EMUI – Tech Raman

9 Reasons why Honor 9N scores over Redmi Note 5 Pro

Lakshmi Rajan — Fri, 27 Jul 2018 06:27:41 +0000

The plain fact is there is no one best Smartphone, had it been there no one would be buying any other mobiles, right? Every phone has its own plus and minus points that people weigh over when buying their new Smartphone, when their needs matches more with the positives a phone offer, they buy it. Simple. If you are looking for an affordable mid-range Smartphone, the choices narrow between the newly launched Honor 9N and the Redmi Note 5 Pro, while both the phones have their own goodie bags, I list 9 reasons why Honor 9N beats over Redmi Note 5 Pro and if you value these points as priority, you get your right pick too.

Design

Smartphone has become almost an extension of us, most of us can’t live without it and is our integral part. For a device that we carry almost always with us, the ergonomics matter a lot. The phone has to be lighter and get its dimension right for ease of use in our daily life, this is where Honor 9N has a vital advantage. The Honor 9N measures 149.2 x 71.8 x 7.7 mm as compared to 158.6 x 75.4 x 8.1 mm reading of Redmi Note 5 Pro, a few mm does make a huge difference and anything less than 8mm definitely is better. More importantly, the Honor 9N at 152 grams is much lighter than the 181 grams the Redmi Note 5 Pro weighs. Clad in glass body as compared to the more common in the category metal body the Redmi note 5 pro comes and available in exquisite one of the kind robin egg blue color and Lavender purple along side the traditional black and Honor’s special blue shade, the Honor 9N could easily win hands down the most stylish Smartphone in this price category.

Notch Ahead

Smartphone industry keeps evolving when it comes to aesthetics and design, last season it was about the new found love for 18:9 aspect ration which helped the OEMs to bring more real estate to the screen while still managing to keep the phone narrower for grip. Redmi Note 5 Pro embraced the 18:9 aspect ratio and it was well received but there was a quick shift again from the 18:9 aspect ratio to 19:9 aspect ratio with the arrival of notch design. Undoubtedly the ‘notch’ on the top divided the tech community with many of them deriding it but ultimately what matters is the end consumers and when I interacted with many consumers, I found there are lot many people who liked to be one notch ahead. The notch was embraced again, people did like it. So Honor moved in swiftly and the Honor 9N comes with notch. You don’t find any other device in this price range with notch, atleast yet. For those who don’t like notch, the EMUI also offers a display setting to hide notch.

Display

Honor 9N has a 5.84 inches IPS LCD display with a 1080 x 2280 pixels resolution translating to 432 ppi density. On the other hand, the Redmi Note 5 Pro comes with a 5.99 inches IPS LCD display offering a 1080 x 2160 pixels working out a 403 ppi density. 9N is packed with more pixel density and also when kept side by side, the display panel looks slightly more vibrant than the Note 5 Pro giving it a slight advantage.

Game Suite

If you are a hard core gamer like me, you would like the Game suite feature in Honor 9N. Game suite offers three modes: Performance mode: to improve game performance Smart mode: to balance performance and power consumption Power saver mode: saves battery life but reduces game performance. It also offers a DND mode while you are at gaming for an uninterrupted game session. When enabled, all onscreen notification will be muted or hidden except for calls, alarms and low battery alerts. The device will not ring or vibrate for calls and alarms so you can have unhindered gaming.

GPU Turbo – The future proofing

Talking about gaming, we all know the Smartphones performance can deteriorate over a time or atleast when you buy a Smartphone, you are limited to its hardware capability. What works as advantage for Honor Smartphones is the tight integration of software and hardware since they use their own HiSiliconne Kirin chipsets, very few countable OEMs have their own chipset running on their phones. Huawei, the parent company of Honor has their own R&D centers across the world including one in Bangalore. With a talented workforce of engineers and tightly integrated ecosystem, they are pushing a GPU Turbo update to some of their Hauwei/Honor Smartphones and Honor 9N is poised to receive the update in few months, the update promises to increase the gaming performance by 30% and battery life by 20%.

Riding Mode

A recent report states that in India the use of mobile phones while driving claimed 2,138 lives last year. It’s a serious concern which made Honor introduce a Riding mode in their Smartphones including Honor 9N. It can be easily enabled from the quick settings before you start your ride. When you enable the ride mode, the bluetooth and headset will be disabled in case you have paired them, and calls will be automatically answered with voice or sms messages based on your ride mode settings. You can choose to answer by voice message, answer by text or decline calls automatically. The app also features an optional ride tracking which gives you insights on your riding pattern, distance covered and time spend on wheels.

