If you are planning to get a smartphone with a budget no more than INR 20,000, then Huawei Honor 9i might be you were looking for. In fact, the same device is available in Europe for INR 30,000 with the ditto specifications. So, let’s look at the factors that make this, the one of the greatest smartphone available in India.
Built Quality: The Huawei Honor 9i features a full metal unibody design with completely rounded off edges. The device will be available in different shades including Gold, Black, and Blue Colour shades. If we look at the competition, the Moto G5S Plus does offer similar design, but the Honor 9i has its own advantages over the other mid-range smartphones.
Display: One of the unique selling points of the Huawei Honor 9i is display. The device offers a premium FHD+ 1080 X 2160 Pixels IPS LCD screen, protected by 2.5D curved tempered glass on the top, which should save the device from normal wear and tear. Though, smartphones like LG Q6 and LG Q6+ features similar 18:9 aspect ratio screen, the Honor 9i has an edge over them, with respect to resolution and screen to body ratio. Though the device has a massive 5.9-inch display, the device offers a great comfort in one hand usability due to the unique aspect ratio. The narrower corners are also the thinnest amongst the competition. So, if you are into watching a lot of multimedia content, then, the Huawei Honor 9i is the tailor-made smartphone for you.
Processor and RAM: The device is powered by Huawei’s in-house Kirin 659 Octa-core SoC with 4x 2.36 GHz and 4×1.7 GHz CPUs paired with 4 GB LPDDR3 RAM and 64 GB onboard flash storage with a dedicated micro SD card slot. However, like most of the modern smartphones, the device can only accept either 2 SIM cards or a SIM and a micro SD card due to space constraints. So, one can use micro SD cards up to 128 GB, if you are ok with just a single SIM card slot. However, for the most of the users, 64 GB storage itself will be sufficient, until you store all your favourite movie collections on your smartphone.
Performance: When it comes to day to day usage, the device shows no lags or what so ever. The Kirin 659 is a very promising processor which offers performance equivalent to that of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 or equivalent processor with similar CPU and GPU performance. The 4 GB LPDDR3 RAM combined with this energy efficient processor should be enough to use multitasking and a bit of gaming. The device also supports high-end games like Modern Combat, Asphalt 8, and Modern Warfare 2, however, at times, the device might get the little worm on continues gaming sessions and there will be few frame drops, which actually go unnoticed to the untrained eyes. So, if you are a casual gamer, then this device will be up to your expectation all time every time.
Camera: At this price point, probably this is the best camera implementation that we have seen in the recent times. On the rear-end, the device offers a 16 MP RGB sensor and a 2 MP depth sensing monochrome sensor. This camera combination can produce great looking photographs and videos in broad daylight, natural lightening condition, and in the artificial lighting condition. For the front facing camera setup, the company offers a 13 MP RGB sensor and a 2 MP secondary sensor with depth sensing technology, which is used to give bokeh like effects to the selfie photos as well. In fact, this is the first smartphone, that offers bokeh effect on the selfie shooter as well. The device does offer the best camera setup at this price point (INR 17,999).
Operating system: The device runs on Android Nougat 7.0 with custom EMUI 5.1 on the top. And the company has promised that the device will be updated to Android Oreo 8.0 with custom EMUI 8.0 on the top before the end of 2017. Having a third party skin on the smartphone is not always a bad sign, in fact, the EMUI 5.1 offers features like gesture support, app duplication, and theme support which are missing in the stock Android user interface.
Connectivity: The Huawei Honor 9i offers dual SIM card slots with 4G LTE and VoLte capability on both the slots. WiFi (only 2.4 GHz), WiFi Hotspot, and Bluetooth 4.2 are also supported. However, the device is missing on features like NFC, support for 5.0 GHz WiFi bands.
Sensors: The smartphone offers all the basic sensors like Fingerprint Sensor, Digital Compass, Ambient Light Sensor, Proximity Light Sensor, Accelerometer, Status Indicator. So, you won’t be having any trouble with anything basic task at any cost.
Battery: The device boasts a 3340 mAh Li-ion non-user replaceable battery with normal charging capability via micro USB port (one of the shortcomings). However, the device takes almost 3 hours or 180 minutes to complete charge from 0 percent to 100 percent.
Conclusion: The centre of attraction of the Huawei Honor 9i is the display supported by the quad-camera solution. The device has a great CPU, RAM, and storage. However, few quirks like the micro USB port and no support for fast charging are the only regret, that stops us giving 100 out of 100. So, this is the best mid-range smartphone presently available in India for under INR 20,000 price margin.