an enviable price tag, and your inbox is flooded with nicely-worded promotions that celebrate its flash sale successes. So, what’s the big deal about? Does the phone live up to the hype?
The first thing that catches your eye while unboxing the phone is its shiny look, especially the mirror effect on the back courtesy the glass surface. This is quite impressive and adds a premium feel to the whole form factor. But the glossy-finish body is extremely slippery and unless you have a back case, you’ll end up breaking the glass.
The Honor 9 Lite measures 14.4cm (5.65”) with Honor’s FullView FHD+ IPS panel. The 2160x1080 resolution is quite sharp and delivers an enriching experience while playing HD, 4K videos. To be fair, Honor is known for its quality displays and the 9 Lite is no exception. Also, keeping in line with the trend, Honor 9 Lite offers 18:9 screen ratio, which makes video viewing and photo operations fairly wholesome. The screen, however, is not so fingerprint-free and you may need a better screen guard to keep it clean. The touch response is smooth and urgent enough.
The Honor 9 Lite has the fingerprint sensor at its back. The feature works fast enough to provide a smooth authentication experience. In fact, we feel the sensor works much faster than many other phones in the same price range. You can use the sensor for clicking photos, to answer calls, snooze the alarm, surf through photos and even launch the notification bar. Most impressively, these gesture functions work with all fingers, not only the registered ones.
The most-promoted feature in Honor 9 Lite is the camera set. The device has four lenses — two each (13 MP and 2 MP) at the front and the back. In daylight, the rear-camera photos come out extremely rich, especially in HDR and bokeh modes. Even indoors, on flash, the pictures give superb clarity and pleasing saturation. But the lenses struggle a bit in low-light environments. If you are looking for photos to share on social media, these are just fine, but if you want slightly high-res and crisp shots, Honor 9 Lite may disappoint you a bit. When you zoom the low-light photos, the edges seem noisy and blurred. The video department is a surprise though, especially the object tracking function. It works suitably well and can be a boon for amateur video album-makers and those who keep video records of their kids’ activities.
The front-camera lives up to Honor’s legacy when it comes to taking stills as well as videos. The lenses fine-tune images so well that you rarely use editing faculties to touch them up. This is arguably one of the best selfie-cameras in the market in this price-band. And, the videos taken using the selfie camera are as good as the ones that come out of the rear camera. The way the front lenses tackle changes in light sources and ambient lighting is congratulatory.
The audio is, perhaps, the most under-rated feature of this phone. The Honor 9 Lite gives out crisp, noise-free audio and the voice doesn’t break even at high-volume renderings. The audio experience is quite surround and stereo even though there is just one speaker grille at the bottom. The call quality is very good and the audio recording faculty does laudable work.
If you’re an Honor enthusiast, you can spot some of the regular Honor specs in the 9 Lite as well, such as Huawei’s own Kirin processor, IPS display and so on. The 9 Lite is powered by the octa-core Kirin 659 processor. The phone supports FM radio, Bluetooth 4.2, single-band Wi-Fi b/g/n, 4G with VoLTE, USB-OTG and so on. The Honor 9 Lite comes in 3 GB, 32 GB and 4 GB, 64 GB variants. The storage can be expanded up to 256 GB using a micro-SD card.
The overall performance is largely glitch-free. The device remains cool even during heavy gaming or similar weighty operations. Multi-tasking is executed without much lag and the battery performance is (despite porting a not-so-great 3,000 mAh non-removable bar) above average. In fact, the phone’s stand-by performance is one of the best in the class. The dual-SIM phone runs on Android 8.0, weighs 149.00 grams and comes in three colours — midnight black, sapphire blue and glacier blue.
Price: ₹10,999 (32 GB) and ₹14,999 (64 GB)
Pros: Video recording, highres display, premium looks
Cons: Slippery and heavier than usual body, poor lowlight still photography