Honor 9 Lite – Redefining design in a mid-range mobile – Review

Honor 9 Lite, is priced starting at Rs 10999. Honestly, have a look at this mobile and would you say that you believe it? I could never believe it. Look at the other similarly priced mobiles. They all look like they came out from the same mold. But the Honor 9 Lite looks like a premium mobile. But looks may not matter for many, and let’s dive in to check out if this mobile is worth your money

Design

Honor 9 Lite is an elegantly designed mobile. It has glass on both sides with a glossy mirror-like finish at the back. Unfortunately, the glass is not a branded toughed glass, on either side. Honor claims that the glass is tough and not easy to crack. It is a lightweight mobile with its weight evenly distributed. So I think it must hold up against most cases of accidental drops. Also, the glass back is a fingerprint magnet. So the best solution here is to get an elegant back case for this stylish mobile. The bottom has all the ports and sockets. The SIM tray is hybrid. The fingerprint is placed at the back.

Without any doubt, the Honor 9 Lite is a stylish mobile. It is the best-designed mobile in this price range. In fact, when you flaunt the Honor 9 Lite, nobody is gonna believe that this mobile cost you less than 30k.

Display

Honor 9 Lite has a full HD panel with a full vision display. The aspect ratio is 18:9 and the bezels are thin. The display is bright and vivid. It has good viewing angles. The colors are accurate. Text and images are crisp and clear under all ambient light conditions. Under display settings, you would find the Eye Comfort mode. I can say that Honor 7x has one of the best displays among all the phones in this price range. Also, the display is just 5.65 inches diagonally, making it a compact mobile to hold and handle.

Camera

The Honor 9 Lite is a quad camera mobile like the Honor 9i. The camera UI has loads of features and all of them can be found easily. It is lag free, fast and feels lightweight. The camera is a 13 MP primary camera with a 2 MP depth sensor. The quality of image output is impressive under bright lighting conditions. Color saturation is a bit high. Exposure is good and the details are rich. The images have good contrast levels and the sharpness is impressive. The secondary 2 MP sensor is only for depth sensing. The edge detection for portrait photos is good when there is ample light. Under low light, the detection algorithm is a hit and miss. The bokeh is rich and natural as it is controlled at the hardware level. Low light photos from the rear camera are just about average. Both photos and videos are good under bright light conditions. It has shoot FHD videos, but it does not have any kind of image stabilization.

The front camera has a 13 MP sensor and a 2 MP depth sensor. The quality of the image output is good and the selfies are sharp and natural. It can identify the gender and apply beautification accordingly. It can click share and detailed selfies when there is ample light. Even the background blur is good under good light. But as light drops, the colors tend to become inaccurate. The Honor 9 Lite has a good camera and it is comparable to its slightly pricier cousin, the Honor 7x.

Hardware and Performance

Honor 9 lite is powered by HiSilicon Kirin 659 and it has 3GB or 4GB of RAM in the 32 GB or 64 GB variant, respectively. During my usage, the mobile phone was smooth and lag free. Gameplay was smooth and no visible frame drops. Even after 30 minutes of gaming, the mobile did not heat up beyond 8 degrees. It also has the Gyro sensor. Even the resource-heavy applications did not have any issues running smoothly on this mobile. It supports USB OTG and VoLTE. It has FM Radio as well. Audio over the speakers is loud. The fingerprint sensor at the back is fast, accurate and has a versatile set of features. Overall, the Honor 9 Lite offers a good performance.

Software

The mobile is running on Android 8.0 with EMUI 8.0 skinned on top. EMUI 8.0 corresponds to the Android major version number. It has a lot of features promising a better user experience. It has a bunch of useful features. It has very few bloatware and these Honor specific apps can be uninstalled as well. The UI is smooth and lag free. Honor 9 Lite offers a smooth and pleasant user experience, thanks to the robust EMUI 8.0.

Battery

The mobile is powered by a 3000 mAh battery and the bundled charged is a 5V 2A fast charger. PC Mark tests gave me about 7 hours of screen time. In real life, I get an average of 5 hours screen on time under moderate usage. It gets charged from 0 to 100% in about 2 hours. Battery performance in Honor 9 lite is satisfactory.

Verdict

Honor 9 Lite is priced at Rs 10,999 for the 3GB variant and Rs 14,999 for the 4 GB variant. The price difference is steep. For Rs 14999, it has a lot of competitors, but the 10,999 has very fewer devices that have a chance fighting against the 9 lite. In the design department, Honor 9 Lite is the king with no competition up to Rs 25k, currently. So, I would consider the Rs 10,999 variant the best value for money. For that price, you would get the best-designed mobile which a good display, performance, and camera. It is a neat package and that makes the Honor 9 Lite one of the best choices for a mid range smartphone.