Honor X9B

The primary camera on the Honor X9b is a large 108MP sensor, paired with 5MP ultra-wide lens and a 2MP macro unit. For selfies and video calling, the handset sports a 16MP snapper. The image quality is acceptable in areas with ample lighting conditions, especially from the main 108MP camera which outputs 12MP images by default. There is slight oversaturation, but the details are substantial. That said, the dynamic range could have been better. The primary camera is also capable of clicking portraits with good edge detection; however, it smoothens out the facial detailing and presents skin tones with high contrast.As for the 5MP ultra-wide camera, it fails to capture crisp shots due to its low resolution. The colours also appear faded and there is a noticeable warping across the frame. Additionally, it only offers a 110-degree field-of-view (FoV), which is narrower than what most others offer. Lastly, the 2MP macro sensor disappoints as it's challenging to avoid blocking light while taking shots from a mere 4cm distance. Consequently, it leads to hazy results, affecting the fine details of small objects.The selfies from the 16MP front camera are likeable in daylight, even though the skin tones may not look quite accurate. The low-light performance of the smartphone is a little underwhelming. There are smartphones within the segments doing a much better job when the sun goes down.

The Honor X9b is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 SoC, which debuted in India earlier this year with Realme 12 Pro. It is a mid-range octa-core chipset with up to 2.2GHz clock speed, Adreno A710 GPU, and a built-in 5G modem. The SoC is paired with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of non-expandable storage. That said, the RAM is expandable virtually up to 8GB using a portion of the phone's storage.Starting with the benchmark scores, the Honor X9b achieves 4,84,172 points on AnTuTu. On Geekbench, it attained a score of 855 in the single-core test and 2,828 in the multi-core test. Regarding handling intense loads, the handset can perform at 83 percent of its peak performance per the CPU Throttle test. While these scores are marginally lower than those of the Realme 12 Pro, I'm pleased to report the handset performed satisfactorily in real-world usage.Mind you, the handset is not being marketed as a performance-focused smartphone, yet it can handle most things. I did not face any app crashes or awkward freezes while using the smartphone for my basic activities involving streaming, browsing, navigation, and some gaming. I tested the phone's gaming ability with the popular battle royale game BGMI. It ran the game well without becoming uncomfortably warm, albeit with some compromises. To maintain smooth performance, you'll need to keep the game at moderate graphics and frame rate settings.Software-wise, the Honor X9b runs Android 13-based MagicOS 7.2 out of the box. It is a slightly dated software, but the company claims a new update is coming. The handset is expected to receive two years of major software upgrades and three years of security updates. As things stand, the software is heavily customised and comes with some proprietary apps, including Honor App Market, Game Center, and Honor's Email app, alongside the usual suite of Google apps. There are a few third-party apps as well, which can be uninstalled if they are of no use to you after the initial device setup.Be that as it may, the software looks intuitive and easy to navigate. A top-down swipe from the right brings the control centre, while a similar swipe from the left brings the notifications panel. There is also an AI suggestions widget, among other things, on the home screen that suggests apps based on your activity for quick actions.

Coming to one of the key USPs, the 5,800mAh battery on the Honor X9b is rated to last up to three days between charges depending on the usage. However, with my usage, I found myself looking for a charger by the end of the second day. If you are a slightly heavy user, you might have to charge the device at least once after a day and a half of usage. The screen-on-time I was getting was roughly around nine hours, which is impressive. What might not look impressive though is the PC Mark battery result and the charging speeds of the smartphone.On the PCMark battery test, the handset could only score 13 hours and 34 minutes. This is lower than some of the smartphones with 5,000mAh battery in the same segment. When it comes to charging, the handset supports 35W fast charging. Sadly, there is no charger bundled in the box. The company will be shipping a 30W charger separately but only for a limited time.That said, the charging speeds are quite slow on the smartphone. Even with the official 30W charger, the Honor X9b takes two and a half hours give and take to achieve a full charge from 0-100 percent. Slightly faster charging speeds would have been appreciated here.