- It's never been easier to get ahold
of a great high spec smartphone
without paying iPhone or Samsung money.
And well part ways, Honour brand might not have
the instant recognition
of the bigger names it's hard to argue
with performance build quality like this
for just 379 pounds.
I'm Alex with Android Central
and this is our first look at the Honour 9.
First off there's a lot of Honour 8 DNA
in this phone which is mostly a good thing.
There's a stunning 15 layer glass back panel
which is now gently curved at the edges
and the splash of colour
in this blue model continues
around to the front
to the tapered 2.5D glass of the display.
The updated design hasn't changed
a whole lot compared to last year's model
but several tweaks like the removal
of the plastic trim
between the metal and glass makes
it feel much more premium.
And the curved back of course helps
the Honour 9 fit more comfortably in the hand.
Unfortunately though this phone is
still rather slippery
and the smooth glass will manage to slide its way
across flat surfaces given the opportunity.
One of my least favourite things about the Honour 8
Regardless it's a gorgeous looking design.
An illustrious counterpart
to the unremarkable visuals of its main rival.
And while we're mentioning OnePlus,
the Honour 9's button layer mirrors that
of the OnePlus 5
with a central fingerprint scanner that doubles
as your home key,
flat by swapable capacitive buttons.
On the front is a 5.15 inch 1080p IPS LCD panel
which while it's not 2k
still looks fantastically vibrant
and is easily visible out in the bright daylight.
It's actually rare to find high end specs
in an Android phone that's this small
and easy to use in one hand as this.
And after using a lot of phones
at 5.5 inches and up it's
actually kind of refreshing to go back
to something smaller.
Sound is also a big focus for the Honour 9
with audio tuning
by Grammy winning engineer, Rainya Mallard
and sound profiles inspired by Monster.
The verdict on sound quality is going to be out
until I spend more time with this phone
but at the very least,
the built in loud speaker seems suitably punchy.
When it comes to internals,
the Honour 9 is almost a carbon copy
of the Huawei P10.
Running the show is a Kirin 960 octa-core chip,
a proven processor with four or six gigabytes
of ram depending on which country you buy it in.
Plus 64 gigs of internal storage plus micro SD.
There's also a ample
thirty two hundred milliamp power battery
with quick charging which is pretty generous
for this size of phone.
Notable P10 features that you don't get include
Huawei's faster supercharging technology
and optical stabilisation in the main camera.
So there's a dual rear camera set up, once again,
on this phone with a 12 megapixel colour sensor
and a 20 megapixel monochrome sensor
behind f/2.2 lenses.
Unlike the P10 there's no Leica's tuning
in this camera but it really doesn't seem worse
off for it.
In my brief time with it,
the Honour 9 was quick to capture images
with vibrant colours and excellent dynamic range.
And thanks to that 20 megapixel sensor,
you also get the same hybrid zoom feature
in portrait mode that
we've been seeing in the P10.
But we'll have to wait and see how it shapes up
in darker conditions where the new low light mode
with pixel bending is designed
to produce clearer night shots.
So on the software side, this is EMUI 5.1 based
on Android's 7.0 Nougat.
Honour is already promising an update
to Android 8.0 when it's released
but no time frame for that just yet.
There's more in EMUI 5.1
in Huawei P10 and MADE 9 videos
but the quick version is
that this is Huawei's best software yet
although it is
still highly differentiate compared
to might be used to Samsung, Google or HTC
however it is a vast improvement
of earlier versions of Huawei's software
as we saw on the Honour 8 last year.
Out of the box EMUI feels
a lot more like Android now
and there's a pleasant blue
and white theme running through Huawei's own apps
while other parts of the software can
be endlessly themed and customised.
So great specs, quick software,
a promising camera and a sharp design
all this stuff is yours for 379 pounds in the UK
or 449 Euros in Europe.
That's impressive.
And the Honour 9 looks at
to give OnePlus a run for its money in the
always interesting affordable flagship space.
We'll have more on the Honour 9 in a full review.
And be sure to subscribe so you don't miss that
and all of our future coverage.
Thanks for watching and I'll see ya next time.