Honor is providing smartphone buyers with a mobile device that combines tough tech that can roll with the punches even demanding and outdoorsy tech users can throw at it, with eye-catching design, pocket-friendly usability, and powerfull under the hood performance in its Honor X9b 5G. This smartphone is fantastically tough, which we along with other tech media and influencers thoroughly tested at its local launch earlier this year – also pushing the launch over two hours past what would have been the end time of the event, in order to try and break the screen in order to win one for yourself.
In fact, this device has been awarded Five Star Overall Drop Resistance certification by SGS of Switzerland. This recognition is thanks to the HONOR Ultra-Bounce Anti-Drop Display incorporated in the phone for the first time, providing all-round drop resistance for the screen as part of the 360° whole-device protection, helping the entire phone withstand drops onto any face or corner, even against hard surfaces like marble.
HONOR’s Ultra-Bounce Anti-Drop Display combines innovative special materials used in the manufacturing of the display, along with – for the first time – three layers of protection around the screen, frame and internal compartments, helping to absorb impact if the phone is dropped from up to 1.5m, and ensuring resilience and strength. The three-layer protective structure also makes the HONOR X9b 5G splash-resistant and capable of working even after being submerged in water for 15 seconds.
Beyond the tough exterior is an eye-catching one, especially in the Sunrise Orange (Vegan leather) looks of our review unit, which boasts pocket-friendly dimensions (163.6 x 75.5 x 7.98 mm) and weight of approx. 185 g (including the battery) that makes it easy to use within one hand even if you are not an NBA player or rugby forward. Within this stylish frame resides a stunning 6.78″ AMOLED 1200*2652 that is glorious to consume all sorts of multimedia on.
Under the bonnet of this beast you find Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 coupled with Adreno’s A710 GPU, with this midranger CPU from Qualcomm being a snappy performer in the form of an Octa-core processor that consists out of four A78 CPU cores clocked at 2.2GHz plus another four A55 CPU cores clocked at 1.8GHz. This all results in snappy and smooth performance whilst playing even the most demanding mobile titles, multitasking or simply navigation MagicOS 7.2 (based on Android 13). You also get either 8GB RAM with 256GB onboard storage or 12GB RAM with 256GB onboard storage, with our unit sporting the latter.
Equally impressive is the camera performance of this phablet as you get a whopping 108MP Main Camera (F1.75) that is paired with a 5MP Ultra Wide Depth Camera (F2.2) and 2MP Macro Camera (f2.4). It produces fantastic looking shots and crisp, smooth video (supports 4K video shooting). This is the case in virtually any weather or lighting conditions. Selfie lovers will also really enjoy using the 16MP (F2.45) front camera that delivers great looking selfies while also being capable of handing video calls and shooting 1080P videos.
Additionally, you get a 5800mAh Lithium Polymer Battery that Honor says lasts up to three days, but we got around a day and a half comfortably with at least 33% battery leftover, so non-demanding or non-power users should be capable of getting at least two days of use. To top it up, you can use fast charging with a suitable charger provided in the retail box delivering Wired Charging speeds of 35w.
Ultimately, this dual-SIM (nano) Honor X9b 5G packs in a lot of spec value in an eye-catching, super tough package for under R12 000 from local retailers such as Takealot. This makes it very easy to recommend as our favourite midranger not only in the Andriod space but overall midrange smartphone. .
