Test and review of the Honor 9 Lite smartphone: best price-quality ratio

Conclusion:

The price-quality ratio here is convincing: although during testing the Honor 9 Lite showed shortcomings in the areas of battery life and photo quality, we can consider the display, performance and workmanship, despite the low initial cost of about 16,000 rubles, convincing. As a nice addition, there is a high-resolution dual front camera with portrait mode for selfie lovers.

Honor 9 Lite test: top quality for its price

Honor 9 Lite feels great in the hand and looks cool: despite the low cost (about 16,000 rubles), buyers in this case receive a smartphone with very good workmanship. Aluminum frame, glass back. We really like the look, however, as is the case with so many other glass mobile phones, fingerprints are very visible on the back.

Below the camera is a fingerprint scanner, which we could easily reach when holding the smartphone in our hands. There is a classic audio jack for connecting a headphone cable on board. But you will have to forget about protection against water damage or wireless charging - nothing surprising for this price segment.

Honor 9 Lite looks and feels good in the hand. Illustration: Chip

Specifications Huawei p9 lite (vns-l21)

• Screen: IPS LCD, 5.2″, 1920×1080, 424 ppi
• Processor: eight-core Hisilicon Kirin 650 (4x 1.8 GHz, 4x 2.0 GHz)
• Graphics accelerator: Mali-T830
• Operating system: Android 6.0 Marshmallow, Huawei EMUI 4.1
• RAM: 2 GB
• Built-in memory: 16 GB
• Memory card support: microSD up to 128 GB
• Communication: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz || UMTS 900/1900/2100 MHz || LTE 1, 3, 7, 8, 20
• SIM: 2x nano‑SIM
• Wireless interfaces: Wi-Fi (a/b/g/n), Bluetooth 4.1 (A2DP, LE), NFC
• Navigation: GPS, GLONASS
• Cameras: main – 13 MP (f/2.0, pixel size 1.12 nm), front – 8 MP
• Sensors: position in space, illumination, accelerometer, microgyroscope, compass, pedometer, fingerprint scanner
• Battery: non-removable, Li-Pol, 3000 mAh
• Dimensions: 146.8×72.6×7.5 mm
• Weight: 147 grams

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We liked the display of Honor 9 Lite

In addition to its appearance, Honor 9 Lite repeats Huawei P Smart to the smallest detail. Honor is an independent “daughter” of a large Chinese concern and both models do not make much of a secret about it. Also in Honor 9 Lite, buyers get a 5.65-inch display in a narrow 18:9 format. The resolution is 1080x2160 pixels, that is, it corresponds to the extended Full-HD length, which is also called Full-HD Plus. Content looks extremely crisp and colors are neutral.

The maximum brightness of the display is also excellent, so its contents can be read without problems even in bright sunlight. But in a direct comparison, it becomes clear that the Huawei P Smart panel is able to offer something a little more and therefore receives a higher total of rating percentage points in the Display test category.

Natural colors, decent brightness: the 5.6-inch display with Full-HD-Plus resolution seems convincing to us. Illustration: Chip

Battery and autonomy

There is a 3000 mAh battery installed here - its charge during everyday use will last for a maximum of a day, but it all depends on how optimized the software is. In addition, a software power consumption optimizer, Smart Power 4.0, is installed here, which monitors applications that consume a lot of power, and in which you can either manually configure the operation of various applications, or do as the system suggests. The function is really good - if you set up the work wisely, you can easily add another 4 or 5 hours to the autonomy of your smartphone.

Good performance

All conclusions about the performance and battery life of Huawei P Smart are also true for Honor 9 Lite: Huawei's mid-range Kirin 659 processor is perfectly equipped to perform all everyday tasks and harmonizes very well with the operating system. The pace of the Honor 9 Lite is very fast, all animations look very smooth. Applications launch quickly, and websites can be scrolled smoothly.

Honor 9 Lite in LTE networks reaches a data transfer speed of 300 Mbps, which is quite fast. Some limitations compared to top CPUs show up in graphics performance: demanding 3D games are still better played on Kirin 970 or Snapdragon 835 / 845 processors. You will find the current highest-performance mobile phones in the top positions in our respective rankings.

