The HONOR 90 is set to be getting its global launch early next month in Paris, according to the brand’s official Twitter account. While the company is still being tight-lipped about local launch details, we were recently invited to take an early peek at what the phone has to offer. So this is what I thought of the phone in the short time I had it in my hands.
The first thing I noticed with the HONOR 90 was that it was very light, at least in my hands. This might have something to do with me having last reviewed the ASUS ROG Phone 7 Ultimate, which is a pretty hefty device. That being said, light is definitely better than heavy, especially when it doesn’t claim to be fulfilling the needs of a very specific niche. Officially, the phone is rated to be weighing 183g, though it has a large-ish 5000mAh battery inside.
On the surface, the HONOR 90 doesn’t have much that truly helps it stand out from other phones in the market. Sure, it has a screen with curved sides, and the back is also curved in a similar way, but these are not exactly rare design choices anymore. There’s some texturing at the back which feels nice, but probably more importantly they help maintain grip when it’s in your hands.
In a sense, the camera bumps on the HONOR 90 may serve as a visually differentiating factor. Rather than going for a singular bump to house its three cameras and LED flash, the company has gone for two, splitting them evenly for each. The bumps themselves start off round at the bottom, ending with an oval at the top, giving them an almost catseye look to them. As for the cameras themselves, there’s the 200MP main + 12MP wide angle and Macro combo + 2MP depth sensor setup.
Beyond that though, we go back to the pretty standard stuff. With that, I mean the SIM tray, USB-C port, and speaker grille at the bottom, as well as the power button and volume rocker on the right. The chipset here is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage space to go with it. On the software side of things, this runs the MagicOS 7.1, which is based on Android 13. All these put together provides a smooth scrolling experience, at least in the short amount of time I used the phone.
One thing that the company has highlighted about the HONOR 90 is its 6.7-inch AMOLED 2,664 x 1,200 display. Though it’s not the fact that it has a 120Hz refresh rate, nor that it supports HDR 10+ output. Instead, it is its eye comfort features, which include the 3840Hz PWM dimming and TUV Rheinland Flicker Free certification.
What all this does, to put it very simply, is reduce eye strain when using the phone in low-light conditions. One example that comes to mind is when you are doomscrolling just before you go to bed. While it is nice that the company is letting you do that in comfort, the bigger question would be why you would do so in the first place. Either way, in the limited time we had with the phone prior to the publication of this article, I didn’t really feel any difference between using this and any other phone in terms of eye strain.
Once again, the company is being very secretive about the availability and local pricing of the HONOR 90, so it’s even harder to make a value judgement this early on. Though the company will likely reveal something shortly after the global launch is done and over with.
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