How to set up the camera and take the perfect selfie on a HUAWEI (honor) smartphone? Honor 9 charging time

Productive, premium and affordable. Is this possible? Yes, if it’s the new Honor 9. We offer a review of a new Chinese smartphone with a claim to flagship characteristics: tests of the processor, display, battery.

Honor, a subsidiary brand of Huawei, has released a new 9th flagship in the line. And although Wylsa speaks very unflatteringly about the brand, Honor 9 turned out to be worthy of competitors even to the top flagship with a huge advantage in a more affordable price. Unlike Honor 8, the ninth reincarnation has become shiny, more powerful and more interesting in terms of filling. GSMArena experts predict that the new Honor will compete with one of the most powerful devices on the market -.

We offer a review of Honor 9 in terms of design, performance, screen and battery life. Traditionally, we start with the main advantages of a smartphone.

Main advantages of Honor 9

In order to create a flagship or simply a powerful smartphone, the Huawei brand does not need to wait for the release of the new Snapdragon. HiSilicon Kirin processors are responsible for the performance of Huawei and Honor smart phones (our comparison with SD). The latest Kirin 960 showed all its power and perfection both in synthetic tests and in practice. At the presentation of Honor 9, viewers were shown a comparative test of the performance of Honor 9 and Samsung Galaxy S8. The Chinese turned out to be more agile in launching applications and responding to user actions.

The main disadvantages of smart:

• The camera is not a Leica
• there is no at least some kind of dust/moisture protection
• no stereo speakers
• no FM radio
• glass - the back cover collects fingerprints, the glass itself is less practical than plastic or aluminum in the case

However, given the cost of the smartphone, the shortcomings seem quite forgivable. After all, the expected cost of Honor 9 (4/64) is only 26,000 rubles or approximately 430USD. This is the price segment of the Samsung A-series, which is inferior to the new Huawei flagship on all fronts.

Briefly about the design of Honor 9

The Honor 9 kit is simple. The box contains an 18W charger, a USB Type-C cable, and a transparent plastic case. There are no headphones, and they didn’t even provide a napkin for polishing.

The design of Honor 9, alas, is not new. Gloss and shimmer are inherent in Huawei flagships, and HTC recently released a super-glossy smart phone.

Glass and metal are offered even in the cheapest smartphones. And this is no longer an indicator of premium quality.

The front surface is hidden behind 2.5D glass, the back panel is covered with 3D glass made using Edge technology - with rounded edges. A special feature of the model is the back pattern that imitates vinyl, which undoubtedly sets the smartphone apart from others. Honor 9 looks much cooler

The assembly is of high quality: there are no creaks, backlashes, or gaps. It feels great in the hand, although the glass sandwich is still a slippery design. It doesn't hurt to be careful.

On top of the front panel there is a standard set of sensors + a speaker (an LED indicator of the latest events is present). At the bottom end there is a touch-sensitive Home button with multitasking support and two unmarked control buttons. The backlight turns on only when touched, which is a little inconvenient, although it’s a matter of habit. Control buttons can be disabled by assigning basic navigation functions to the Home button.

On the left side there is a hybrid slot for SIM/memory cards, on the right there are volume and power buttons.

At the top end there is a microphone and an infrared port, at the bottom there is a USB, 3.5mm audio jack, microphone and speaker.

Honor 9 display

The Honor 9 display is not at all impressive at first glance. Standard format (no 18:9), normal resolution, IPS, 5.15′ diagonal. Until you look at the test and comparison:

Honor 9 demonstrates deep blacks, excellent image contrast (1479:1) and an unprecedented maximum brightness of 522 nits.

As for color reproduction, Honor 9 provides natural color with a slight fall into a cool undertone; color adjustment is available in the settings.

The screen contrast of Honor 9 in the sun is also not satisfactory. The Smart shows a decent result for an LCD in the test, and even in bright sunshine the screen will remain highly readable.

Honor 9 sun contrast ratio

Autonomy Honor 9

The autonomy of the smartphone is ensured by a 3200 mAh battery that supports fast charging technology. The charger replenishes 33% of the charge in 30 minutes; it takes just under 2 hours to fully charge the smartphone.

