HONOR is indeed a brand that steadily experimenting and putting up improvement within it’s range of product, not just the smartphones but laptops and accessories.
This isn’t a surprise when HONOR sent us a unit to try it out. In case you need to know about our unboxing, check it out below and the following in this article is our full review.
Who is this for?
Seeking something that is different than others, but still able to crunch every bit of performance it has with a rightfully placed camera for the social essentials and able to keep both work life balance all together in a compact, flagship like device.
The Design
The Honor 90 is using a similar all round curved design which shares some of the slim profile as the HONOR 70 which we also did the review last year. The slickness makes it easy as pocket friendly and easy to store in a small bag. The HONOR 90 is just measured at 7.8mm thickness, and weighted at 183 Grams.
One changes they made is the design of the rear camera, where HONOR gets the inspiration from the Moon Phase Ring, that when looked at the different angle, light and shadows can be spotted when moving around gazing at the surrounding ring. Specifically to the Emerald Green, which is the unit that we got, it has the smooth frosted texture when touched, and the colors pretty much resembles the color of the gem, which represents the primary colors of what we see everyday.
Besides that, there is also Peacock Blue and Diamond Silver, as the name implies, also representing the gems available on our very Earth, with design that is elegant and brings in the luxury vibes to it.
Display & Audio
HONOR has put in quite a lot of effort on this one, and this time its a 6.7inch, 120Hz AMOLED HDR10+ display with an impressive 3840Hz PWM dimming and peak brightness up to 1600nits. All these translates to a fast motion display with good deep rich colors that to what I see, a pleasant and vibrant one. While at the same time it is great for reading my favorite articles or emails, while still enjoyable even in a dimmed lighted room, as the screen will still adjust according to the surrounding. You also should be able to get good smooth motion and responses over gaming as well with almost 94% screen to body ratio with Quad-Curved Floating Screen. As usual Widewine L1 is there and certified, translating to support any verified popular streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
Now towards the audio, we tested a few songs and streams, you only get a single loudspeaker. The experience is a bit there lack of, there is no fancy high treble and bass, however still be able to produce an experience that is still pleasant to my hearing especially classical tunes. However to take full advantage especially with USB C headphones, HONOR Histen is there allowing for more sound presets and customization, or otherwise, you can just pair it with any of your favorite bluetooth headphones or TWS.
Camera
The star of the show lies towards the rear camera setup. A 200MP wide rear camera with PDAF, a 12MP ultrawide cam and 2MP depth sensor along with LED flash.
Day Time – Rear Camera
Night Time – Rear Camera
The rear camera bring most of the modern needs and it does almost on par with some of the flagships today, with good amount of clarity, along with AI assisted adjustments towards colors and saturation that fits in most places we take pictures at, and it does identify foreground and background decently coupled with dynamic range. This is also a capable shooter during night time and should you need to tweak or edit captured pictures, you still can do that and more when enabling Hi-Res mode, allowing up to 200MP of photo per capture.
Front camera is indeed quite useful as a portrait camera killer, a 50MP camera with HONOR Image Engine that can process via RAW portrait computing path, this optimizes the image quality via AI and one can choose different filters to play with, and the Bokeh effects can still be captured whether during day or night, as long there even a little light or brightness within the frame, the front cam can take it on to compute the image taken.
Lets talk a little on the rear camera video capability, the maximum you can get is 4K at 30FPS with proper AI video support and this can be use as a great for those who just wanted to take a video without messing much, but if you wanted to, the Pro Video option is always there for you when ready for a more to your own customized video taking adventures.
Performance & Experience
The HONOR 90 is powered by an overclocked Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 Accelerated Edition, which pushes additional clockspeed compared to the stock version, giving it an edge forward towards multi core application processes a tad slightly smoother. 12GB OF LPDDR4 RAM and a quite huge 512GB Internal Storage is also there to keep your applications, games loaded and if that is not enough, 7GB of HONOR RAM Turbo is also ready to keep up over 20 applications at the same time.
You can basically keep things going on and on for up to 12 to 13 hours average based on experience usage equipped with 5000MaH battery in it and you should be able to get even more further if you turn on battery saver and 4G connection only. Recharging it with the supplied 66W Adaptor will get you back from empty to fully charged around 1.5 hour time.
Besides hardware, the HONOR 90 is running on MagicOS 7.1 with Android 13, and HONOR definitely will support the OS and security patches for at least 3 years to come. MagicOS 7.1 essentially brings in several new features such as App Lock, GPU Turbo X (which optimizes for heavy games), Password Vault, Themes and many more, but thats just to name a few. One should not be worry as Android 13 features are baked to it, so it is pretty much updated and ready to use the minute you freshly start the phone, as Google Play Services will help to migrate your data over along with HONOR Device Clone. There is still some bloatware apps and games, but that can be uninstalled easily.
HONOR also offers PC to Phone and tablet collaboration as an unity companion for file transfers and screen mirroring, this makes things easy too when you wanted to present things by showing your phone screen via any HONOR laptop or file sharing between HONOR smart devices
Benchmarks
*select any of the phones below to see the benchmarks results, take note that this interactive chart is still in beta.
Technical Specifications
| rocessor | Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 Accelerated Edition (4 nm) |
| RAM/Internal Storage | 12GB RAM/512GB Storage |
| Display | 1200 x 2664 pixels, 6.7 inch, AMOLED, 1B colors, HDR10, 120Hz, PWM |
| Rear Camera | 200 MP, f/1.9, (wide), 1/1.4″, 0.56µm, PDAF 12 MP, f/2.2, 112˚ (ultrawide), AF 2 MP, f/2.4, (depth) |
| Front Camera | 50 MP, f/2.4, 100˚, (ultrawide) |
| Audio | Single Speakers, Bluetooth Audio, USB C Audio |
| Wireless Protocol/Hardware | WiFi AC/AX Dual Band, GPS, NFC, Bluetooth 5.2 A2DP+LE |
| Battery Capacity | 5000 mAh, 66w Charger included |
Verdict & Conclusion
HONOR 90 is a phone that is balanced in overall hardware internals, optics and design. The inclusion of the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 AE combined with the camera brings the choice of a contending mid range candidate that focuses on what is important on camera first with optimisation that is appreciated for multi tasking, gaming, while it can deliver a good battery usage along with a bigger internal storage compared to its competitions. With that we do recommend this phone as one of the choices out there should you wanted an up to date phone with some fashion sense baked to the design.
Pricing & Availability
The HONOR 90 is now officially announced at the price of RM2099 (512GB) and RM1799 (256GB). HONOR is also offering a one day offer with FREE HONOR Earbuds X5 and Extra RM150 eWallet Credit, all gifts worth up to RM647