Honor 9N review: Mid-range device with premium design, average performance

The Honor 9N shares its technical specifications with other Honor budget smartphones. However, in terms of design and features, the phone offers a refreshing new experience.

Honor, the online sub-brand of the Chinese smartphone maker Huawei, has been aggressively pushing its new smartphones in India. As a result, the company recently becamme one of the fastest-growing smartphone brands in the country, according to the Counterpoint research. A new addition to the company’s budget smartphone portfolio, the Honor 9N, sports a notch-based screen, a first for the company’s budget profile. However, there is more to the phone than just the new screen format.

The Honor 9N sports a premium glass design, dual rear cameras and a modern 19:9 aspect ratio notch-based screen. Importantly, the phone comes in three RAM and storage configurations – 3GB/32GB, 4GB/64GB and 4GB/128GB. It shares its technical specifications with other Honor budget smartphones, but in terms of design and features, it offers a refreshing new experience.

Design and display

The Honor 9N takes design cues from its flagship sibling, the Honor 10. The phone’s front and back are covered with glass, with subtle curved sides that move into a metallic chassis. The back glass is reflective in nature and takes some of the colour-changing properties from the Honor 10. However, it is not as profound as seen in the premium sibling.

The front of the smartphone is dominated by a 5.84-inch notch-based fullHD+ screen. However, even with a big screen, the phone’s form factor is compact and it feels light in hand and comfortable to carry in pocket. The phone’s back has a fingerprint scanner at the upper centre and dual cameras, with an LED flash, on the extreme top left. Interestingly, the camera unit does not bulge out much – it did in the Honor View10 – and fits right inside the frame, improving the phone’s design quotient.

Speaking of the screen, it produces sharp colours and ample brightness to stay legible under direct sunlight. The touch response is good and there seems to be no issue with calibration. The screen contrast also remains sharp which makes it suitable for multimedia content consumption.

Performance
The Honor 9N is powered by Kirin 659 system-on-chip, which is a default choice of processor in most Honor budget smartphones. The processor seems to have aged now but still has the potential to keep things going the right way. It manages to run day-to-day tasks with ease, and manages to get along well with processor-intensive apps and games.

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Honor 9N India launch today: Watch live stream, know expected price, specs

The Honor 9N would sport an optimised notch-based screen and 2.5D curved glass design with 12-layer Nano coating on the back for a mirror-like effect.

Honor, the online subsidiary of Chinese smartphone manufacturer Huawei, is all set to launch the Honor 9N in India on July 24. The Flipkart-exclusive smartphone would sport an optimised notch-based screen and 2.5D curved glass design with 12-layer Nano coating on the back for a mirror-like effect.

The Honor 9N is reported to be a renamed version of the Honor 9i, launched in China some time ago. In terms of specifications and features, the Honor 9N is expected to sport a 5.84-inch fullHD+ notch-based screen stretched in a 19:9 aspect ratio. The phone would be powered by Kirin 659 system-on-chip (SoC), paired with 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of internal storage. This is the same processor that has been used in most of Honor’s budget smartphones, including the Honor 9 Lite, Honor 7X and Honor 9i (Indian version).

However, the Honor 9N processor might support Huawei’s recently announced GPU Turbo technology, which the company claims to boost graphic performance by up to 60 per cent and processor efficiency by 30 per cent.

In terms of imaging, the Honor 9N would have a dual camera set-up on the back and a single-camera unit on the front for selfies. The rear cameras would feature a 13-megapixel primary sensor mated with a 2MP depth-sensing lens. The selfie camera would feature a 16MP lens, which would also double up as a biometric utility for the face-unlock mechanism. Powering the device would be a 3,000 mAh battery.

As for the price, the Honor 9N is expected to be priced somewhere between Rs 12,000 and Rs 18,000. However, this is a speculative price and the official price, sale information and colour details would be added soon after the launch.

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