Honor 9X: Is this the new budget smartphone to beat?
Honor has unveiled a new entry to its X range of budget phones, but can it live up to the high bar set by its predecessor? Here’s our first look.
The image above gives you a good glimpse at the official sample of the Honor 9X that Trusted Reviews will put through its paces in our upcoming review of the phone, which will demonstrate exactly what it’s capable of. The shimmering design is noteworthy, because it is a shimmering crystal effect that plays the light nicely, revealing a giant X shaped pattern when in the right conditions.
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While the back panel will no doubt catch your eye, there’s another strongly-rumoured physical feature making its way to the device. Several official tweets from Honor hint that the new phone will have a pop-up camera similar in looks to the one found on the OnePlus 7T Pro. This innovation would give a premium look to the 9X, and of course would increase the screen-to-body ratio and deliver a uniform display, uninterrupted by a protruding camera.
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The Honor 9X looks even more distinctive than the Honor 8X, to which we awarded a 4.5/5 review score, but it’s what underneath that mstter. That phone had fantastic battery life, a great screen, and good performance — but we thought there was definite room for improvement with regard to the camera, while the sheer amount of bloatware, plus the lack of a USB-C port were disappointing let downs for an otherwise high-performace, value for money.
We hope that these points have all been addressed and have risen to the occasion. with this latest installment in the series. At first glance, it seems that at least once has, in the form of the triple (rather than double) camera, which should provide even more photographic versatility.