As we indicated at the beginning of the review, Honor 9 is positioned as a worthy competitor to the Huawei P10, so most of the comparisons will be made with this smartphone:

Honor 9 performance

First, let's take a look under the hood of the smartphone:

Honor 9 is equipped with the top-end proprietary processor Kirin 960, installed in the latest flagships of the brand - Huawei P10 and Mate 9. As we can see from the table above, there are no differences in the processors.

Today this is one of the most powerful and productive chipsets.

Cortex A73 provides a 30% performance increase over the previous Cortex A72 core.

GeekBench single-core tests show that the Cortex A73 performs on par with the new SD 835 cores in the Samsung Galaxy S8.

Honor 9 in GeekBench 4.1 (single-core)

Honor 9 in GeekBench 4 (single-core)

No less interesting is the GeekBench multi-core test. Assessing the results, let us recall that this is a mid-price smartphone.

Honor 9 in GeekBench 4.1 (multi-core)

Honor 9 in GeekBench 4 (multi-core)

The new Mali-G71MP8 GPU has significantly improved graphics, bringing Honor 9 closer to the flagship segment.

(the last of the representatives of this brand that we tested and pleasantly surprised us). But, of course, we don’t take the manufacturer’s word for it and check everything ourselves.

The simplest but most revealing plot is daytime shooting in good lighting conditions. The Honor 9 does very well here, delivering natural colours, great detail and sharp focus. If you look at the images at full scale, there is a subtle oversharpening at the edges of objects, but this is easy to forgive with a mobile camera.

Honor 9 (STF-L09) SETTINGS: ISO 50, F2.2, 1/1032 sec, 27.0 mm equiv.

Honor 9 (STF-L09) SETTINGS: ISO 50, F2.2, 1/594 sec, 27.0 mm equiv.

Honor 9 (STF-L09) SETTINGS: ISO 50, F2.2, 1/994 sec, 27.0 mm equiv.

Honor 9 (STF-L09) SETTINGS: ISO 50, F2.2, 1/109 sec, 27.0 mm equiv.

Honor 9 (STF-L09) SETTINGS: ISO 50, F2.2, 1/1600 s, 27.0 mm equiv.

Honor 9 (STF-L09) SETTINGS: ISO 50, F2.2, 1/944 sec, 27.0 mm equiv.

Honor 9 (STF-L09) SETTINGS: ISO 50, F2.2, 1/442 sec, 27.0 mm equiv.

If you shoot at a resolution of 12 megapixels with a color camera, then the so-called hybrid zoom is available, which allows you to shoot images with double magnification with virtually no loss of quality. Let's look again at pixel binning technology. Thanks to the second camera with a monochrome 20-megapixel sensor, you can create images with almost no loss of quality using 2x zoom. In this case, the images are obtained in color: the camera uses color data received from the 12-megapixel sensor and “colorizes” the resulting image.

As an example, we give a crop of an image taken on a color sensor with a resolution of 12 megapixels, and a crop of a photo with zoom. The quality of the magnification is truly impressive!

When switching to a monochrome camera, we regularly set the resolution to 20 megapixels to fully exploit its capabilities. Shooting in black and white is still a special genre: it has its own aesthetics and a certain style. Contrast, detailing and development of halftones are especially important here. And Honor 9 does all this perfectly.

Honor 9 (STF-L09) SETTINGS: ISO 50, F2.2, 1/1949 sec, 27.0 mm equiv.

Honor 9 (STF-L09) SETTINGS: ISO 50, F2.2, 1/47619 sec, 27.0 mm equiv.

Honor 9 (STF-L09) SETTINGS: ISO 50, F2.2, 1/943 sec, 27.0 mm equiv.

Honor 9 (STF-L09) SETTINGS: ISO 50, F2.2, 1/1678 sec, 27.0 mm equiv.

