INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Honor has added yet another budget smartphone to its lineup
The Honor 9N improves upon last year's Honor 9 Lite (Review) in small yet significant ways
The display now sports a notch and the selfie camera has been bumped up to 16 megapixels
It features a glass back, dual rear cameras, a 19:9 display, and runs Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box.The Honor 9N is priced starting at Rs
11,999 and competes head-on with the likes of the Asus ZenFone Max Pro M1 (Review), Oppo Realme 1 (Review), and Moto G6 (Review)
Does Honor's new smartphone have what it takes to compete in the cut-throat budget segment Let's find out. Honor 9N designThe most striking
aspect of the Honor 9N is its design
The back panel is made of glass and has a glossy finish that looks striking
The horizontal dual camera setup barely protrudes from the chassis and the back panel looks very clean thanks to the lack of antenna lines
and regulatory information.The 5.84-inch display has a notch at the top, which is quite small
The notch is undoubtedly a polarising design element, and Honor has added an option in the settings menu to mask the same
This basically darkens the screen area on either side of the notch.The Honor 9N will be available in four colour variants - Lavender Purple;
Black; Robin Egg Blue, which is a greenish-blue shade that looks fantastic; and the one our review unit came in, Sapphire Blue
Only the Blue and Black versions will be available initially, with the other two coming at a later date. The smartphone is compact and
petite and very easy to use with one hand
The rounded corners and curved sides also enhance in-hand feel
That said, it is incredibly slippery and the glossy glass back is a fingerprint magnet
Build quality though is top-notch
The phone feels solid in the hand and it survived multiple drops during our review period.The rear mounted fingerprint sensor is quick and
accurate and can be used for a variety of functions such as taking a picture, answering calls, and sliding down the notification panel
These gestures can be used with any finger and are not locked to the finger you've registered for authentication.The left of the Honor 9N is
blank save for the SIM tray which makes you choose between a second Nano-SIM and a microSD card
The right side has the volume rocker and power button which are a tad too small for our liking but well within reach.On the bottom of the
phone is a Micro-USB port, flanked by a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a single loud speaker that is shrill and tinny
The lack of a USB Type-C port for charging and data transfers is quite disappointing
The industry has started transitioning towards USB Type-C and it is high time Honor starts adopting the same for its budget offerings as
well.Honor 9N specifications and displayThe Honor 9N is powered by Honor's tried and trusted Kirin 659 processor which is also found in the
likes of the Honor 7X (Review), Honor 9 Lite (Review), and Honor 9i (Review)
The smartphone straddles multiple price categories with three variants on offer
The base variant retails for Rs
11,999 and has 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, and the one we tested here is priced at Rs
13,999 and has 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage
There is another variant of the smartphone on offer which is priced at Rs
17,999 and features 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage
While the 4 + 64GB variant is set to go on sale on 31st July, the release date of the other two has not been specified by Honor yet. The
Honor 9N has a non-removable 3,000mAh battery and runs EMUI 8.0 on top of Android 8.0 Oreo
Connectivity options include Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, GLONASS, 4G VoLTE, a Micro-USB port (USB 2.0 speed), and a 3.5mm headphone
It supports dual SIMs but only one can be connected to a 4G network at a time.The Honor 9N has a 5.84-inch full-HD+ IPS display with an 19:9
The screen dominates much of the front fascia but is not exactly borderless
The chin is pretty significant
The display is one of the highlights of the smartphone
Viewing angles are spot on and the panel is bright, vivid, and punchy
The 19:9 aspect ratio also lends itself well to gaming and multimedia consumption and EMUI allows you to stretch third-party applications
that do not support the aspect ratio natively.Honor 9N performance, software, and battery lifeThe Kirin 659 processor is getting a bit old
in the tooth and cannot compare to Qualcomm's newer mid-range offerings in terms of both power and efficiency
The Honor 9N handles basic day-to-day tasks like browsing the Web and using social media applications with ease but struggles when pushed
With multiple applications open in the background or more than a dozen tabs open in Chrome, we could feel the effects of the relatively
We also experienced keyboard lags and occasional slowdowns throughout our review period
With budget smartphones becoming more and more powerful, such slowdowns are quite disappointing.In our experience, simple games like Subway
Surfers ran fine but we experienced choppy frames with titles like Asphalt 8 every now and then.Benchmark scores were very similar to other
Kirin 659 powered smartphones