Better Camera Controls

EMUI has probably one of the better camera app offering good number of presets or modes which helps normal users take amazing pictures, something which the MIUI on Redmi Note 5 Pro lacks. Honor 9N offers an extensive array of modes including pro photo, pro video, AR lens, night shot, light painting, and my favorite good food mode. For those who are not comfortable or unsure of handling manual modes, the light painting mode enables them to become ace photographers in capturing the city at dark with trailing lights, shoot silky water like pro. Another area in the camera app where Honor 9N scores over Redmi Note 5 Pro is the rich manual controls the EMUI offers. If you are a pro, you definitely have a better control on the camera with a Honor 9N smartphone. So either way, amateur or pro, the Honor 9N camera offers a better usability and controls.

Fingeprint Sensor – A little more

There is no denying both the phones offer accurate and quick fingerprint sensor and also has app lock feature. But Honor has few more tricks to the fingerprint sensor implementation. You can use touch and hold or slide gestures on the sensor area to do certain tasks like to answer incoming calls, stop alarm, quick access notification panel or browse photos.

Battery modes – last minute survival methods

We all scramble to prolong the battery when it is reaching the fag end, we turn off the connectivity, dim the screen and what not to make sure the battery can last a little longer. The Honor 9N offers a better power saver mode than Redmi Note 5 Pro there is a power saver mode and when you are really left with last few percentage of battery, you can turn to the Ultra power saving mode which turns the screen black, shuts down everything else except to use dialer, messages, contacts, SOS and an option to add two more apps to the home screen. So if you value any of these points above, the Honor 9N definitely should be your pick. What you think of these features, do share your thoughts. https://youtu.be/Ip6zypPW8cg ]]>

Honor 9 Lite Review – A Thing of Beauty is a Joy for Ever?

Lakshmi Rajan — Sun, 04 Feb 2018 17:00:45 +0000

Honor packs in a potent mix of beauty and performance in Honor 9 Lite. I think its a smart offering that sets the bar high for competition. With a price starting at Rs 10,999 in India, its no push over for others. Honor has been resurgent in India with their recent Smartphones gaining good traction and overall positive vibes around the brand now. With back to back releases they are on a high, and the Honor 9 Lite is a confident product and also comes with flaunting four cameras, read on our Honor 9 Lite Review to know our in-depth take on the device. Out of the box you get:

Honor9 Lite Smartphone
Soft back case
Pin
USB Type C charger
Power adapter

Design and Build Quality

Double sided 2.5D glass
Aluminum frame
151 x 71.9 x 7.6 mm
149 grams

Few seasons back, we had many full glass bodied Smartphones but soon metal became the main stay with glass finding place in premium offerings. Honor 9 Lite makes a bold statement with a mirror-life finish at the back. Available in three colors, Midnight Black, Sapphire Blue and Glacier Grey, they outshine the rest of the competition on style quotient and elegant design. Honor has by now very much owned the Blue color and the Glacier Grey is the new sizzler but they Grey the Honor says is a complicated shade to make and it would be available in limited numbers. A light aluminum frame holds the glass on both the sides and it also helps to keep the phone lighter. The phone has rounded sides and gives a comfortable grip. Having glass rear also means its a bit slippery and the back is also prone to smudges. The right side has the power button and volume buttons and the left side the SIM tray. Its a hybrid dual SIM and supports 4G VoLTE. The bottom is populated with a speaker grille, microUSB port, mic and an audio jack.

Display

5.65-inch IPS LCD display
2160×1080 resolution
18:9 aspect ratio
75.5% screen-to-body ratio
428 ppi density

Full vision displays and 18:9 aspect ratios has changed the way we perceived the display sizes, now the 5.65 inches is the new 5-inch compact phones. The Honor 9 Lite’s 5.65-inch display features it and if you look for a palm fitting phone between the 7x and 9i, the Lite fits your needs. The fullHD+ IPS panel pops colors and has good brightness level. The viewing angles are good and we can safely say the display is one of the strong point of the Honor 9 Lite. The display settings has eye comfort mode which can be scheduled.