Let's talk briefly about color images in 20 megapixel resolution (5120 by 3840 pixels). To obtain such images, the Honor camera takes a photo from a monochrome sensor and, as it were, colors it using the data received from a color camera. This is how pixel binning technology works. As for the quality of the images, in good lighting conditions the images turn out to be highly detailed, it is difficult to find fault with them. The algorithm rarely makes mistakes; this mainly happens when there is backlight or when shooting in low light conditions.

The Honor 9 smartphone has an aperture priority mode. In it, the gadget uses both cameras to achieve a depth of field comparable to a lens with aperture from F0.95 to F16. It is noteworthy that after the shot is taken, you can change the focus point, aperture value, and also apply additional effects.

Honor 9 (STF-L09) SETTINGS: ISO 80, F3.5, 1/100 sec, 27.0 mm equiv.

Honor 9 (STF-L09) SETTINGS: ISO 80, F0.95, 1/100 s, 27.0 mm eq.

Another mode is “Panorama”. It so happens that it’s quite easy to film it on a smartphone. In the case of Honor 9, excellent quality panoramic images are obtained, especially if you take your time and turn slowly enough, keeping an eye on the level. Then a good shot without noticeable gluing is guaranteed.

Honor 9 (STF-L09) SETTINGS:

Honor 9 also has the already familiar extended dynamic range mode - HDR. It works confidently, although it works and draws out mainly the dark parts of the image.

Let's move on to filming indoors with artificial lighting. Honor 9 performs great! The images are very high quality: excellent white balance in difficult conditions with different light temperatures, natural colors, high detail and accurate focus.

Honor 9 (STF-L09) SETTINGS: ISO 320, F2.2, 1/50 sec, 27.0 mm equiv.

Honor 9 (STF-L09) SETTINGS: ISO 500, F2.2, 1/50 sec, 27.0 mm equiv.

Honor 9 (STF-L09) SETTINGS: ISO 320, F2.2, 1/25 sec, 27.0 mm equiv.

Honor 9 (STF-L09) SETTINGS: ISO 500, F2.2, 1/25 sec, 27.0 mm equiv.

Honor 9 (STF-L09) SETTINGS: ISO 320, F2.2, 1/33 sec, 27.0 mm equiv.

Another interesting feature of Huawei and Honor devices is the ability to include a watermark with the logo of the model on which the image was taken. The function is interesting, but not particularly necessary. In this case, the Honor 9 logo appears in the lower left corner of the photo.

Honor 9 (STF-L09) SETTINGS: ISO 125, F2.2, 1/50 sec, 27.0 mm equiv.

We also took some shots indoors using the hybrid zoom to see how the camera would cope in those conditions. In our case, it was a Chevrolet pickup truck in the corner of the museum, which there was no way to get closer to. Despite the difficult lighting conditions, the camera performed very well.

Honor 9 (STF-L09) SETTINGS: ISO 640, F2.2, 1/20 sec, 54.0 mm equiv.

Honor 9 (STF-L09) SETTINGS: ISO 640, F2.2, 1/25 sec, 27.0 mm equiv.

Honor 9 has a two-color LED flash, which can also work in flashlight mode. When shooting objects in a dark room, we would recommend using this particular mode, because you can correctly highlight the subject by tapping on it on the screen. Thus, the automation will quickly adapt to the shooting conditions and the image will be of much better quality: there will definitely be no overexposure, and the background will not “fall through” into the darkness.

Indoors, we remembered to try the aperture priority mode and took a few shots.

Honor 9 (STF-L09) SETTINGS: ISO 320, F2, 1/50 sec, 27.0 mm eq.

Honor 9 (STF-L09) SETTINGS: ISO 500, F2, 1/50 sec, 27.0 mm eq.

Traditionally, the most difficult scenario not only for smartphones, but also for cameras is evening and night shooting in low light conditions. In this scenario, the work of all camera systems from autofocus to color rendering is especially noticeable; detail and white balance are important. But Honor 9 pleasantly surprises here too, producing good images and even panoramas.

World premiere in Berlin

Huawei held a presentation of the next smartphone under the Honor brand in China a couple of weeks ago - this is always done earlier for its own market. However, this time the international presentation was not long in coming, the world premiere (Honor Global Launch) took place on June 27, the capital of Germany, the city of Berlin, was chosen as the location for the event.

