The HONOR 90 series landed in Malaysia last month with two phones in the lineup, not counting the 90 Pro that didn’t make it to our market. The vanilla HONOR 90 is the brand’s best mid-range smartphone in its current line of products with a very reasonable price and some interesting specs.
Specifications
Running everything is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 Accelerated Edition which, as the name implies, is an overclocked version of last year’s mid-range chipset. This is paired with a hefty 12GB RAM and up to 512GB of storage. For connectivity, it supports features such as 5G, Wi-Fi 6, and Bluetooth 5.2.
For the display, it sports a curved 6.7-inch AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate and a high peak brightness of 1,600 nits. Unfortunately, it lacks any sort of protection from the likes of Corning or AGC, nor does it have any IP rating against dust or splashes.
Powering the entire devices and its components is a 5,000mAh battery with support for 66W wired charging but, unfortunately, no wireless charging. The phone supports two SIM cards with the option for one of them to be an eSIM.
Looks & Functionality
The HONOR 90 has a tall, sharp, and beautiful AMOLED display that gets reasonably bright enough for comfortable outdoor usage. My only complaint about the screen is the same as my complaint with most Android phones these days, which is the unnecessary curve on both edges that can sometimes distort images as well as increase the likelihood of accidental swipes. Thankfully, this one’s curves aren’t as harsh as some others.
It has an under-display fingerprint scanner that is placed way too low and honestly, it is not as quick and reliable as I had hoped. While my fingers are admittedly more sweaty than the average person, I’ve used several phones this year that had no trouble handling my damp digits. With the HONOR 90, I found myself using the passcode to unlock it a bit more than usual.
The backplate is shiny and subtlely colour-shifting but at the same time, it has a matte texture that provides a good grip as well as being resistant to fingerprint smudges — this is becoming a more common design and I’m here for it. Even though the phone itself is slightly top-heavy, it’s well-balanced enough to use with one hand, although its tall aspect ratio makes it a pain for those with small hands.
The camera setup consists of two large circular bumps on the back that make it a bit worrying to use the phone without a case and they even make it wobble like crazy if you’re trying to use it on a flat surface. Both the volume rocker and the power button are positioned on the right while the SIM card tray is placed at the bottom.
Performance & Battery
In spite of it rocking a previous generation chipset, the daily overall performance feels solid, with everything running smoothly. 12GB RAM is more than enough for multitasking on a phone in most situations. I’m still not the biggest fan of MagicOS for the smallest of reasons like not being able to delete apps directly from the homepage but it’s still an overall acceptable Android skin.
When it comes to benchmarks, it scores in the mid-range category as expected and it doesn’t overheat even with a continuous heavy load, with a 99.3% stability score on 3DMark. That being said, the chipset’s last-gen status shows once you start to compare it with its successor.
The HONOR 90 does score a lot of points with me in terms of battery life as it regularly gives me a full day’s use out of it and even two full days with light usage. Despite the fact that 66W doesn’t even come close to some of the charging speeds offered by other brands, it’s a damn sight faster that it gives me enough juice to last the whole day, even with less than a half hour of charging.
When put under a YouTube streaming endurance test set at 25% brightness and volume, it somehow managed to last over 17 hours. This speaks volumes about how efficient the phone is.
Camera
The HONOR 90 features a triple camera setup made up of a 200MP main sensor, a 12MP ultra-wide lens that doubles as a macro lens, and a 2MP depth sensor. While the large primary sensor should be the main attraction, I found myself having more fun using the macro lens.
The magnification of the macro camera is nowhere near as good as the microscope lens found in some flagships but it’s still able to take beautiful and interesting close-up shots of flowers and other subjects. It can be a bit blurry with indoor lighting and in such a situation, your hands need to be as still as a statue, but turning on the flashlight does help it focus and sharpen the image.
The main camera itself is a mostly reliable shooter that takes acceptable images in good lighting but as far as I can tell, there isn’t a noticeable difference in sharpness between the 200MP sensor and other mid-tier sensors. It tends to over-expose in both indoor and daylight outdoor settings and for night shots, it suffers from light blooming and just overall blurriness.
Camera Samples
Competition
POCO F5
The POCO F5 is a mid-range smartphone released this year with a 6.67-inch 120Hz AMOLED display. While being at a similar price point as the HONOR 90, it runs on the newer and more powerful Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 2 chipset, although it only maxes at 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
Choosing the POCO over the HONOR would also mean getting a downgrade in the camera department with a 64MP primary camera, an 8MP ultra-wide lens, and a 2MP macro lens. Battery and charging are similar as it also has a 5,000mAh capacity with a slightly faster 67W charging.
Conclusion
The HONOR 90 has a design that is both aesthetically pleasing and practical, with a bright high-quality display that is practically flagship-level. Moreover, the chipset it uses is highly efficient, resulting in great battery life, and more than powerful enough for day-to-day use without any stuttering.
While the main camera is nothing more than average, the gimmicky but usable macro feature is a welcome bonus at this price point. It may not be the photography heavyweight that you might hope it would be, but if you’re purchasing a phone at the RM2K mark or lower, there’s only so much you could realistically expect from it regardless of how astounding the specs look like on paper. On that note, the brand may have a solid mid-ranger here.
Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or Telegram for more updates and breaking news.
