Honor X9b Review: A Mid-Range Phone With A Surprisingly Durable Display But A Lot of Drawbacks
Huawei’s sub-brand Honor has returned to the Indian market with a bang, launching the Honor 90 as a premium device and the Honor X9b as a mid-range offering. While the X9b promises a slick design, a massive battery, and a capable camera (on paper), Honor has also been touting its "Ultra-Bounce" display technology, which is supposed to offer a certain level of shock resistance. Having used this phone for a while, I’ve found it to be a practical mid-ranger, but with a number of drawbacks that make it hard to recommend.
Here’s a detailed breakdown of my experience:
Honor X9b Review: Price in India
The Honor X9b is available in India for Rs. 25,999 with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. It comes in two colorways: Midnight Black with a basic polycarbonate rear panel and Sunrise Orange with a vibrant orange vegan leather rear panel. I received the Midnight Black variant for review.
The Honor X9b makes a good first impression when you pick it up
Apart from a clear TPU case and documentation, Honor includes a Type-C to 3.5mm headphone adapter and a pair of wired earphones. You’ll also find a Type-A to Type-C USB cable for charging but no charger in the box. Honor sells its 30W charger separately for Rs. 699.
Honor X9b Review: Design
The Honor X9b feels surprisingly slim and sleek with its curved sides. The polycarbonate rear panel and display glass both curve around the edges, offering a comfortable grip. Despite weighing 185g, it feels lightweight with a thin profile of just 7.98mm. The curved edges, combined with a sturdy polycarbonate frame, give it a premium feel.
Honor claims the phone can survive a 1.5-meter drop, meaning the display glass shouldn’t shatter under impact. This isn’t a rugged phone, but Honor utilizes its proprietary shock-absorbing cushioning material, consisting of three layers, which the display’s curved edge glass panel rests on. This "Ultra-Bounce" technology allegedly protects the phone from impacts on both soft and hard surfaces like marble. However, it doesn’t guarantee shatter-proof protection.
The Honor X9b quickly becomes a smudgy and dust-ridden mess
I put the "Ultra-Bounce" technology to the test. While the phone survived the first two drops (one on the back and one on the edge), the display shattered on the third, a face-down impact. The shattered glass, however, did not affect the display layer’s functionality. It’s clear that this technology won’t survive a direct impact on the display, but the polycarbonate frame and rear panel remained largely unscratched, which is impressive. However, if you’re looking for a rugged phone, the Nokia XR20 would be a better option.
The slick design is marred by a dust and fingerprint magnet rear panel. Its matte surface makes it nearly impossible to wipe off fingerprints, making it look messy after just a few hours of use. For a mid-range phone, the IP53 rating for dust and water resistance feels quite basic. Competing phones like the Realme 12 Pro offer a better IP65 certification at the same price.
Honor’s Ultra-Bounce display cushioning couldn’t protect the screen from impact
Despite the IP53 rating, the rubber seal around the SIM card tray became loose easily when removing or inserting the tray. This is unusual, especially for a mid-range phone, and makes me question its resistance to water spray.
I enjoyed the design of the 6.78-inch curved-edge display. It features a thin bezel, providing a premium look. While it’s a smudge magnet, these smudges are relatively easy to wipe off.
Honor X9b Review: Specifications and software
The Honor X9b is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 SoC, a 4nm processor with a maximum clock speed of 2.2GHz, which was released in 2022. While not a bad choice for casual users, it’s a bit dated, especially compared to newer processors like the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 found in competing phones like the OnePlus Nord CE4, which I recently reviewed.
The phone comes with 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage, which is not expandable. Connectivity features include dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.1, NFC support, a USB-C port at the bottom, dual 5G standby, and support for all popular global positioning systems. The X9b packs a massive 5,800mAh battery and supports 35W wired charging.
The seal around the SIM card tray came loose several times despite the IP53 rating
The software experience is familiar to Huawei users. The Honor X9b runs Magic OS 7.2, based on Android 13, with a slightly refreshed appearance compared to older Huawei devices. Honor promises only two years of Android updates and three years of security updates, which feels limited given that the phone is already stuck on Android 13. Competitors offer better update policies.
Magic OS closely resembles EMUI, with a few tweaks, and is similar to the interface found on globally sold devices. Meanwhile, EMUI continues to be used on handsets sold in the Chinese market.
The 120Hz refresh rate display enhances the software experience, creating smooth interactions. The icons are revamped, offering extensive customization options and themes, reminiscent of OnePlus’ OxygenOS. I am also a fan of the Honor Sans font, which is remarkably consistent across the interface, unlike most other smartphone operating systems.
I appreciate the swipe-up gesture on select system icons, which displays their respective cards or widgets. Additionally, features like AI app suggestions and Magic Text, which extracts text from screenshots, are handy tools.
Honor X9b Review: Performance
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 performs as expected, on par with most devices in this price range like the Realme 12 Pro and OnePlus Nord CE4, but lagging behind more powerful phones like the Poco X6 Pro. This translates to a smooth, lag-free software experience and decent gaming performance, with occasional hiccups.
