Honor 9 Lite first impression: Mid-range phone with top-notch features

Huawei's subsidiary Honor officially unveiled the much-anticipated Honor 9 Lite in India on January 18 and is slated to go on sale starting January 20.

What's striking about the Honor 9 Lite is that it comes bundled with top-notch features such as Kirin 659 octa-core, FullView display offering cinematic viewing experience, quad camera setup, two dual-cameras on the back, a pair of snappers on the front and a daylong battery. Its price starts at Rs 10,999.

International Business Times India is in possession of the Honor 9 Lite review unit and here's our initial impression of the device, which many have dubbed as the next big thing in the mid-range segment.

Display and design:

Honor 9 Lite is one of the best designed phones in the mid-range range. It features well crafted rounded edges around the corner with metallic shell having additional layer of glass exuding mirror-like glossy premium look.

On the front, it sports a 5.65-inch full HD+ (2160x1080p) screen and features extra 2.5D curved glass cover which not only shields the screen from getting damaged on the edges but also adds value to the visual appeal.

Performance:

We have been using the Honor 9 Lite for a couple of days and it is swift in terms of app loading and switching between multiple apps. It is too early to judge the phone's performance, as all new Android phones no matter what configuration it has, will work faster. So, stay tuned for complete review with benchmark test results.

The device comes packed with proprietary Huawei HiSilicon Kirin 659 octa-core (4x2.36 GHz Cortex-A53 & 4x1.7 GHz Cortex-A53) backed by Mali-T830 MP2 graphics engine, 4GB/3GB of RAM and 32GB/64GB storage.

Camera:

Honor is the pioneer among the tier-1 brands,  who brought dual-camera phones to the mainstream premium phones, and now with Honor 9 Lite, it has set a new benchmark in the under Rs 11,000 price range.

Honor 9 Lite features not one but two dual-cameras, one pair each on the front and back. Both come with 13MP (main)+2MP (secondary for depth field detection) configuration. With dual-cameras, it offers advanced Portrait mode 2.0 that allows users to take Bokeh picture with blur effect in the background.[Check out the samples below].

Battery:

Honor 9 Lite comes packed with a standard 3,000mAh battery which is more than enough to get through the day with single full charge under mixed usage.

Also, the company claims that the new Android Oreo-based EMUI software comes with Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based codes, which makes the device intuitive enough to optimise the battery usage and cuts off rarely used apps from draining the cell, thereby extending the battery life.

Initial thoughts on Honor 9 Lite

Over-all, Honor 9 Lite looks feature-rich both in terms of internal hardware and visual appeal but we will reserve the final judgement until we test the device on all aspects, particularly camera image quality in low-light, battery life expectancy in rigorous usage and performance while playing games.

Keep a tab on this space, as we will be bringing the complete review of the Honor 9 Lite in the coming days.

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 Key specifications of Honor 9 Lite: