Honor 9 Lite is the all-rounder of budget Android smartphones

Huawei's sub-brand Honor recently announced Honor 9 Lite in the Indian market. Priced aggressively at Rs. 10,999 for the 3GB RAM variant, the smartphone has a lot to offer to tech savvy users. Honor 9 Lite looks good on papers but works even better in real life. The affordable smartphone features best-in-class dual-lens camera setup, a design that instantly grabs eye-balls and sports a vivid 1080p display with 18:9 aspect ratio.

We used the handset as our daily driver and liked the good balance of style and performance. Here's what think of Huawei's affordable Honor handset for masses.

Premium glass unibody design

Honor 9 Lite is undoubtedly the most stylish smartphone in sub Rs. 15,000 price segment. Unlike the other metal and plastic handsets, Honor 9 Lite looks distinctive as it has a shiny glass panel on the back that reminds us of the most premium devices launched in last one year. You can buy the smartphone in three available eye catchy colours- Sapphire Blue, Midnight Black and Glacier Grey.

Honor 9 Lite also takes care of ergonomics. It is one of the lightest and most compact handset in its price-point. Honor 9 Lite has much thinner bezels around its 18:9 aspect ratio screen as compared to traditional 16:9 aspect ratio screen devices. This makes the smartphone feel compact and look downright appealing and modern

Taller 18:9 aspect ratio Screen with 1080p resolution

Honor 9 Lite offers a 1080p screen at an aggressive price-point. Moreover, it is the only handset that combines two dual-lens camera setups and an 18:9 aspect ratio screen in sub Rs. 15,000 price segment. The 5.6-inch display on Honor 9 Lite has a resolution of 2,160x1,080 pixels which offers an unmatchable visual experience at a pocket friendly price-point. Games, videos and web pages look better and appealing on Honor 9 Lite as compared to other smartphones in similar price-point.

Most feature packed camera in its price-point

Honor 9 Lite ups the ante in the camera department. 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 cameras also come packed with Huawei's tried and tested modes and filters to please shutterbugs.

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. 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.

The combination of a 13MP primary sensor and 2MP 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.

Honor 9 Lite First Impressions

Hardware and Software performance

To deliver on performance, Honor 9 Lite draws its power from Huawei's custom in-house octa-core processor called the Kirin 659. The smartphone comes in two RAM and storage variants- 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, and 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. You will experience smooth multitasking, lag free games and stunning video playback without any performance slowdown. You also get FM radio, Bluetooth 4.2, Wi-Fi, 4G with VoLTE and USB-OTG.

Huawei's Emotion UI is one of the best custom Android skins for end users. It's full of useful software tweaks without making the overall UI too complex for smartphone users. The user interface is smooth, easy to use and comes with a variety of small but usable tweaks. One-key Split Screen function offers faster multi-management experience. App Twin let you login to two different accounts for the same app at the same time. You can also display battery percentage and cellular data network in the status bar to monitor your smartphone's battery and data speed respectively.

Big value at destructive price-point

Honor 9 Lite is a clear example of high-end technology at pocket friendly price-point. There's no other smartphone that offers a premium glass design, crisp 18:9 aspect ratio display and a quad-lens camera setup at such a pocket friendly price-point. Moreover, you can also avail some exciting offers on the smartphone. You can get flat 5 percent off with SBI Debit and Credit Cards. Vodafone users are eligible to avail free mobile data up to 295 GB, in 6 months on a simple recharge of INR 199.