The premium mid-range handset segment is heating up. After Oppo’s R11 and R11 Plus made their presence in the market known and are touted to be released soon, it seems that so have Honor, with their Honor 9 handset. The Honor 9 just surfaced to the public thanks to a certification report by TENAA, the Chinese regulatory agency.
The phone will come in three different variants – STF-AL00, STF-TL10, and STF-AL10. The devices and their listings have brought forth their specifications, which will differ slightly among the variants. It seems that all of the variants will feature the same 5.15-inch 1080p display. Whether Honor will go with an LCD or AMOLED variant in the display department has not been confirmed yet.
Reports also confirm that the handsets will include Honor’s proprietary chipset – the Kirin, which will be clocked at 2.4GHz and will be an octa-core chipset. The base model will arrive with 4GB of RAM and the other two variants of the phone will come with 6GB of RAM. The three phones are said to come with 64GB of internal storage along with a microSD card for expandable storage, all the way up to 128GB. While the handsets will come with Android Nougat 7.0 out of the box, it seems probable that the phones will receive their due updates to 7.1. Expecting them to receive the Android O update might seem like a long-shot for now, however.
It also is reported that the phones will come with a metal and glass build, with a front-facing fingerprint scanner this time around – a change from its predecessors. The phone itself is curved on all sides with the Honor branding on the back, making it easily distinguishable from its predecessors, who all look very similar. Aside from the build, the phone’s main USP, as is with most premium mid-range phones nowadays, is that it features a dual-camera setup on the back of the phone, with the setup consisting of a 20MP and 12MP configuration (which is very similar to Oppo’s R11 camera setup) along with an 8MP camera on the front of the display. Powering the phones will be a 3,100 mAh non-removable battery.
The phone’s display will have a 2.5D curved glass on top for much better protection, with the back employing an even curvier 3D design. It will be exciting to see Honor’s new and capable Kirin 960 chipset, especially in competition to the Snapdragon 660’s performance which is said to be on par with the Snapdragon 820 and 821 chipsets.