We got 5061 in PC Mark Work 2.0, 19fps in GFXbench T-Rex, 5.3fps in GFX Bench Manhattan 3.1, and 937 and 3731 in Geekbench's single- and
multi- core tests respectively
We tried running AnTuTu multiple times but failed to get a result.The smartphone did get warm when pushed, but not uncomfortably so
Calls were clear and crisp, and 4G connectivity was solid
The Honor 9N also supports face recognition, via the 16-megapixel front camera
It works quite well for the most part and is near instantaneous in good light, but it struggles somewhat in direct sunlight and when
lighting is not the best.Wi-Fi+, pre-installed applications, and the built-in messaging app that filters spam The Honor 9N runs Android 8.0
Oreo out of the box, with Huawei's EMUI 8.0 custom skin on top
As of now, there is no information regarding the Android P update for this phone
In its past few iterations, EMUI has become much more responsive
In fact, Huawei claims that EMUI 8.0 is 60 per cent faster and 50 per cent smoother than EMUI 5.1
That said, it's still not as snappy as stock Android or even some custom builds such Oxygen OS.EMUI is also loaded with a host of nifty
features such as Wi-Fi+, which automatically switches between Wi-Fi and mobile data depending on which connection is stronger
The phone automatically switched over to mobile data at places where the Wi-Fi signal was rather poor, which was pretty convenient
The built-in messaging app has a useful feature that did a good job of recognising and filtering out spam messages
You also get several gestures such as a three-finger swipe to take a screenshot
We found most of these gestures to be rather flaky but your mileage may vary.Facebook Messenger, TrueCaller and Netflix are pre-installed
along with six Gameloft game demos
Thankfully, all of them can be uninstalled
There are a host of first-party Honor applications as well, which compete with Google's own and don't seem to add much value
Overall, the amount of bloat on the Honor 9N is quite disappointing.Just like the Honor 9 Lite, battery life is mediocre
In our HD video loop battery test, the Honor 9N lasted just 8 hours and 40 minutes, which is well below the average for this market segment
With moderate use, we found ourselves reaching for the charger by 9-10pm every day
Our usage involved around an hour or two of Google Maps, frequent use of social media applications including WhatsApp, Twitter and Instagram
throughout the day, games such as Asphalt 8, and taking a a couple of selfies and photos
The lack of fast charging means the phone takes around two and a half hours to charge fully.Honor 9N camerasOn the imaging front, the Honor
9N features a dual rear camera setup with a 13-megapixel primary sensor, and a 2-megapixel secondary sensor alongside an LED flash
On the front, there is a 16-megapixel sensor.The camera app is quite logically laid out and comes with a fully featured Pro mode, which
allows you to alter the shutter speed, ISO, exposure, aperture, and white balance
AR stickers are a fun and nifty way to kill time and can be can be used with both the front and rear camera
There are 16 effects and 14 backgrounds on offer and more can be downloaded from Honor's AppGallery.Tap to see full-sized Honor 9N camera
samples In favourable light, the rear camera takes above average photos
The level of detail is good and colours are quite accurate
Wide aperture mode lets you adjust the aperture value (f/0.95 - f/13) before - and even after - shooting an image
However, images taken in wide aperture mode often ended up looking like a Photoshop job gone wrong
The resultant shots were sub-par, with average edge detection.In low light, the camera performs rather poorly
Photos lack detail and seem over sharpened
A fair bit of noise creeps in as well and focusing is also slow in unfavourable light
The front camera follows much of the same script - it struggles in low light but captures decent photos in favourable light
There's a beauty mode as well which offers 10 levels of beautification and works reasonably well
The front camera can also shoot bokeh shots via software algorithms (as there is no secondary sensor) but these are quite average and the
blur effect does not even work half the time.Both the front and rear camera setups support full-HD (1080p) video recording
Videos are lackluster at best and lack detail, especially at night
The lack of electronic image stabilisation means the footage can be shaky at times.Honor 9N in pictures VerdictThe Honor 9N is a compact
smartphone that sports a vibrant display, a fresh and modern design, and Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box
The colour options are also quite funky, especially Robin Egg Blue, which is set to go on sale soon
That said, battery life is mediocre, performance is below average, EMUI seems cluttered, and the cameras falter in low light.If you want a
sleek phone with a great display, the base variant of the Honor 9N makes for a good buy
The other variants are a bit too expensive though and are much harder to recommend
If you are shopping in this price segment, the Redmi Note 5 Pro (Review) is hard to beat as an all-rounder and the Asus ZenFone Max Pro M1
(Review) offers stellar value for money
Oppo's Realme 1 (Review) is also another option worth considering which has a more powerful processor but lacks a fingerprint sensor.
