You can check our unboxing and first impressions video below:
With a brand new processor to meet up with, no doubt that we did not have any problems in the connectivity department brought in by Snapdragon 6 Gen 1. Calls, texts, VoLTE (even on DITO), WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS passed with flying colors.
If to compare with HONOR X6a, not that much changes on MagicOS 7.2 based on Android 13. Now with 12 GB RAM, multitasking is much lighter to do if to compare with X9a. Fact that we did not use HONOR RAM Turbo option which the phone can have 8 GB virtual RAM
'On benchmarks, the phone has 7 out of 9 working sensors. For some weird reason that we are getting more on Antutu score when we had to put the display in 120 Hz and on battery performance mode which scored at over 500,000
On battery life with it's bigger 5800 mAh battery, we are able to manage this phone in 1.5 days in average in heavy usage from social media and some photo/video shooting and editing. We did not felt the slight downgrade on the battery charging speed as it can be from 0 to 100% in around 90 minutes.
On cameras, the biggest jump on this compared to X9a that we were finally able to shoot 60 fps video and up to 4K 30 fps. The staples are still there from portrait, aperture,night mode, multi video and AI modes were still there. On broad daylight, it is quite good to shoot in very good quality but once that we got into the low light environment, it can be tricky at times but good thing the AI mode did it's job fast enough to catch up if ytou are into shooting a lot of photos. The biggest question for me was the inconsistent color realistics when comparing from normal photo to 108 MP blow up sample. You can check out our video samples on Ron Not The DJ on Yotuube
HONOR X9b rear camera samples
HONOR X9b normal to night mode camera samples
HONOR X9b normal to 108 MP camera samples
Bonus: The sound quality on it's single firing speaker is average but we got excellent when we paired it with a high quality TWS earphones
Display quality and durability, design, UI and battery were the strengths of HONOR X9b. While we are still yet to to determine the official price of it, the camera is not that bad yet the inconsistencies might be somehing to check out. If to compare if it is an upgrade to X9a, yes if to RAM, video shooting and battery but not that much in processor performanc. Based on it's Malaysia price, for sure that it will not exceed in the 20,000 php price mark.
HONOR X9b for us is 4 out of 5 .
More ronnotthedj.com updates? Like and follow us at @ronnotthedj on Twitter and Instagram, facebook.com/rntdblog and subscribe to Ron Not The DJ On Youtube