The President of Honor, George Zhao, opened and almost single-handedly conducted the entire presentation. As usual, to begin with, he spoke about the company’s recent achievements and further plans for the future. In short, the manufacturer is doing well; Honor now ranks first in the Chinese market among brands in online sales, ahead of even Xiaomi in 2017.

But let's return to the hero of the occasion. The new flagship of the legendary Honor family, which spun off into a separate brand several years ago, but constantly walks side by side with the main Huawei brand, has become even more beautiful and even more powerful. Technically, this is almost Huawei P10 - except for some points.

In terms of design, the differences lie in the materials: here glass, rather than metal, is used as the front and back panels. In terms of technology, for example, there is no mention of Leica's participation in the creation of the dual camera installed in the new Honor flagship.

So, the smartphone received the usual glass case for the series, made in the same style as the previous model. Only here the edges of the backrest are even more rounded on the sides.

And also, unlike Honor 8, in the new model the fingerprint scanner pad was moved to the front panel and included in the Home button, like the older brothers Huawei P10 and P10 Plus.

The curved edges of the back of the case allow you to comfortably hold the smartphone in your hand. Glass with a good oleophobic coating is not so slippery, but very easily soiled.

Under the glass, like the Honor 8, there is a thin shiny substrate that shimmers under the sun’s rays, this is clearly visible in the video. In a word, it looks rich.

The new product will be available in silver (“ice grey”), black (“midnight”) and, of course, blue (“sapphire”), which has become the signature color for the manufacturer. True, George Zhao himself said that sapphire blue remained in the last season, now icy gray will become fashionable.

Nano-SIM cards are inserted into the side hybrid connector, the power and volume control keys are located on the opposite side; At the bottom there is a USB Type-C connector that supports connecting external devices in USB OTG mode.

Here, at the bottom end, there is also a 3.5 mm headphone output. The smartphone also has two microphones, two main cameras and a dual LED flash.

The top end is also not empty. Here is a rather rare for most manufacturers, but very useful infrared transmitter. With its help, you can turn your smartphone into a universal remote control.

Honor 9 uses a dual camera, as in older Huawei models, only without mention of Leica developments and without Summarit H lenses. It also has a 12 MP color RGB sensor and a 20 MP monochrome sensor, the maximum aperture is f/2.2.

As before, the RGB sensor is responsible for color reproduction, and the monochrome sensor is responsible for detail. There is optical image stabilization (OIS), hybrid autofocus combining phase and laser focusing technologies. There is a hybrid zoom and the ability to shoot video in 4K.

The camera can shoot video in a maximum resolution of 4K, and there is also a shooting mode at 60 fps. For 4K video, the H.265 codec is used, and for videos at 60 frames per second and the rest, H.264 is used. There is no video stabilization; when shooting on the move, shaking is clearly noticeable. Otherwise, the camera copes quite well with video shooting. Focusing does not fail, there are no artifacts or image scattering, the image is bright and detailed. Sensitive microphones produce high-quality sound recordings, there are no distortions, and the noise reduction system copes with its tasks adequately.

• Video No. 1 (39 MB, 3840×2160@30 fps, H.265, AAC)
• Video No. 2 (34 MB, 1920×1080@60 fps, H.264, AAC)

The front camera has an 8-megapixel module with a wide-angle lens with f/2.0 aperture. For the camera, as usual, decoration effects are available, there is a background blur effect - a new feature of all selfie cameras of modern Huawei smartphones.

True, a very simple software algorithm is used here; the background is simply blurred around the central spot of sharpness. The program does not track any object boundaries, so the same object can be partially in the sharpness zone and simultaneously blurred in another part. But still, if you get used to it, sometimes you can take quite creative selfie photos.

The shooting quality is more than acceptable for selfie level, the images are bright, with good sharpness and high detail.

The resolution of the 5.15-inch IPS screen is 1920x1080, pixel density is 432 ppi, maximum brightness is 450 nits. The screen is covered with 2.5D Gorilla Glass. There are no buttons on the front panel under the screen, except for the central “physical” Home with a fingerprint scanner. There is an event indicator at the top.

