Hardware

Published on November 10th, 2019 | by Tony Smith

Huawei Y9 Prime Review

The Y9 Prime is an excellent mid-range phone from Huawei that boast some impressive features for a handset that retails under $400AUD (November 2019). This new phone from Huawei is powered by a multicore CPU, the Octa-core (4×2.2 GHz & 4×1.7 GHz) and comes the Hisilicon Kirin 710F chipset with 4GB of RAM and a generous 128GB of storage.

If you need more storage, it is expandable to up to 512GB. The O/S is Android 9.0 (aka Pie), including EMUI 9.0 that in essence turns your smartphone into a fully fledged PC. While there are larger batteries available, the Y9 Prime comes with a 4000 mAh capacity, including USB Type-C charging. Given the size of the battery, it should keep you out of trouble for a day with standard use. However Huawei state that the smartphone will give you 28 hours of calling, 12 hours of browsing, 108 hours of music and 22 hours of video.

Aesthetically speaking, the HuaweiY9 Prime looks like a high-end phone with its stylish phone design and choice of two colours, sapphire blue or midnight black. We reviewed the sapphire blue and seeing the colours shimmer in the light looked great and more importantly feels good in your hands while you are using it. The phone weighs in at 196.8 grams which makes it quite lightweight in the grand scheme of things and the dimensions of the Y9 are 163.5 x 77.3 x 8.8mm. It also feels like a sturdy phone as well and you’re probably wondering what about the pop-up camera? According to Huawei, it has a withstandable pressure of 15kg that can work in environments from -20c to 60c. In other words, it is quite a sturdy pop-up camera!

Then you have the screen which is a 6.59” Ultra Full-View Display that gives you almost full screen real estate with zero notch. What’s a notch? Chances are the smartphone that you are using now has a notch on the front which is its selfie or front facing camera. On the Huawei Y9 Prime, this does not exist thanks to its auto pop-up camera that is ready to use in just one-second. We recently reviewed an OPPO smartphone that had a pop-up camera and like the aforementioned model, it’s very subtle and quite fast. The resolution of the phone is 1080 x 2340 pixels which produces clear images and text and vibrant colours.

The Y9 Prime includes a 16MP (megapixels) Triple Camera which is broken down into a main 16MP camera, a 8MP ultra-wide camera with a 120-degree field of vision and finally a 2MP depth camera which increases the field of depth. The front facing pop-up camera is 16MP that also boasts Huawei’s clever AI algorithms which helps in capturing and fine-tuning that perfect image.

In reference to the back cameras, they also have access to Huawei’s AI algorithm which can recognise 22 categories and 500+ scenes in real-time, as well as analyze and optimise the scenes intelligently, so each shot will be more accurate and vivid. For example, some of the categories may include foods, flowers, dogs (awesome), fireworks and even ancient buildings. Photos taken during full-light are brilliant with vibrant colours and limited saturation. The wide angle shots are great as is the digital zoom. In low-light, the camera does struggle but with some tweaking, you can get some good shots… see the last two photos below.

In terms of performance, the Y9 Prime is a very responsive phone that boots quickly and loads app quite fast. Most games also work quite well such as Call of Duty Mobile and Injustice 2 as some of the titles we tried, including Asphalt 9 thanks to its GPU Turbo 3.0. Unlike it’s bigger brother the Mate 30 Pro, this phone also comes with FULL Google Support which means you have access to everything and out of the box, Huawei ensure that you have everything you need to get started.

Final Thoughts?

The Huawei Y9 Prime is a great midrange phone that is not only affordably priced but packs a punch. If you’re on a budget or a social media lover, this phone ticks all the right boxes. Furthermore, it’s a good looking phone, has an excellent design plus its camersa are mightily impressive for a phone at this price. It can game, surf the net, stream and even has a PC-like experience on it which makes the Huawei Y9 Prime our Editor’s Choice for November 2019!

For more information, please visit https://consumer.huawei.com/au/phones/y9-prime-2019/

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About the Author

Tony Smith

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