HONOR has been filling social media with videos and clips of your favorite tech reviewers throwing around the Honor X9a on different surfaces. It’s clear that the phone is incredibly tough, but is that all that it’s good for? Let’s see in our HONOR X9a 5G review for the Philippines:
How tough is it really?
Let’s answer the most obvious question right away: is the HONOR X9a 5G really as tough as it seems? The short answer is yes, but there are certain caveats. The 0.65mm of reinforced glass is able to protect the HONOR X9a 5G from drops of up to 5 feet high, as long as the screen is flat when it makes contact with the surface. If your phone hits the floor in one of the corners, it might not survive since all the force of the drop concentrates in a smaller spot rather than being spread out, reinforced glass or not.
Is the display any good?
Yes. Aside from being incredibly tough, the display on the X9a 5G looks really good as well. It’s a 6.67-inch AMOLED panel with a 1080 x 2400 resolution, and comes with all the bells and whistles you expect from a high-end display -120Hz refresh rate, 800 nits of max brightness as well as PWM dimming.
How does the phone feel in the hand?
It feels FANTASTIC. The HONOR X9a 5G has got to be one of the thinnest phones I’ve ever used so far. It’s way thinner than Honor’s own Magic4 Pro, which is surprising because the Magic4 Pro costs more than double the SRP of the HONOR X9a 5G.
The best part of that is that the HONOR X9a 5G doesn’t sacrifice battery capacity for the sake of thinness, if anything the HONOR X9a 5G has even more battery capacity than the Magic4 Pro, which is pretty surprising.
How’s the design of the phone?
Incredibly premium. The overall design of the phone conveys this air of premiumness that you usually don’t get from other devices. Yes, the back of the device uses plastic, but thanks to the frosted Titanium Silver colorway on our review unit you really wouldn’t notice, and if you did, you probably wouldn’t care. The frame is made out of aluminum which contributes to the phone’s overall toughness.
Probably the only thing I don’t like is the circular camera module – I don’t really like how it looks, though that’s just personal preference talking.
Is it good for gaming?
Ah, depends on what you’re playing. The phone has a Snapdragon 695 chipset with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, which is good enough to play games on medium settings without the stuff hanging or lagging.
That being said, the Snapdragon 695 processor isn’t really that great when you’re cranking the detail up in games like Genshin Impact or Asphalt 9, and you’ll definitely see some frames dropping when you do that. That doesn’t mean you can’t use the HONOR X9a 5G for gaming – you’ll just have to keep the slider to medium to keep things nice and smooth.
Are those cameras any good?
If we’re talking about the 64-megapixel primary camera, then the answer is yes. Images taken with it look good, with plenty of details in shots taken in daylight. Low-light images are a little hit or miss though they’re still usable for posting on social media.
The rest of the cameras aren’t really great – the ultra-wide camera is just 5-megapixels and should be used outdoors, in bright light as much as possible as its low-light performance isn’t that great. And obviously the less we say about that 2-megapixel camera the better, as it’s merely there to make the spec sheet look good.
How long does the battery last?
All day. Thanks to the less demanding Snapdragon 695 processor, the battery can easily last a full day on a single charge, which is a plus. I had a quarter of a tank left after a demanding day, and thanks to 40W wired charging I quickly managed to get my battery up to 100% in no time.
Is it worth buying the HONOR X9a 5G in the Philippines?
Yes, as long as your focus isn’t hardcore gaming. The HONOR X9a 5G has all the things a regular user could ask for – an incredibly tough screen, a good primary camera, an excellent design, and long battery life. If your primary focus is gaming, then probably don’t bother – but if your interests lie in the stuff I mentioned, then the HONOR X9a 5G should be the phone you buy as we found in our review of it for the Philippines.
How much is the HONOR X9a 5G in the Philippines?
The HONOR X9a 5G that we reviewed for the Philippines is priced at Php 16,990, and pre-orders start from Jan 20 to Feb 3. Pre-order customers get a free HONOR Earbuds X3 Lite worth Php 3999 with every purchase.
