Honor 9 Lite offers the most feature packed camera in its price point

Camera Specifications

Honor 9 Lite might just start a new trend in the camera department in budget smartphone segment. We say this because there's no other handset in the market that offers four-lens camera system with the ability of hardware-level bokeh effects. Honor 9 Lite has 13MP+2MP camera setup at front and rear. The 2MP secondary lens at front and rear is provided to sense depth of field information in the images you capture. The rear camera supports ‘Phase Detection Autofocus' and advanced wide aperture mode to create ‘Bokeh effect'. The 13MP camera at front is fixed focus but takes good use of secondary camera to deliver impressive results.

Just to give you a better understanding of price-features ratio, Moto G5S Plus which is priced at Rs. 13,999, ships with just one camera at front and cannot deliver bokeh selfies.

Camera UI and Features

Honor 9 Lite has an easy to use interface where you don't have to struggle for camera features. Moreover, you will never face any dull moment with Honor 9 Lite as the sheer number of modes, filters and features will keep the photographer in you alive. The camera's main screen itself offers portrait mode, wide aperture mode, moving pictures, beauty mode, etc.

Honor 9 Lite First Impressions

Modes and Filters are just a swipe away

You can swipe left to access all the camera settings such as resolution, GPS, timer, touch to capture and more. Swiping right will take you to modes section where you can also access colour filters and can also install new modes to experiment with pictures you capture. The section includes- Photo, Pro Photo (manual mode), Video, Pro video, HDR, Night shot, Panorama, Light painting, Time-lapse, Filters, watermark and more. Fire up the selfie camera and you can also capture group selfies with the help of Panorama selfie. Last but not the least, Honor 9 Lite camera is also intelligent enough to sense gestures and smiles to take a shot.

Moto G5S Plus cannot match the sheer number of modes and filters that Honor 9 Lite has under its sleeve.

Camera Performance

The combination of a 13-megapixel primary sensor and 2-megapixel secondary sensor makes Honor 9 Lite an amazing value for money camera smartphone in the budget price-point. You get the benefit of depth-sensing and bokeh shots while using both the rear as well as the front camera, not just on papers but also in real-life scenarios.

The 2MP secondary sensor at front and rear effectively senses depth of field of information and manages to create an impressive bokeh effect. The bokeh effect is as good as created by the secondary 13MP sensor on Moto G5S Plus, which is quite appreciable.

Impressive Portrait mode at pocket friendly price-point

The Portrait mode is backed with an upgraded beauty algorithm that can recognize facial contours, diverse features and customize beauty effects based on subject's genders. You cannot achieve this kind of dedicated portrait mode on any other handset in this price-point, not even on Xiaomi Mi A1, Moto G5S Plus, and other handsets priced higher than Honor 9 Lite.

Ample detailing and Natural colors

The front and rear cameras offer images with good detailing and contrast ratio. The images have natural color tones and are not artificially saturated, something we have experienced in the camera output from Moto G5S Plus. The camera also gets the bokeh effect fairly accurate. The wide aperture mode enables users to change the blur effect before or after taking a shot with the help of simple to use controls. You can adjust the aperture value in between f/0.95 to f/13, which is quite admirable at this price-point. The camera quickly focuses on subject and wastes no time in capturing an image. You will not experience any shutter delays on Honor 9 Lite in good or bad lighting conditions.

Moto G5S Plus on the other hand has some issues. Switch on the depth mode and you will experience a noticeable shutter lag while taking a shot. You have to very patient while capturing bokeh images on Moto G5S Plus as the camera software takes evident time to process the images. Unlike the camera on Honor 9 Lite, the dual-lens camera on Moto G5S Plus is not always ready to capture a shot.

Conclusion

Honor 9 Lite has impressed us with its good overall camera performance at a pocket friendly price-point. There are enough reasons to consider this affordable handset as your primary camera device over other mid-range handsets. This is due to the fact that Honor has been developing camera smartphones from quite a while and their dual-lens camera systems offer better response in varied light conditions and real-life scenarios. On the other hand, Moto G5S Plus is Motorola's first handset with two-lens camera setup which largely fails to match the performance delivered by Huawei's smartphones.

With the 9 Lite, Honor has managed to offer flagship level camera features at an affordable price-point. You can capture bokeh shots from front and rear camera and can experience high-end features such as slow-motion, time-lapse, panorama selfie, HDR, Pro mode and more without burning a hole in your pocket.