Huawei's Honor brand released its V9 phablet as an exclusive offer in the Chinese market. Although the Honor series is marketed as a premium mid-range brand, the V9 smartphone will pack impressive specs at a competitive price point. Together with this, the company also dropped its "Honor 8 Lite" in China, Finland, and Japan where it is marketed as "Huawei nova lite."
The Honor V9 features a 5.7-inch QHD LCD screen covered in 2.5D glass with a resolution of 1440 pixels by 2560 pixels, resulting to 515 pixels per inch. Under the hood, the device is armed with HiSilicon Kirin 960 octa-core SoC with four Cortex A73 cores clocked at 2.4 GHz frequency and four Cortex A53 efficiency cores running at 1.8 GHz frequency. This is the same mobile chipset powered in the Huawei Mate 9. The powerful mobile SoC is coupled with 6GB of RAM and a 64GB of internal storage, which can be further expanded up to 128GB via a microSD card.
According to XDADevelopers, the selling point in the Honor V9 is its camera department. At the rear panel, the device sports a pair of 12-megapixel with f/2.2. It supports laser autofocus, LED flash, and 4K video recording. Up front, the Honor V9 features an 8-megapixel camera with f/2.0.
The company claimed that the device also utilizes one monochromatic sensor and one RGB sensor that cover for an improved low-light performance.
On the software front, the Honor V9 ships with the Android 7.0 Nougat-based EMUI 5.0. Its battery information shows a hefty 4,000mAh battery, while a fingerprint sensor is mounted on the rear panel. The Honor V9 supports hybrid dual-SIM slot with Bluetooth 4.2, NFC, IR blaster, USB-C port, and 3.5 mm headphone jack as its connectivity options. Sensors on the phone include Proximity sensor, Accelerometer, Ambient light sensor and Gyroscope.
NDTV reported that the pricing for the Honor V9 is based on its two storage options. The 4GB RAM/ 64 GB of internal memory is priced at ¥ 2,599 ($349), while the higher 6GB RAM/64GB internal storage costs ¥ 2,999 ($435). The 6GB RAM/ 128 GB storage is pegged at ¥ 3,499 ($510).
The Honor V9 is announced in four color variants namely, Midnight black, Flame Red, Platinum Gold and Aurora Blue. The phablet has been started with pre-orders on Feb. 21 and will soon start shipping on Feb. 28 in China.