The phone scored 4,87,774 points in AnTuTu, 939 in Geekbench’s single-core test, and 2,763 in the multi-core test. In terms of graphics performance, the phone managed 60 FPS in GFXBench’s T-Rex, 31 FPS in Manhattan 3.1, and 16 FPS in Car Chase.
Magic OS software, based on Android 13, runs smoothly
Playing Call of Duty: Mobile (CODM), the phone offered only High graphics settings but allowed for Max frame rate, limited to 60 FPS during gameplay. While the phone didn’t heat up with High graphics, the 240Hz maximum touch sampling rate felt laggy. Asphalt 9: Legends ran smoothly at High quality graphics with no issues and even offered a 60 FPS mode.
While the 120Hz refresh rate doesn’t significantly impact the mid-range gaming experience, it does deliver smooth animations and transitions in the Magic OS software. The display gets quite bright outdoors, with text and images remaining legible under direct sunlight. Color reproduction is good if you stick to the natural screen color mode.
Battery life is a standout feature of the Honor X9b. It’s impressive how engineers managed to squeeze in a massive 5,800mAh battery into such a slim frame. The phone delivers 1.5 days of battery life with heavy use. With casual use, you can easily achieve two days of battery life, which is impressive.
Our standard video loop battery test delivered 25 hours and 43 minutes, slightly lower than the OnePlus Nord CE4 but still impressive numbers.
Honor’s software update commitment includes just 2 years of Android updates
Unfortunately, charging is a weak point for the Honor X9b. 30W charging (or the supported 35W) feels slow compared to competing smartphones offering 67-100W wired charging. The phone also doesn’t include a charger, which is another downside. The optional 30W charger took 30 minutes to charge the phone to 37 percent, an hour to reach 62 percent and a total of 1 hour and 54 minutes for a full charge. This is slow compared to the competition, even considering the larger battery capacity.
Honor X9b Review: Cameras
The Honor X9b offers a basic camera setup for a mid-range device. It features a 108-megapixel primary camera (without OIS), a 5-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera, and a 2-megapixel macro camera. Selfies are handled by a 16-megapixel front-facing camera.
The camera interface feels clumsy and unintuitive. Settings and toggles typically found in the viewfinder are hidden in the camera settings. However, I appreciated the classic camera clicking sounds when changing modes.
The primary camera boasts a high resolution and captures 12-megapixel binned images by default. In daylight, photos are strictly okay. Despite the large sensor, resolved details are just passable, and the camera often overexposes images, leading to blown-out highlights. All images, whether landscapes, objects, or people, have a noticeable pinkish tinge.
From top to bottom: Ultra-wide-angle camera, primary camera, 2X digital zoom
Shooting with 2X digital zoom brings subjects closer, but there is a noticeable drop in image quality, with reduced sharpness and definition. The primary camera struggles to maintain shot-to-shot consistency, which is essential for a phone in this price range.
In low light, image quality deteriorates further in Auto mode. The image processing is best described as weird, with slightly pixelated photos and flattened textures. Switching to Night mode significantly improves the results, producing decent images with defined edges, but it still lags behind the competition.
Selfies captured in Portrait mode show blown-out backgrounds
Selfies in Auto mode feature decent detail and good dynamic range, ensuring proper exposure for both the subject and background. However, in Portrait mode, the camera struggles with average edge detection and blown-out backgrounds, making photos unusable in bright daylight. Low light selfies are acceptable, especially with the on-screen flash, but they exhibit over-sharpening and noise suppression, along with the usual blown-out highlights in Portrait mode.
Low light camera samples: Top: Primary camera (auto mode), Bottom: Primary camera (night mode)
The ultra-wide camera, with its meager 5-megapixel resolution, falls short of expectations. Photos show overexposure, purple fringing, and textures that resemble oil paintings with little definition. Low-light images are soft and blurry.
The 2-megapixel macro camera, as expected, captures passable macro photos. It allows for getting close to subjects, but you’ll likely achieve better results by cropping images from the primary camera.
4K 30fps video recordings tend to be shaky, both while walking and panning. Exposure and detail are decent, making the footage usable, but the camera shake is a significant issue at this resolution. 1080p 30fps video recordings have better stabilization and quality, but overexposure is frequent in daylight. In low light, recording at 4K offers the best results but with noticeable noise.
Honor X9b Review: Verdict
Despite being practical in terms of battery life, the Honor X9b falls short compared to the competition, especially when considering the discounted price of the superior Honor 90, which starts at Rs. 27,999.
Even among mid-range devices, the Honor X9b struggles to stand out. The OnePlus Nord CE 4, starting at Rs. 24,999, offers impressive performance, battery life, a better software experience, slightly better cameras, and blazing-fast 100W wired charging. The Poco X6 Pro, starting at Rs. 25,999, provides superior performance for gamers. The Nothing Phone 2A, starting at Rs. 23,999, offers a unique design, good performance, and a bloatware-free software experience. For an extra few thousand rupees, the Realme 12 Pro+, starting at Rs. 29,999, boasts superior camera performance, telephoto capability, an IP65 rating, and a unique design.
In a crowded mid-range market with strong competitors offering better value and features, the Honor X9b falls short, making it difficult to recommend.
