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| Unlocking the Future: A Comprehensive Review of the Honor 90 Smartphone |
After an absence spanning nearly three years, Honor is poised to make a triumphant return to the Indian smartphone market with its latest offering, the Honor 90. This new addition is set to compete fiercely in the premium smartphone segment, and the question on everyone's mind is whether Honor can recapture its earlier success in the Indian market.
Design:
The Honor 90 impresses with its slim and sleek profile, a remarkable achievement given its hefty 5,000mAh battery. Notably, its curved design eliminates sharp edges, providing a comfortable and ergonomic grip. The device exhibits superb weight distribution, ensuring a balanced feel in the hand. The phone's design also features distinctive camera accent rings, known as Moon Phase Rings, which add an undeniable aesthetic appeal.
On the right side of the phone, you'll find the power button and volume rocker, easily accessible for convenient control. The left side remains uncluttered, with a slim strip of plastic running along its length. Moving to the top, you'll notice a minimalist design, featuring only a small opening for the secondary noise-cancelling microphone.
The phone's bottom edge is busier, housing the single bottom-firing speaker, dual nano-SIM card tray, main microphone, and the USB Type-C port. Additionally, the phone incorporates an under-display optical fingerprint reader for hassle-free unlocking.
Display:
The Honor 90 boasts a 6.7-inch curved AMOLED display with a high-resolution of 1200x2664 pixels, delivering an immersive visual experience. With a pixel density of approximately 435 pixels per inch (ppi) and support for three refresh rate modes (60Hz, 90Hz, and 120Hz), this phone offers both manual resolution selection and automatic adjustment based on content, enhancing user convenience. Its remarkable peak brightness of 1,600 nits ensures excellent visibility in daylight. The display is HDR10+ certified and equipped with robust Widevine L1 DRM certification, catering to HDR enthusiasts and streaming services, although it lacks Dolby Vision support. The display also features 3840Hz PWM dimming, minimizing screen flickering.
Operating System:
Running on MagicOS 7.1 layered atop the Android 13 core, the Honor 90 offers full compatibility with the Google Apps suite, ensuring users have access to familiar applications. Honor has rebranded from UI to OS with this iteration (v7), distancing itself from the Huawei EMUI lineage.
Processor:
Powering the Honor 90 is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 chipset, built on a 4nm manufacturing process. This variant of the chipset, known as the Accelerated Edition, boasts a slightly overclocked prime Cortex-A710 CPU core running at up to 2.5GHz, compared to the standard 2.4GHz. The CPU configuration also includes three additional Cortex-A710 cores (Kryo Gold) clocked at up to 3.36GHz, along with four Cortex-A510 cores operating at up to 1.8 GHz. Complementing the chipset is the Adreno 644 GPU.
The review unit featured 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM. However, it's important to note that the Honor 90 does not support expandable storage, so it's wise to choose a variant with sufficient storage from the outset.
In terms of performance, the Honor 90 handles daily tasks smoothly, exhibiting no noticeable lag or stuttering. It provides ample power for everyday use and even casual gaming. Gamers will appreciate that achieving over 60fps in high-refresh-rate modes is quite feasible with lighter game titles.
Camera:
The Honor 90 boasts an impressive 200MP primary camera utilizing the Samsung ISOCELL HP3 sensor, featuring a Tetra pixel arrangement, 0.56 µm pixels, and a generous 1/1.4” sensor size. While it lacks optical image stabilization (OIS) and advanced features like laser autofocus, it is enhanced by QPD PDAF technology.
The device also offers a 12MP ultrawide camera with a 112-degree field of view and an f/2.2 lens, notable for its autofocus capability, which also doubles as a macro camera. A 2MP, f/2.4 depth sensor further enhances the camera setup.
Selfie enthusiasts will appreciate the substantial 50MP front-facing camera with a 100-degree field of view and f/2.4 aperture, though it lacks autofocus but supports 4K video recording.
In standard shooting mode, the primary camera uses pixel binning to capture photos at slightly over 12MP by default, resulting in images with decent detail, pleasing colors, and good dynamic range. Users can opt for nearly 200MP resolution photos, which come with larger file sizes and less aggressive processing, reducing chromatic aberrations and artificial sharpening.
Despite the absence of a dedicated telephoto lens, the main camera offers digital zoom capabilities, producing quality comparable to 1x photos. The 2x toggle in the camera UI is particularly effective.
The 12MP ultrawide camera delivers satisfactory results with good detail and pleasing colors, although subject detection and separation in portrait mode can be inconsistent, especially in busy backgrounds.
In low-light conditions, the main camera performs reasonably well, offering ample detail, vibrant colors, and manageable noise. Dynamic range remains moderate, with highlights and light sources often overexposed, while darker areas lack detail. Night mode is available but has minimal impact on main camera shots, primarily improving sharpness and handling of light sources.
The 50MP selfie camera is competent, capturing 12.5MP selfies with good skin tones and color accuracy. Selfie portraits exhibit adept subject detection and separation, along with quality background blur, albeit with a closer crop compared to regular selfies.
Battery:
With a 5,000mAh battery, the Honor 90 comfortably lasts a day on a single charge. Although it doesn't come with a charger in the box, it supports 66W charging, taking approximately 45-50 minutes for a full charge. The manufacturer claims to provide the charger free of cost.
Verdict:
Priced starting at ₹37,999, the Honor 90 emerges as a well-balanced option in the premium smartphone segment. Its sleek design, all-sided curved display with a high PWM dimming rate, and an accelerated Gen 1 SoC make it an enticing choice.
However, it's worth noting that the Honor 90 faces stiff competition from brands like OnePlus, Motorola, and Vivo in the Indian market. Choosing this phone will largely depend on individual preferences and priorities, but it certainly offers an impressive package for its price.
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