There’s an immense demand for feature packed affordable smartphones in the Indian market. Consumers look for handsets that offer the most bang for their buck without missing out on important features such as camera, hardware, display and a premium design. If there’s any handset that ticks all the right boxes of being a total value for money deal, it has to be Honor 9 Lite.
Priced aggressively at Rs. 10,999 for the 3GB RAM variant, the budget smartphone from the house of Huawei has left us baffled with its overall performance. Honor 9 Lite is a clear example of how far mobile technology has come in last few years. It offers features that were once only associated with top-of-the line smartphones that cost a fortune.
How Huawei has managed to offer the same set of features and performance in a fraction of cost, is something that other smartphone manufacturers would still take time to learn. Having said that, let’s take a closer look on the design and hardware of Honor 9 Lite to understand the true potential of this unique smartphone.
Mesmerizing Glass Unibody Design
A smartphone is not just about performance. It has to look good because it is perhaps the only gadget one carries along everyday, everywhere. The smartphone with its dual-tone glass finish on front and back is simply a class a part. It’s like nothing we have seen in this price segment.
The shining glass creates shimmering reflections that makes Honor 9 Lite the most visually appealing smartphone in budget price-point. The slim integrated design and PPVD (Patterned Physical Vapor Deposition technology) frame enable light to flow around the device, bringing a seamless visual experience. The rear glass finish enhances the phone’s style quotient and gives Honor 9 Lite the look and feel of a much more expensive smartphone.
Honor 9 Lite’s premium look and feel is further enhanced by an ergonomic design. With a higher screen-to-device ratio, the compact handset easily fits in your palm and is quite comfortable to use with one hand. The 2.5D curved glass on front and back subtly blends with the curves on the sides to offer a streamlined finish and comfortable feel in hands. And despite having a glass body, the smartphone is not slippery and is just perfect for one-handed usage. Overall, Honor 9 Lite is one of the lightest and most compact 18L9 aspect ratio handset in its price-point.
Honor 9 Lite Colours: Three Stunning Shades
Honor 9 Lite is available in three stunning colours- Sapphire Blue, Midnight Black and Glacier Grey. The mirror-like effect is limited to Sapphire Blue and Glacier Gray variant of the handset. There is a Midnight Black variant of Honor 9 Lite as well.
18:9 Aspect Ratio Screen with HD+ Resolution
Honor 9 Lite is designed to offer a visually stunning multimedia experience in a pocket friendly price-point. The smartphone sports a Full HD+ screen with the taller 18:9 aspect ratio. The 5.65-inch display on Honor 9 Lite has a resolution of 2,160×1,080 pixels which in its bezel-less form factor makes for a best-in-class video playback and gaming experience.
The taller bezel-less screen offers Honor 9 Lite the body of a typical 5.2-inch screen device. The 18:9 aspect ratio screen enables enhanced multitasking where you can use tow apps simultaneously for a more dynamic visual experience. Games, videos and web pages look stunning on Honor 9 Lite as compared to other smartphones in similar price-point.
Most Feature Packed Smartphone Under 15k
Honor 9 Lite is the only handset in sub Rs. 15,000 price-point that combines two dual-lens camera setups and an 18:9 aspect ratio screen. Moreover, the four-lens camera on Honor 9 Lite comprises of 13MP+2MP camera setup at front and rear has the ability to create hardware-level bokeh effects. The 2MP secondary lens at front and rear is provided to sense depth of field information. The rear camera also supports ‘Phase Detection Autofocus’ and advanced wide aperture mode.
Powerful Hardware for a Lag Free Performance
Honor 9 Lite is more than just an eye-candy. The budget smartphone is backed by Huawei’s custom in-house octa-core processor- Kirin 659, which is a power efficient chip produced in a modern 16nm FinFET process. The ARM-based octa-core System-on-Chip comprises of 4 power efficient and 4 performance cores. The performance cores are clocked at 2.36 GHz to manage resource intensive tasks and the power-efficient cores are clocked at 1.7 GHz to take care of everyday tasks.
For graphics, the Kirin 659 integrates a Mali-T830 MP2 GPU clocked at 900 MHz. The CPU-GPU setup very well renders intense graphics to offer a lag free gaming experience
The smartphone comes in two RAM and storage variants- 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, and 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. The efficient CPU and ample RAM makes for a smooth multitasking, lag free gameplay and stunning video playback delivery without any performance slowdown.
Honor 9 Lite is backed by Huawei’s 4th generation fingerprint identification technology. The new tech is combined with machine learning and speeds up the ‘unlock process’ to an almost imperceptible 0.25 seconds. The smartphone has ‘Chip-level’ security where your fingerprint data stored in isolated encrypted storage to prevent unauthorized access which can compromise the security of your sensitive data.
You need a powerful battery source to drive all such features throughout the day. Thankfully, Huawei has taken care of it by packing the Honor 9 Lite with a 3,000 mAh battery that has been tested rigorously and optimized with company’s 5th generation smart battery saving technology. Honor 9 Lite has 6 power-saving features that as per Honor offers 86 hours offline music listening or 13 hours offline video watching on one full charge.
For connectivity, Honor 9 Lite has FM radio, Bluetooth 4.2, Wi-Fi, 4G with VoLTE and USB-OTG.