Software Features – Liter Version of EMUI 8.0

Honor 9 Lite is the second device after Honor View 10 to come with Android Oreo and EMUI 8.0 out of the box. But unlike in View 10, the EMUI 8.0 is a bit watered down here. Few features have been left out while the essence of the UI is retained. Honor’s own skin has evolved a lot over the years and is more refined now. For those who long for app drawer, there is a provision for it too. Multi-tasking via split screen is made easy with a long press on the menu button, there is the bells and whistles like app twin that enables to duplicate apps but limited to Facebook, Messenger and Whatsapp, Smart assistance that offers one hand UI, motion control actions etc. The features of EMUI that has been omitted include private space that enables the user to have a partition and a separate phone within a phone, glove mode, guest mode and the Game suite which I liked in View 10 that offered a DND mode during gaming episodes. The settings page has a neat layout and then there are few localized customization like in calendar which offers local almanacs. You also have the option to use Huawei’s cloud services for backing up contacts, calendars, Wi-Fi credentials, SMS messages, and call logs but you can’t back up data from third party app.

Performance

HiSilicon Kirin 659
Octa-core (4×2.4 GHz Cortex-A73 & 4×1.8 GHz Cortex-A53)
16nm FinFET
Mali-T830 MP2
3/4 GB RAM
10nm processor
32/64 GB,expandable.

The part everyone would be more interested at, once the vanity settles down. Powering the 9 Lite is the same Kirin 659 that we have seen already in 7X and 9i, which is not bad at all. Its a good mid-range processor Honor has delivered recently. The phone perfectly and dutifully does all the demands of the daily grind an average user would put a phone to use. The call quality is good. The speaker is decent and I had no issue with the occasional speaker calls I made. While I don’t use video calls, there are many who do ask if the dialer has a video call option, the answer is no. A software update could fix it though. The 9 Lite has OTG support and is a decent performer at this price level. Talking about gaming, it could handle most of the games thrown at, though keen gaming enthusiasts will notice few frame drops in heavy graphic intensive games. Glass clad phones tend to heat up a bit more than their metal counterparts and 9 Lite is no exception. On a gaming trip, the phone heats up a bit around the camera module area. You can check the gaming review video below for more details on it and the gaming performance. https://youtu.be/ufxmBRY58lc The apps load quicker and I didn’t notice any lag in daily use. The RAM management is pretty aggressive and if any apps are idle for a bit longer time, it shuts them down. Overall, the 9 Lite didn’t disappoint me. It also has the Gyroscope, so if you are looking at playing 360 degree videos or VR games, it does handle them. As always, Honor does a pretty good work with the fingerprint sensor, its quick and highly reliable. You can also app lock and there is the usual bells and whistles that Honor packs in with touch and hold and touch and slide gestures on the sensor area to access notification lights, browse images, take quick snap etc.

Battery life

The 9 lite has a 3000mAh battery and the Kirin 659 does a good job with the battery optimization inspite of a lighter battery. Putting the phone to a medium use could squeeze out 18 hours of battery life or a bit more. It takes 2 hours or a little more for full charge from 0%.

Camera performance

Rear & Front: Dual: 13 MP + 2 MP,
phase detection autofocus, LED flash
1080 video capability

The four cameras on the Honor 9 Lite makes for any conversational point when someone asks about your phone. The dual camera on both sides also means you can enable portrait mode on both the cameras. The pictures have a good color reproduction and as expected under good day light conditions, the pictures are really good. What I liked more is the selfies, which come nice especially with the portrait mode turned on. For the rear camera though, I liked the wide aperture mode better than the portrait mode, the wide aperture gives a soft background and you can also fiddle with the aperture later after taking an image. Night conditions suffers a bit of noise but that is the case with most of the cameras in this price range in any case. Having tried the Honor 7X and 9i, I realized the later two did fare a bit better than the 9 Lite when it comes to camera but nevertheless 9 Lite has a decent camera optics at this price range. Videos are decent but there is no image stabilization. The camera mode as usual squeezes lots of camera modes.There are bunch of shooting modes like professional mode for both stills and videos, good food mode, light painting, HDR etc. You can also trigger the camera with gesture palm control or by a smile. [gallery link="file" columns="4" ids="12957,12958,12959,12960,12961,12963,12964,12965"]

Verdict:

The base variant of Honor 9 Lite is a sweet deal. At a price of Rs 10,999 it gives you a beautiful phone with a vivid display complete with 18:9 ratio almost gone bezel-less design and it is also a decent performer at this price. ]]>