Honor 9 Lite responds quickly to commands. Illustration: Chip

Battery life could be better

The weak point of the Honor 9 Lite is the rather disappointing battery life: 7 hours 08 minutes in our “online” testing with the display activated for a modern smartphone with a 3000 mAh battery - this is unexpectedly low. Many top models can boast of 10 to 12 hours in this area.

Despite this, for ordinary users the battery's energy reserves should last the whole day without any problems. However, in two years, when the battery endurance decreases somewhat, there will no longer be any certainty. In addition, the 3 hours that a smartphone must spend at a power outlet until its battery is full again is quite a long time.

Honor 9 Lite: there is a headphone audio jack. Illustration: Chip

The quality of photographs is poor, especially at dusk.

Photo quality is only adequate - and disappointing especially in poor lighting conditions. Anyone who takes photos during the day in good light will find decent but not mind-blowing quality with some minor flaws. We quite like the dynamics and color rendition, but the detail of 13-megapixel photos, although normal, could be better.

What especially stands out here, for example, is the fact that the hair on our mannequin’s head merges into a single mass - Huawei P Smart copes better with them, although otherwise the pictures look very similar. Perhaps the reason for such differences is the tolerance of the assembly. The blurring algorithm gets down to business just as roughly and reduces the level of detail, according to our calculations, sometimes by up to 60 percent - top models “capture” up to 90 percent of the details.

Comparison: also the inexpensive bq Aquaris X produces better images in twilight lighting. Illustration: Chip

Those who take photographs in twilight lighting can no longer count on any pleasure: the photographs turn out extremely fuzzy, noisy and leave much to be desired in almost every respect - only we more or less like the color rendition.

However, Huawei P Smart has exactly the same problems. But in this price category, some other smartphones are able to show better results: for example, the bq Aquaris X. Those who can spend about 100 euros more on a smartphone can be pleased with the HTC U11 life with its excellent photo quality.

On both the front and back sides, Honor introduces a combination of a 13-megapixel primary sensor and a 2-megapixel secondary sensor to give the smartphone the ability to create a background blur effect in portrait mode.

Accordingly, the images from the front camera can be considered convincing and qualify the Honor 9 Lite as a device for selfie lovers who do not want to spend too much money. In this sense, the P Smart, with its 8-megapixel single front camera, is somewhat behind the curve.

13MP + 2MP: Thanks to the dual camera design, portrait shots can be given a background blur effect - even through the front camera. Illustration: Chip

Software and multimedia

The software platform uses Android OS version 7.0 with the proprietary EMUI 5.1 shell, which is currently the latest version of the interface for Huawei mobile devices. The capabilities of the EMUI shell, used in all modern mobile devices of the manufacturer, have been well studied by us and have been described in detail more than once in reviews.

Among the features: the EMUI 5.1 interface studies user habits and predicts their behavior. The developers claim that over time this improves the speed of opening applications. Launcher offers two options for displaying the workspace, with and without a menu of installed applications. In the settings menu, an additional panel now slides out on the side, and the proprietary timeline has disappeared from the notification panel.

There is a two-window mode and the ability to reduce the size of virtual keyboards. That is, in principle, the organization of the proprietary shell has become as close as possible to the pure Android interface. There are very few additional programs: only a comprehensive phone manager, a file manager and the HiCare health monitoring program.

To listen to music, you use your own player. Previously, there were no manual settings at all, now there is a Huawei Histen audio effects section in which you can turn on the 3D sound effect and choose from equalizer presets. But all this becomes available only with connected headphones.

The Honor Purity equalizer, by the way, was developed in partnership with Monster. In headphones, the smartphone sounds high quality, the sound is loud, clear, thick and rich. The loudspeaker also sounds good, but, naturally, produces a simpler sound. The microphone has good sensitivity, but the smartphone does not have a built-in FM radio.

Android 8 with additional features

Honor installs Android 8 on the 9 Lite under a user interface called EMUI and developed by Huawei. The security system update package was up to date at the time of testing. The system looks good, is easy to control, and responds promptly to user commands. By default, there is no separate application menu; all program icons are located on the desktop. However, this can be corrected if someone considers this approach not visual enough.

We even liked some of the customization options: in particular, you can assign the camera shutter function to the fingerprint scanner or thus pull out the notification shade.

The Android 8 system looks good and responds quickly to commands. Illustration: Chip

Specifications Huawei p9 lite