Honor 9 Full Review – The Best Looking Phone Of All Time?

Today we get to talk about one of the best devices so far this year, the Honor 9.  Last year I had the opportunity to attend the Honor 8 launch party in San Francisco and had a blast.  I came away from the event with my very own Honor 8.  It was my favorite phone of 2016 and up until now I would have said it was the best-looking phone ever.  I had high hopes for the Honor 9 and for the most part, it has lived up to those expectations!

The Honor 9 has some awesome specs and doesn’t disappoint when it comes to performance!  It comes with Huawei’s, Kirin 960 octa-core processor, either 6GB or 4GB of memory, and 64GB of internal storage, as well as microSD support.

The device features a 5.15-inch display, with a 1920×1080 pixel resolution.  The front is all glass with a nicely curved 2.5D edge.  The back is also glass and also has a slightly curved 3D edge that helps it sit very comfortably in the hand. 

Rounding out the specs is a 3,200 mAh battery. Huawei and Honor claim you can get a full three days of battery life from it!

Now that specs are all done, let’s dive into my favorite part, my list of favorite things!  First, we cover the favorite things and then we cover those things that we aren’t as fond of.  That way you can weigh the pros and cons and make a decision for yourself on whether or not the Honor 9 is the device for you!

1) The Look!
It seems like for the longest time, the focus on phones was to make the screen bigger, the camera better, the software smoother, etc.  There are some good-looking phones out there, but before this, they were mostly just black bricks with a screen.  The Honor 9 takes that standard and throws it out the window!  The back of the device really shines, with the fancy layered glass and the curved edges, but the Honor 9 as a whole looks amazing.  The edges of the glass blend perfectly with the metal frame.  Before today, the Honor 8 was the best-looking device ever made, now the Honor 9 has taken its place!

2) The Speed!
With the Honor 9, we have a device that not only looks insanely good, but we have a device that works well too! As we mentioned earlier, the Honor 9 ships with a Kirin 960 processor.  Huawei makes the Kirin 960.  Honor is a subsidiary of Huawei.  This means that Honor practically has complete control over the whole build of the device.  They know the exact limits of the processor and what they can and can’t do with it.  They take that knowledge and then they optimize the whole package.  And they did an incredible job of it!  I’ve tried to put the Honor 9 through its paces and run as much as possible on it at one time. I haven’t been able to get it to slow down once!  Run as many games as you want, stream music, switch apps repeatedly, this thing won’t slow down!

3) The Camera!
Next up is the camera.  The Honor 9 features a dual camera setup with a 12 Megapixel RGB lens and a 20 Megapixel Monochrome lens.  These lenses work together to produce some incredibly sharp pictures.  But that’s not all!  They’ve got a hybrid zoom that gets you closer to the subject of the photo without losing any significant quality.

4) The Fingerprint Scanner!
Although it isn’t in my preferred position on the back, the fingerprint scanner on the Honor 9 is a really good scanner.  It is the fastest and most accurate one I have ever used!  And I used to say the same thing about my Honor 8 and Pixel XL.  The Honor 9 has both of them beat!  I could gripe more about it not being on the back, but I’ve actually gotten used to using it on the front, and it has the added benefit of filling in some of the wasted space on the chin of the phone.

Now there are a lot of other good things we could say about the Honor 9.  In fact, if I could keep your attention long enough I probably would!  But not every device is perfect and we want you to be aware of both the good and the bad.  So, let’s talk about the things I don’t like about the Honor 9.

1) US Network Support.
The first thing I dislike about the Honor 9 is the lack of support in the US. The Honor 9 supports several different network bands and frequencies, but it doesn’t support any of those used by any carriers in the US for 4G or LTE.  That means that I have an insanely awesome phone, but unless I’m hooked into Wi-fi, I won’t be able to do much with it that requires data.  This is probably my biggest complaint about the Honor 9, but there is still time to fix it.  I hope Honor hears me and does something about it so that all of us who love Honor can get some support here in the US.

2) EMUI.
The second thing is both a strength and a weakness with the Honor 9. The Honor 9 comes with the latest version of EMUI and it is awesome!  EMUI offers a lot of extra customization options and it is unbelievably fast.  But it looks like iOS and that’s just not my thing.  I’ve owned the Honor 8 and Honor 6X prior to this and it did grow on me, but I still wish that Honor went with something closer to stock Android.

3) Bloat.
The last thing I didn’t like was the bloat. Honor must have partnered with Gameloft for the release of the Honor 9.  There were almost as many Gameloft games on there as there were Google apps!  And Google created Android!  All of these can be removed, but it’s annoying that I have to.

Conclusion
To sum it all up, I really like the Honor 9.  If it weren’t for the fact that it isn’t fully supported by my carrier, it would be my primary device.  I love Honor and Huawei, and I love their products.  They make great phones and I hope that they will give the US the chance it deserves to see these awesome products in action.  If you live outside the US, this would be a great phone for anyone that wants a great looking, great performing, and budget friendly device.  If you live in the US and are going to be in areas where you always have wi-fi, or if you don’t need high-speed data, this would definitely be a good phone to look into.

Order your Honor 9 here: Honor 9

Be sure to check out our video review below!