Honor 9 - We are at the launch in Berlin
27.6.2017
Translation: machine translated
The Honor 9 has been unveiled in Berlin. We were there live. A report from the Max-Schmeling-Halle in the German capital. Honor has a lot to show. Not just the Honor 9, but also trackers and headphones.
Berlin. Germany's capital and the centre of gravity for Chinese smartphone manufacturer Honor when it comes to its new flagship. The Honor 9 is here. And where the latest smartphones are unveiled, so are we. Team digitec consists of cameraman Manuel Wenk and myself. We travelled to Berlin with a delegation of Swiss media representatives to be among the first to test the Honor 9.
Media from all over Europe have travelled to the Huawei subsidiary's event. Two men speak Italian behind us and a Spanish woman sits next to us. A light electro sound hammers out of the speakers. No doubt to warm up the professional and private audience for the show. There are also pictures of fun sports and young people posing in front of the Honor logo. The message is clear even before a word is spoken on stage: Honor is for the young, for those who are on the move, for those who are at home online and for digital natives. Every now and then, a voice echoes through the hall: "The show will begin very soon".
We are waiting.
The Honor 9 has been given a social media-compatible nickname by the manufacturer: It's called #LightCatcher. This is because light plays a key role in the design of the device.
George Zhao, Marketing Director of Huawei, takes the stage. He calls the Honor brand "still a little baby", but according to all analysts and fans, it already has a lot behind it. Because the growth cannot be denied. "Honor is number one in China when it comes to e-brands". E-brand, because Honor has made the Internet generation its banner. Hardly any offline sales, hardly any offline advertising, few major advertising campaigns. Honor relies on word of mouth, i.e. recommendations from friends and influencers.
"We listen to our customers," says Zhao. Of course, the Huawei subsidiary uses analysis tools to cut out features in devices and optimise the price. This is because digitec customers believe that the value for money of Honor devices is right:
Top mobile with a very good price-performance ratio. The design and workmanship are very nice. The operation and memory card slot are also perfect. The battery can actually be charged by almost 50% in 15 minutes and lasts a very long time. I was initially critical of the finger scan on the back, but I was proved wrong. The finger scanner works perfectly and is very practical! I would recommend this mobile to anyone in a heartbeat - Andybaer about the Honor 8
But on the Honor 9, the fingerprint scanner has moved back to the front of the phone. Sorry Andy
.
The Honor 9 in the spotlight
The Honor 9 had big shoes to fill when it came to development. The Honor 8 won the 2016 Smartphone of the Year award in Sweden and an award from the design magazine Designmedia.ru, among others.
The Honor 9, the light catcher, catches the eye. The Chinese have made many bold design decisions. While strobe lights flash through the stadium and powerful bass thunders out of the speakers. It has "3D curved glass", which reflects the light in a very special way and plays with reflections. This is not only on the front, but also on the back, making it an eye-catcher. The screen diagonal is 5.15 inches, or 13.08 cm.
The back is flat. No camera hump, no indentations for the LED flash. The back really reflects light incredibly strongly - you can hardly capture the effect with the camera. Manuel and I tried to capture this in the video. The effect is best seen in the Glacier Grey colour variant, i.e. silver-grey. Zhao believes that the grey model will therefore be the most popular variant. There will still be a blue model. Whether blue, silver-grey or black, the colour effect with the reflection remains.
In the design, Honor has made sure that the phone feels like a single piece. The edges and transitions between the display and shell are as flat and unobtrusive as possible.
Camera expertise from GoPro
The dual camera remains. However, the engineers and programmers have improved a lot compared to the Honor 8, says Zhao. The images are much sharper with double zoom. "The colours are more vivid, the contrasts sharper," he enthuses.
Thanks to improved pixel binning technology, images taken in the dark are also much sharper and more vivid. In a newly integrated portrait mode, the camera can automatically work with depth of field and thus shoot professional-looking portraits (even if every professional photographer would like to string me up for this statement). Nevertheless, the camera also impresses beyond Instagram and Facebook. Photographers from the Chinese edition of "National Geographic" took the camera on a trip; the pictures from the mobile phone camera actually made it into the printed edition.
For your Instagram stories, you can add effects to videos directly on the Honor 9, be it typefaces or quick cuts. Thanks to a partnership with camera manufacturer GoPro, videos can be recorded on the mobile in 4K and saved in a space-saving way using the latest compression technology.
Faster than the Galaxy S8
The processor installed in the Honor 9, the Kirin 960, is 18% faster than its predecessor and the graphics performance is even 180% better than that of the Honor 8. In addition, the devices are delivered in versions with 4 or 6 GB of RAM. The internal memory is 64 or 128 GB and can be expanded with a memory card as usual. There is also an infrared transmitter, which is almost considered antiquated, but allows you to control the electronics in your home with your smartphone.
The only downer in my eyes is the choice of user interface. The Honor 9 runs EMUI 5.1, the interface that also runs on other Huawei devices. Opinions differ here. Some like it, others don't. But Honor has obviously listened to one of my main criticisms. I'm probably not the only one who likes their apps to be kept clean. Now, not all apps have to be placed on the home screen, as EMUI has had the Android-typical app drawer feature since the Huawei P10.
The Chinese company is also not afraid of comparisons with the big names. Compared to the Samsung Galaxy S8, the Honor 9 is much faster at loading apps and content. A demo video shows this. A murmur goes through the audience. Because the comparison is bold. Very bold. But, hey, you save three milliseconds every time you start an app. That adds up to quite a bit of time.
Honour has drawn on the expertise of headphone manufacturer Monster for the music. The CEO of the audio manufacturer, Noel Lee, rides around the stage on a Segway and talks about the company's long history. But it's not about the history: "We are part of this truly historic product launch," he says. On the cable: three buttons that allow simple media control.
Honor presents activity tracker and Bluetooth headphones
Surprisingly, George Zhao announces a second product. It is designed to help with movement. Bass again, electronic sound again. A shadowy figure stands on the screen, its wrist illuminated.
The Honor Band 3 is waterproof up to 50 metres. The heart rate monitor is so good that it measures just as accurately as a chest strap heart rate monitor. The battery is said to last 30 days under normal use and also records sleep phases.
Further down the line, Honor wants to enter the wireless headphones market. The Honor Bluetooth headphones are available in black, red and blue and provide 11 hours of music enjoyment. They are waterproof and sweatproof, can be clicked together with magnets and last up to 10 days in standby mode.
With that, George Zhao moves on to the launch dates. We will keep you up to date with our availability in the following article:
We're off to do a hands-on. See you later!
Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.
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