The Honor X9b is one of the smartphones that is really unique to its own category, offering a durable glass, frame and body but yet looking like the rest of the pack cause of its stylish orange vegan leather option, and watch-inspired camera ring.

HONOR X9b 5G Specs

HONOR X9b 5G – Design & Entertainment

The vegan leather cover at the back is a nice refreshing look for more into keen of looks, but the stable emerald green or black is still available for choosing in glass back cover. The X9b is overall bigger and chunkier at 185g versus 175g of the X9a. This is thanks to the bigger 5,800mAh battery and thinker material use.

We love the use of the gold chrome finish on the frame which doesn’t look new but a breath of fresh air.

On the right side the volume rocker and power button are located with easy to recognize buttons. No more fingerprint sensors on the power button as its now in-fingerprint sensor. But as what YouTuber Mary Bautista mentioned, the sensor is placed too low on the lower part but we understand this part that due to the bigger battery size this pushed the sensor lower.

Speakers of the Honor X9b 5G is loud but easily to get blocked in scenarios like playing games, watching movies in landscape or even when placed on a stand in portrait. We really wished that Honor could have made this smartphone dual-speakers, but it might be a factor in durability so that’s why they didn’t opted to do so.

The 1.5k resolution 2652 x 1200 AMOLED display is really more clear than ever, it really gives you impression like when 2019 smartphones were launched with 2k resolution displays. Finally it’s now available in a smartphone worth Php16,999, while this is good in sharpness and details, this can also be a factor to drag down performance of the SOC but we will check on that below.

HONOR X9b 5G Performance

Thanks to the old but improved use of the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1, the Honor X9b 5G is actually faster than its predecessor, but you can’t see it much in paper cause of the higher resolution 1.5K AMOLED Display causing bigger toll in graphics processing. Nevertheless details pops in its visuals with several games playable in medium settings with high refresh rate like Mobile Legends and Genshin Impact.

Temperature wise the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 processor doesn’t heat up to the point of being uncomfortable. Mobile Legends will run smooth with even super graphics, but on Genshin setting the graphics on medium then cranking up the fps to 60 would do simply fine with some drop frame here and there.

The game manager of the HONOR Magic UI isn’t that gamer centric, but the mistouch prevention really helps especially in gaming like using complicated characters in ML like Kimmy, Fanny, or using multi-touch gestures.

Overall, anything above 500k in AnTuTu is almost guaranteed sustainable use without the unnecessary heat in production in the processor thus making less waste. We prefer this formula more versus processors with over powering processing but wasteful in battery.

HONOR X9b 5G Camera

108MP Main Camera, 5MP Ultra-wide camera, 2MP Macro Camera, this triple camera package powers the HONOR X9b

The rear camera ensemble is decent for social media, but you would need some decently stable hands overall cause even with scenarios with proper lighting there is already some shaking photos. Overall photos are vivid and bouncy in colors, but there are some degregation inquality in photos with strong warm tones in the white balance that it somehows disfavor darker tones.

We hope that HONOR would be able to improve on this more, aside from this heads up there is this image processing time that you will encounter for every photo. Each photo will have around 2 seconds processing time that you will encounter once you open the photo preview or the gallery app. It’s nothing that its cumbersome but we appreciate to know that every photo are meticulously improved with every approach.

The front 16MP camera is another story, we really like the selfie overall with good details and colors overall. More or less for a profile of Php16,999 its decent camera with more on the selfies so its perfect for social-strong persona like tiktok or fb, but less on apps like IG.

HONOR X9b 5G Battery and Charging

2 hours to full charge, even with 35W charging rate. We don’t mind the longer charging time since you will really feel the longer overall battery life. At most we’re comfortable to say 1.5 days in overall use before you get around 20% remaining.

You can do full charging in 18W via power delivery or via the HONOR Super Charge of up to 35W. Either of the two, you will most likely charge in downtime so its no problem here at all.

Why the shrink in charging speeds?

Two reasons here which are primarily because of

1. To meet charging standards, due to the bigger capacity of 5800mAh the standard charging also change to intake maximum wattage and we think 35W is the stable one for this scenario.
2. While the battery is bigger, it has to withstand the durability claims of the frame and glass to withstand higher impact of force. So that this will avoid batteries easily getting punctured or altered and avoid uncontrollable chain reactions.

HONOR X9b 5G Conclusion

The Honor X9b aims more of steady features that are more beneficial to customers especially the improved battery, manageable camera performance and improved overall performance compared to the predecessor. For the price of Php16,999 (12GB+256GB), we just really wished if the phone could really have a dual-stereo speaker then it would be a hard to pass already if you compare to other brands.

When will you buy the HONOR X9b? 

• You are in need of the added durability for added peace of mind
• Longer battery life – 2 good solid days of use
• Decent overall performance for the processor and camera

When will you not buy the HONOR X9b? 

• If you don’t like single firing speaker – even with the 200% volume its not the same
• If you are not a fan of the vegan leather – get the glass back finish (emerald green or black finish)

Just remember that the durability aspect of the Honor X9b is undeniably there, but we think the value of this feature has no price tag, cause having a broken phone from unintentional drops is common especially if you have kids or ride a motorcycle. So if having a more durable smartphone will remove that anxiety from you, then its priceless.