The hardware platform is the most powerful of Huawei platforms so far, the 8-core SoC HiSilicon Kirin 960, made using 16 nm technology. This SoC uses the current Cortex-A73 processor cores, a UFS 2.1 flash memory interface, and a powerful eight-core Mali G71 video accelerator. The smartphone is equipped with 4 or 6 GB of RAM and 64 or 128 GB of permanent memory, expandable via microSD memory cards up to 256 GB.

Among the communication capabilities of the new product is support for LTE Cat.6, Bluetooth 4.2 and both Wi-Fi bands 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (2.4 and 5 GHz). The navigation module supports all three world systems - GPS, Glonass and BeiDou. Both SIM cards can work simultaneously in 3G/4G in standby mode.

The built-in battery has a capacity of 3200 mAh, allowing the smartphone to operate for up to 10 hours in talk mode and up to 300 hours in standby mode.

All this runs on Android 7.0 Nougat with the proprietary Emotion UI 5.1 shell. In EMUI you can find all the functions necessary for a modern mobile device interface: there is a dual-window mode, gesture support, a virtual button and much more.

Knuckle Sense technology is also available. With its help, tapping your knuckles on the screen takes screenshots and records video from the screen. The full list of Huawei Honor 9 specifications is given below.

Main characteristics of Huawei Honor 9

• SoC HiSilicon Kirin 960, 8 cores: [email protected] GHz (ARM Cortex-A73) + [email protected] GHz (ARM Cortex-A53)
• GPU Mali-G71 (MP8)
• Operating system Android 7.0, EMUI 5.1
• Touch display IPS (LTPS) 5.15″, 1920×1080, 432 ppi
• Random access memory (RAM) 4/6 GB, internal memory 64/128 GB
• Nano-SIM support (2 pcs.)
• MicroSD support up to 256 GB
• GSM/GPRS/EDGE networks (850/900/1800/1900 MHz)
• WCDMA networks (850/900/1700/1900/2100 MHz)
• LTE Cat.6 networks FDD B1,3,5,7,8,20, TD LTE B38,40,41
• Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (2.4 and 5 GHz)
• Bluetooth 4.2 A2DP, LE
• GPS, A-GPS, Glonass, BDS
• USB Type-C, USB OTG
• Main camera 20 MP + 12 MP, autofocus, f/2.2, 4K video
• Front camera 8 MP, f/2.0
• Proximity, lighting, magnetic field sensors, accelerometer, gyroscope
• Fingerprint scanner
• Battery 3200 mAh, fast charging
• Dimensions 147×71×7.5 mm
• Weight 155 g

The price in Europe starts at 449 euros. In China, the junior model costs 2,700 yuan, which is only about 23 thousand rubles in our money. In Russia, the smartphone in the “standard” version (4 GB RAM + 64 GB ROM) will officially go on sale on July 6 and will cost 26,990. It was especially noted that in Russia, in the first days of sales, the smartphone will be available not only in the company’s online store shop.huawei.ru and CSN stores, but also in MTS stores. The last one to appear will be the black version, which will become available later than the others.

The second part of the Honor 9 review: we look at the proprietary shell, sound quality and how the dual camera works in the new smartphone.

The frame processing algorithm is standard. The smartphone uses a BW sensor to capture light and detail in the frame, and a color sensor to capture the colors in the frame. The two images are then layered on top of each other to achieve depth.

The quality of the photos is no different from those it creates (we have a review of the camera of this smart). Honor 9 conveys bright, rich and at the same time realistic colors. Frame detail is high, textures are rendered naturally. The dynamic range of color images is amazing. It seems that the HDR mode was used for the frame, but checking the EXIF ​​files showed that this mode is not always used, while the quality of the image remains at the same level.

Pictures from a 12MP color camera convey enough details, low noise levels, and correct colors.

Hybrid 20MP photos (taken from a combination of 12MP+20MP frames) look like enhanced versions of 12MP photos. Considering that hybrid photos do not convey much detail, and the quality itself does not improve much, we dare to assume that this mode will not be particularly popular.

