Honor V9 flagship smartphone finally unveiled

Huawei subsidiary Honor has finally released its flagship device V9 at an event in China. The smartphone maker also unveiled the slightly toned down variant of the Honor 8- Honor 8 Lite with the V9. Honor 8 Lite already made its debut in Finland recently.

Honor V9 is sporting a humongous 5.7-inch quad-HD LTPS LCD panel with a resolution of 2560x1440 pixels. The device looks very reminiscent to the iPhone 7 Plus with the 2.5D curved glass and metal back. The device is just 7mm thin and weighs 184g.

Coming to the performance of the V9, the device is rocking Huawei’s homegrown Hisilicon Kirin 960 octa-core processor paired with Mali-G71MP8 GPU. The device is made available in a 4GB RAM/ 64GB storage, and 6GB RAM/ 128GB storage capacities.

In the camera department, the V9 retains a dual-camera setup. The device is rocking two 12-megapixel sensors at the back with f/2.2 aperture. The rear camera also gets Phase Detection Auto Focus, Laser AutoFocus, and LED flash. For your precious selfies, the device gets an 8-megapixel front shooter with an f/2.0 aperture. The rear camera is capable of shooting 4K videos at 30fps, whereas the front camera can shoot full-HD videos at 30fps.

In the software department, the device is running on Android 7.0 Nougat right out-of-the-box. The OS comes with Huawei’s EMUI skin on top, which adds a ton of customisation to the vanilla android experience.

This is a dual-SIM device with support for 4G LTE and VoLTE. The device uses a hybrid SIM card tray where the second SIM card space can be used for adding a microSD card, up to 256GB. The device is powered by a ginormous 4,000mAh battery which is a neat addition and also gets quick charging capabilities.

Honor 8 Lite, on the other hand, retains the 5.2-inch full-HD IPS display from the Honor 8, along with the 2.5D curved. However, the core hardware and the camera has been changed on the device. It still retains the glossy glass back and aluminium unibody chassis.

Under the hood, Honor 8 Lite gets the Hisilicon Kirin 655 octa-core processor paired with 3GB of RAM. The device gets 16GB of internal memory which can be further expanded using a microSD card up to 128GB.
Another big change between the Honor 8 and the Honor 8 Lite is with the camera. The dual camera setup has been swapped for a single 12-megapixel camera module at the back with f/2.2 aperture and LED flash.

For selfies, the device comes armed with an 8-megapixel camera which also gets a 77-degree wide-angle lens. Both the cameras are capable of shooting full-HD videos at 30fps.

This device too is running on Android 7.0 Nougat right out of the box, with Huawei’s own EMUI 5.0 skin on top. It’s a dual-SIM device with support for 4G LTE and VoLTE. It also gets a decent 3,000mAh battery.

The Honor V9 64GB variant is priced at CNY 2,999 (which is approximately Rs 29,999). The pricing details for the 128GB variant remains unknown as of now. The Honor V9 goes on pre-orders in China starting Tuesday while the handset will begin shipping February 28. The Honor 8 Lite has been priced CNY 2,599 (which is approximately Rs 24,999) and will begin shipping this Friday- February 24.