Honor 9A Review

An entry level affordable smartphone that comes with a huge battery

Introduction

The Honor brand has been known to be a target for budget to mid ranged price smartphones. This time I am given a chance to do this short review of the HONOR 9A, a smartphone which mainly targets the affordable range price, yet you will get almost all the features that you would use on a smartphone.

Specifications

Design

The front on the phone 6.3 inch is made of glass panel with a front facing 8MP selfie camera while the back material is plastic with 3 rear cameras which is also a fingerprint magnet followed by a rear mounted fingerprint scanner, weighted at 185grams , holding up the HONOR 9A just feels nice, it’s not too heavy, yet not too light, just nice. It comes in 2 colors, Blue and Black. Micro USB slot for charging, 3.5mm audio jack and loudspeaker is located at the bottom portion of the phone. 

Display & Sound

The HONOR 9A comes with a 6.3 inch LCD display with an aspect ratio of 20:9 at 720P HD+ display. For the price that you paid for, its actually reasonable. Definitely this is not the best display ever seen, but considering this is a budget device, it performs what it does as a phone. Viewing a couple of streaming video is just nice. YouTube playback can go up to a maximum of 720P at 60FPS. On the sound portion, both the bottom firing speaker, top earpiece and plugging in a headphone all works well and loud, no further comment on this part.

Camera

Rear : 13MP main + 5MP ultra-wide + 2MP depth sensor

Front : 8MP

Rear Camera wise, I took pictures and a video on it. Well, the quality is just OK, with certain details able to be captured properly accompanied with noise as well. Video capture can go up to 1080P but sadly, locked at 30FPS only. I do wish it had the option for 60FPS recording.

On the Front camera, selfies taken are a little bit grainy, whether it’s indoor, outdoor or in a room, unless if the environment surrounding the selfie capture is bright, it does the job well. If you wish to do Vlog on this phone, this might not be the phone for you.

Performance 

The HONOR 9A is running on a low to mid range MediaTek Helio P22 Octa-core 2.0Ghz processor with 3GB RAM and 64GB of internal memory. Gaming wise, as long its a simple game it will work fine, heck, even games like Mobile Legends will work, although you gotta set the graphic settings to low. Internal memory wise, if its not enough, there is always an option to slot in a micro SD card for memory expansion, which comfortably enough, another 128GB will do. Connectivity such as Bluetooth, WIFI (BGN) 2.4Ghz, LTE, 3G is also available, suitable for those who want to connect to their headsets, WiFi routers and social media on the go with 4G connectivity. On the battery and usage wise, it lasts for about a day, but recharging it back from 0% to 100% will roughly take 3 hours

NO GMS? There is HMS anyway

Applications and game downloads are no issue (at least for me), since there is Huawei App Gallery, which hosts a large number of apps and games in it. You can download from productivity, entertainment , social , Mobile Legends without any issues. If you missed any applications from the App Gallery, there is always an alternative such as AuroraOSS which is an alternative app store that pulls applications and games directly from Google Play, this ensures no malicious apps are downloaded to your device. 

Conclusion 

The HONOR 9A is definitely a great device for those who look for an affordable device, with all modern features built into it. If you wished to get a secondary phone for backup or just for leisure light weight use, this could be your choice as well. At RM549, you will get 12 Months worth of Huawei Cloud services to backup your files.

Pros

• Great affordable device
• Huge 5000mAh Battery
• Has reverse charging

Cons

• Micro USB connector
• Fingerprint magnet
• No Fast Charging
• WiFi 2.4Ghz only