Black and white mode is more interesting. Photos are obtained with high detail (although in comparison with 12MP color frames, the detail is not much higher), contrast and clarity. The noise level is low and the dynamic range is wide, which is most noticeable in dark areas of frames. The main disadvantage of a B&W camera is focusing. In 20% of cases, the focus is adjusted incorrectly or not adjusted at all, which affects the quality of the image. Therefore, we recommend carefully checking the focus and re-focusing several times before taking a photo.

As we noted above, the smartphone smartly applies HDR exactly to those scenes where it is needed. Therefore, HDR can be left in automatic mode.

The user has access to 2x optical zoom. Close-up photos do not lose quality. If zoom is used excessively, the quality of the image deteriorates sharply.

Honor 9 image quality in low light conditions

Honor 9 copes well with shooting in low light conditions, maintaining high detail and color. However, this only applies to shooting close objects. Shooting a general plan leaves much to be desired: detail and depth are reduced.

Night shots lack detail and sharpness. The cause is either a focusing error or camera shake.

In night mode, the user can adjust ISO up to 3200 and shutter speed up to 32s.

Additional modes are available for light graphics: shooting car headlights, light graffiti, shooting water and shooting stars. When shooting in these modes, a tripod becomes essential for getting clear, high-quality images.

Quality of panoramic photos of Honor 9

Honor 9 copes well with shooting in panoramic mode: detail is at the level, the dynamic range is wide, and there is no noise.

Portrait on Honor 9

Portrait shooting is available on both the main and front cameras. The camera uses variable aperture and face enhancement mode to create a blurred background. While the enhancement mode is manually adjusted, the blur remains the same in all frames.

The enhancement filter should be used with caution, otherwise details can be erased and the face will appear too retouched.

Front camera

Honor 9 has an 8MP front camera capable of creating trendy portrait shots with a blurred background (created by software). The algorithms cope with the task very mediocrely, blurring the background too much (and not always correctly) and improving the face. If you don't quibble, photos from the front camera are clear, detailed, with natural colors and a wide dynamic range.

Conclusions:

Huawei presented a powerful smartphone with a top-end processor at a price (400-500USD), which in terms of performance is not a competitor to the new Honor 9. The power and performance reserves of this gadget will last the user for several years to come.

The manufacturer did not follow the general trend of reducing the number of holes in the smartphone and left a standard 3.5mm jack for music lovers.

The design follows the latest trends - glass, vinyl, metal. Whether it’s practical or not is something everyone decides for themselves, but the smartphone looks decent.

The main disadvantages include the lack of dust/moisture protection.

Initially, Huawei expected that Honor devices would belong to the budget segment, and the line of Huawei smartphones would be represented by expensive fashion flagships. But in fact, the Honor sub-brand continues to grow in strength and becomes more and more premium. The trend started with Honor 7 (), which was an excellent choice in terms of price and quality. A year later, Honor 8 () retained all the same advantages and received a beautiful glass body, and on June 27, 2017, Honor 9 was introduced - a smartphone that became even more attractive and acquired some of the features of the flagship Huawei P10 (.

Technical characteristics of Honor 9

Design and ergonomics

However, Honor 9 is one of those smartphones that can be forgiven for its stylish design. It’s especially good that this year the device uses rounded edges on the back panel, improving ergonomics, and the fingerprint scanner has been moved under the screen. In last year's Honor 8, the appearance was not so solid and thoughtful. The only thing the new model lacks is that on the front side I would like to see the same curve of the panel as on the back, but this is the prerogative of Samsung flagships.

Not only the improved ergonomics due to the shape of the case deserve praise, but also the small size of the screen. The IPS panel has a diagonal of 5.15 inches, which ensures the compact size of the smartphone overall. Honor 9 will be comfortable to use for both men and women. And if you want something larger, the company’s lineup includes the huge Honor 8 Pro. In terms of picture quality, the screen is close to the best representatives of the market; it is very bright, contrasting with rich colors. This works especially well in bright sun. At an angle, the image catches glare, but remains well readable, and if you look directly at the screen, you can assume that Honor uses an AMOLED matrix.

Main and front cameras

Devoid of the Leica logo, the main camera on the Honor 9 is a bit simpler than the one on the Huawei P10. In terms of numerical characteristics, these smartphones are identical, but there is still a difference. Firstly, Honor 9 saved on optical stabilization, and secondly, the camera software is different (both the application itself and the image processing algorithms). It will be very difficult to visually notice the gap between Honor 9 and Huawei’s flagship; only the most active mobile photographers will notice the difference. However, there are hardly many people among them who will exchange Huawei P10 for Honor 9 and will look for radical differences between them.

Among the features of the main camera of Honor 9, it is worth noting a hybrid 2x zoom, black-and-white and portrait modes, creative filters and options, as well as convenient manual settings for advanced photographers. The most useful things to use are the pro mode and 2x zoom. The first allows you to significantly expand the capabilities of the camera and get good pictures where automation cannot cope, and hybrid zoom allows you to zoom in on pictures without noticeable deterioration in quality and find more and more interesting scenes for Instagram and other social networks. As for the portrait mode, the background separation in Honor 9 is software (like any other smartphone with such a function), so the boundaries of objects are not always determined correctly. Sometimes blur misses areas of the background or, on the contrary, captures unnecessary parts. It’s easier to take a regular shot than to look for the perfect background and photograph an object with a simple shape.

There is hardly anything interesting to say about the front camera of Honor 9. A module with a matrix resolution of 8 megapixels is installed above the screen, which allows you to take high-quality and well-detailed selfies, but nothing more. In the vast majority of cases, front cameras are incomparably inferior to rear ones. There’s nothing to be done; it’s easier for device owners to compromise on the quality of self-portraits than to constantly see a giant peephole above the display. Generally speaking, the photographic capabilities of Honor 9 are among the best in the class of devices under 30 thousand rubles. The smartphone allows you to take really good pictures, and the dual module and software allow you to limit yourself less in mobile photography.

Honor 9 in action

In terms of performance, autonomy and ease of use, Honor 9 is in perfect order. The eight-core HiSilicon Kirin 960 processor and the Mali-G71 MP8 graphics subsystem, combined with 4 or 6 GB of RAM, make it possible to play top games at maximum or close graphics settings, the interface works without delays, and the performance of applications does not raise any questions. The operating time on one charge is approximately one working day. In the morning you unplug your smartphone from the outlet, use it actively during the day, and by evening there is 10-15% charge left. Such indicators will be relevant for those who do not play, but work a lot with applications, social networks and instant messengers. Mobile gamers will have to look for a source of energy during the day; less active users can count on up to one and a half days of battery life (but it is always better to charge your smartphone at night). The performance and battery capacity of Honor 9 does not lag behind A-brand sub-flagships and top models from Chinese manufacturers such as Meizu, Xiaomi and the like.

Technical solutions of Honor 9 are another strong point of the smartphone. For example, from the flagship Huawei P10 he got a touch button under the screen, which also has a built-in fingerprint scanner. There are two control options available: either there will be sensitive areas on the sides of the central button to go back a level and launch the multitasking panel, or the scanner will recognize gestures. The second method, when you return by touch, press to exit to the home screen, and launch the screen of recently used applications with a stroke, can hardly be called a familiar solution for working with a smartphone. However, such a scheme is quite viable and after a short period of getting used to it turns out to be quite convenient. However, it is very good that the manufacturer leaves the classic scheme and highlights the touch zones on the sides of the “home” button with dots.

In addition, Honor 9 traditionally has strong software. The EMUI shell has been significantly redesigned compared to “pure” Android, but the manufacturer does not fill it with garbage and monitors its visual appeal. All the additional functions implemented in Emotion UI really increase the usability of the smartphone, and design details such as the constantly changing lock screen image captivate with high-quality implementation. The EMUI shell cannot be called overloaded, it is pleasant to use and after purchasing a smartphone you do not want to urgently install a third-party launcher.

Conclusion