Honor 9 Lite review – in pictures
Could this be the smartphone steal of 2018?
Honor 9 Lite review – in pictures
Getting the latest, greatest tech in a phone is supposed to cost a bomb, right? Not much good if you’re on a tight budget. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The Honor 9 Lite is the latest in a long line of budget blowers, following on from the Honor 9 and View 10. Just take a look at the Lite’s spec sheet: it has quad cameras, an 18:9 screen and a glass back – that’s a total steal for under £200/US$290.
Honor 9 Lite design: glassy goodness
The Honor 9 Lite is one of just a few budget phones that could pass for a far more expensive handset. Well, as long as you don’t let anyone look too close. That’s glass on both the front and back – not Gorilla Glass, admittedly, but it’s still some form of toughened glass that shouldn’t scratch too easily. There’s also a light curve at the edges of both panels, to make the Honor 9 Lite feel premium.
Honor 9 Lite design: slim stuff
The back is like a mirror. A blue mirror, in this case. The 9 Lite is one of the flashiest budget phones around. Think that blue is a bit too flashy? The grey version should look slightly less eye-catching. It’s not just about the glass, either. The Honor 9 Lite is also dead slim at 7.6mm thick, and while the 5.65in screen sounds big, the phone is only about as wide as a Galaxy S6. It’s a delight.
Honor 9 Lite design: cheap but classy
The plastic sides are a giveaway this isn’t really an expensive phone – a pricier handset would use metal. The Lite still feels classy, though, and if you’re asking for true flagship at this price, you’re asking for too much. For example, there’s no water resistance – but you do get a fingerprint scanner on the back.
Honor 9 Lite display: stunning surprise
The Lite’s screen style is where Honor has blazed ahead of most of the competition. It’s an 18:9 aspect display, filling almost the whole front of the phone with Android-y goodness. Colours aren’t quite as rich as those of a phone like that, mind. But they are still good, sitting somewhere between neutral and the deep, oversaturated look most more expensive phones aim for.
Honor 9 Lite software: slight stutter
Honor’s custom Android treatment is where a few of you may peel off. That’s because the 9 Lite runs Android 8.0 underneath the EMUI interface, which is also found in other Honor and Huawei phones. Mercifully, EMUI 8.0 is far better than the older versions. The whole system looks pretty good and it’s mostly quick, too. Every now and then we noticed the odd stutter, but nothing we think should put you off a buy.
Honor 9 Lite performance: almost flawless
The Honor 9’s Kirin 659 CPU is made by parent company Huawei, and has eight Cortex-A53 cores that actually outperforms its obvious Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered rivals. Not everything smells of roses, though. Play a demanding game like Asphalt 8 at max settings and you’ll see the frame rate isn’t quite as smooth as it is in the Moto G5S Plus.
Honor 9 Lite battery & storage: par for the course
3GB of RAM for multitasking, 32GB of on-board storage and microSD expansion for adding more capacity later are all on the money, while the 3000mAh battery is par for the course, too. This phone won’t last two days between charges, but it does last a solid day unless you hammer it. It’ll handle a good bit of Facebook life-sucking, a few hours of podcast streams and your WhatsApp obsession without dying before you leave work.
Honor 9 Lite cameras: four for luck
For a relatively cheap phone, the Honor 9 Lite has a big boast: it’s Europe’s first quad-camera phone. There are two on the back, and two on the front. These are used for “bokeh” or shallow depth of field photos. The second camera makes a depth map of a scene, letting the Honor 9 Lite blur-out the background. The secondary sensors are quite low-quality and it can’t cope with complicated objects. Still, having the option is neat.
Honor 9 Lite cameras: good in daylight
Daylight photos are pretty good. The main camera has a 13-megapixel sensor, and it’s not a rubbish one. There’s a decent amount of detail for an entry-level phone, shooting is fast and the camera app makes great use of automatic HDR optimisation to bring out shadow detail and avoid overexposure.
Honor 9 Lite verdict: budget brilliance
Plenty of style and enough hardware substance make this the phone to get in early 2018 if you want a modern-looking budget handset. The Honor 9 Lite’s graphics chip isn’t powerful enough to make high-end games quite as fast as some other similarly priced handsets, but this is still one of the best budget phones to buy if you want something that looks and feels up-to-date.
