Honor 9N   Beauty Blind Test   Beauty All Around
Channel: Techno Mate
Date: 2018-08-11

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 design
The 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 display
The 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.

Huawei’s sub-brand Honor has been there in the Indian smartphone market for quite some time and the company is trying really hard to capture a good market share. Honor has always designed some really good looking and powerful smartphones but the absurd pricing of them didn’t worked in company’s favour. However, learning from the past mistakes the company has now geared up to launch phones with high-end specs and that too with a competitive price tag. The recently-launched Honor 9N is the result of this. The smartphone offers quite good specs like a dual camera, a powerful processor, latest operating system and top it all a really good design with a bezel-less display. In order to make the deal further enticing the smartphone has a starting price tag of Rs 11,999. At this price point no other company in the Indian market is offering this package. But is package turnout to be a game changer for the company? We tried to find out by using the Honor 9N.

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