A few weeks back I got to spend some time with the latest device from Honor South Africa, their X9a smart phone. It was my first test device from the Chinese mobile manufacturer so I was looking forward to seeing how it goes. Honor was once part of the HUAWEI business consortium, being a more affordable sub brand, after trade restrictions were placed on HUAWEI for all US based tech companies, Honor decided to break away from HUAWEI and continue on their own, so for me it was a great to judge how far they've come as a company without a major parent company to assist them and from my first thoughts on unboxing the device, it seems that they doing pretty well. Quality of the packaging and how the items were presented were pretty much up to standard with most high-end brands.
So, what's in the box? Well first up is the actual phone, followed by a silicon cover, sim tray eject pin, then underneath the quick start guide is a USB Type C charging cable and a charging block! Aha, yes Honor are still giving you a charging block with their devices, which does come handy seeing that it is a Super Charger.
First impressions of the phone, great design with its unibody metal body, curved screen display with 93% screen-to-body ratio. The phone I had came in Emerald Green, one of two colours that it is available in, the other being Midnight Black. The phone has a rather interesting circular camera design with a glass band that houses the 3-lenses and the flash. Even though the HONOR X9aisn't a flagship device, it still gives off a very premium look and feel.
The party trick to the HONOR X9a is its screen, it measures 6.67-inch and is a curved OLED display with 1.07 billion colours and measures 800 nits on full screen-brightness but the real kicker is that its claimed to be the toughest screen on any device. It can survive drops, rolls and being squeezed! This is all thanks to its 0.65mm deeply reinforced glass with enhanced stress of over 900Mpa sq. This gives you assurance that should you drop the phone, chances of you cracking the screen is minimal. There are plenty videos on YouTube demonstrating the durability of the phones screen but I obviously I had to test it out myself but after the first two drops I got a bit scared even though there wasn't a need to be.
Day to day phone usage with the HONOR X9a was pleasant experience, the 120Hz AMOLED curved display is easy on the eye and very responsive. The battery life on the device was very impressive as well with it having a 5100mAh battery that is claimed to last 2 days and I came close to achieving this. In terms of processing power, the X9a comes with a 8GB+5GB HONOR Ram Turbo which kicks in when it feels that the phone is being over stressed with multiple apps and functions being performed at once. I never felt any lagging while using the phone over the 2 weeks and I tend to do a lot with the phone during the day, instant messaging on multiple platforms, phone calls, video calls, sifting through social media and of course taking pictures and videos, which brings me to the next item for discussion, the camera.
While the HONOR X9a does come with the triple matrix system camera, with the main camera having a 64MP lens, I wasn't very pleased with certain aspects with the picture quality, especially in low light but then again I have to remember this isn't a flagship model device so for the price you're paying, the camera is actually brilliant. The clarity of the close-ups did impress me a lot and the 5MP wide angle camera is decent too. The front facing camera is a 16MP F2.45 which is prefect for selfies and takes pretty decent videos too in 1080P resolution.
Overall my experience with the HONOR X9a was a decent one, an entry level phone that has some great features and even better hardware, it certainly stands out from the rest in its segment and a great buy for anyone considering this device.
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