Huawei Honor 9i faces strong rivals in LG Q6 and Xiaomi Mi Max 2
Huawei is trying to make a mark in the sub-Rs20,000 segment with a smartphone which offers the new small bezel design, dual cameras on front and rear and looks as good as the Honor 8 Pro
Chinese phonemaker Huawei is back with another smartphone called the Honor 9i. It offers a near bezel-less design that is in vogue these days and has dual cameras not just on the back but on the front too. It is priced at Rs17,999 and will be a available in India from 14 October onwards on Flipkart.com. Here are some of the key talking points of this new mid-segment smartphone.
Touch of metal, new design
The Honor 9i’s metal body and curved edges look similar to the more expensive Honor 8 Pro. The position of the rear camera is a bit different, though. In the former, the dual cameras are vertically inclined and have been placed towards the middle, while in the latter they are placed sideways and are located around the left corner. It comes in blue, graphite black and black colour options.
The Honor 9i’s front panel has extremely thin bezels, similar to the LG G6 and Q6. The front panel has a screen to body ratio of 83%. Despite the 5.9-inch screen, it looks as big as a 5.5-inch screen smartphone.
The fingerprint sensor is placed on the back. Even the Honor logo has been placed on the back and not on the front. The base looks a bit cluttered with the micro USB, 3.5mm and speaker huddled together.
Big screen, mid-range hardware
The 5.9-inch screen has a resolution of 2,160x1,080p, pixel density of 407ppi and aspect ratio of 18:9. At the heart of the Honor 9i is Huawei’s mid-range Kirin 659 octa-core processor paired with 4GB RAM. It offers 64GB storage and accepts microSD cards. However, it has a hybrid SIM tray. So you can’t access the microSD card slot if both SIM slots are occupied.
Four cameras
To take advantage of dual cameras, Huawei has added two cameras on both front and rear. The front panel includes 13 megapixel and 2 megapixel cameras, while the back offers 16 megapixel and 2 megapixel cameras. The dual cameras allow users to add focus on any images they want after clicking a picture. There is no update on the camera sensors used in the smartphone, yet.
Key rivals
At the current price point, the Honor 9i is competing against the likes of LG Q6 (Rs14,999) and Xiaomi Mi Max 2 (Rs16,999). The former has a similar near bezel-less design, packs a 5.5-inch screen with resolution of 2,160x1,080p. The latter has a bigger 6.4-inch screen with resolution of 1,920x1,080p, but due to wider bezels, it looks a lot bigger in size.
The LG Q6 is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 octa-core processor with 3GB RAM in tow, offers 32GB storage and has a single 13-megapixel rear camera and 5-megapixel front camera. The Mi Max 2 is driven by a superior Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 octa-core processor with 4GB RAM, provides 64GB storage and has a 5-megapixel front camera and a 12-megapixel rear camera.
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