Huawei announced another mid-range smartphone recently – Huawei Y9 2019. Since then the company has been taking preorders for the smartphone which closes on November 2nd. Afterwards the phone will be available for you to buy in the Pakistan markets.
We just have got our hands on with the new Y9 2019 that costs you PKR 37,999/- It replaces the company’s hotcake of last year Mate 10 lite. In easy words, Huawei is touting this new mid-ranger to be a successor to Huawei Mate 10 lite that was sold really well in the country – check Mate 10 lite review.
You might be thinking that why a Y-series phone would replace the Mate lite phone? That’s pretty much an obvious question but the most simple answer can be the price factor. Huawei has not officially brought up the Mate 20 series in Pakistan which should bring Mate 20 lite as the most cheap model of the series. Mate 20 lite also shares most of the hardware features with Y9 2019, but expect to cost higher as the Mate 20 lite comes with some better camera.
Let’s just proceed with the new Huawei Y9 2019 and start with the box is a standard white box Huawei usually ships its phones in. It prints some key information about the phone that includes the device name, the color, the model number and memory configuration.
Unboxing the Y9 2019
The box pops out to unveil the Y9 2019 smartphone sitting on top. Underneath the phone, there comes a packet with the add-on cover and screen protector. User guide is also in there with a SIM eject tool.
The phone comes with a standard and big 5 volt and 2 ampere charger that Huawei ships with most of its mid-range smartphones.
Just like any other smartphone, the package includes a set of earphones, which is also just a standard circular shaped buds with a 3.5mm pin. The phone doesn’t have a better USB Type-C port as the microUSB still follows this phone for connectivity.
The bundled back cover and a screen protector is always wonderful thing but it’s your preference, if you want to use those coverup things or want to keep the phone as it comes out of the box. Specially if it’s shiny and elegant. Unfortunately, Y9 2019 doesn’t have fast charging support to fuel up the 4000 mAh battery powering up the phone.
Huawei Y9 2019 Box Contents
- The device – Huawei Y9 2019
- Travel charger – 5V+2A
- USB cable for Connectivity/Charging
- Stereo Headset
- SIM eject tool
- User guide
- Add-on TPU back cover
- Add-on TPU protective film
Huawei Y9 2019 Overview and Features
Available in three color option – midnight black, sapphire blue and aurora purple, the Y9 2019 features a big 6.5-inch display. Thankfully it has full HD+ resolution and sports a wider display 19.5:9 aspect ratio. So it’s going to deliver a crisp and sharp content on the screen.
There is only one variant you can buy and it comes with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. The phone packs with the company’s latest mid-range chipset, the Kirin 710. It’s the same chip, featured in Huawei Nova 3i and it outperformed the devices with Snapdragon equivalents.
The Y9 2019 has a large battery of 4000 mAh but it doesn’t feature fast charging. The phone comes with quad-camera – dual-cam setup on the front and a dual-camera config on the back. Y9 2019, along with other basic sensors, packs in the gyroscope. So you better have some AR/VR experience with this mid-ranger.
The phone runs Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box and features the company’s own EMUI 8.2 on top of it.
Hands-on and First Impressions
First thing first, Huawei has learnt to how to give the first impressions to its customers. The way, their customers should feel right after opening the box.
Even though, I feel pity on the fact how Huawei wraps its budget phones into a simple lousy plastic bags in the box, the phone itself covers up that first feel.
The one I got here is the midnight black variant which has a shiny/glossy finish on the back. But the build material is plastic all around. It feels exactly like the glass finish on Nova 3i at first but you can feel the right thing with just a single tap on it. I believe the sapphire blue model would be more attractive than this is.
I wonder how long this plastic will keep the from scratches, however a good plastic has its own benefits and biggest one is that it can absorb shocks pretty well.
Once again, thanks to Huawei that it has finally thought to give a simple thing to users with its phones – that’s oleophobic coating. Mostly they have kept it for their flagship devices but now it’s good to have a smooth touch experience on the screen with less fingerprints.
It’s a 6.5″ Full HD+ display with a cutout on top – most commonly known as the notch. The screen has a 19.5:9 aspect ratio and it serves with 2340×1080 pixels resolution at the pixel density of around 397ppi.
The EMUI software gives you an option to hide the “notch” if you want to. This option, if turned on, will darken the surrounding area on the left and right sides of the notch to camouflage it. It will look like as you just have a little bezel on top. However the status informations stays there on the top, so you don’t lose that extra space while having removed the not-so-good cutout.
The Huawei Y9 2019 is quite good in handling with its curved edges but if there was matte finish around the frame it could have been much better. The durability of this plastic can not be told in just one day, we’ll see how much can it be performed.
Quad-Camera – Two on the back, Two on the front
Let alone the rear dual-cameras, Huawei has shipped quite a few devices now with the dual-camera setup on the front. The predecessor, as the company calls it, the Mate 10 lite also had four cameras – two on the back and two on the front. Huawei’s AI features also follow into this phone too.
Rear camera configuration has the 13-megapixel main sensor paired with a 2MP depth sensor with f/2.4 aperture lens. On the front there is a 16MP main sensor with the similar 2MP depth sensor. The front camera has a large f/1.8 aperture lens for brighter selfies.
Rear camera is “trained to see more than 500 scene types by creating 22 category labels”. The categories include flower, panda, group photo, food, ancient building, auto, text, portrait, night, sunrise/sunset, stage performance, beach, blue sky, plant, fireworks, autumn, snow, bike, cat, dog, and overcast. We’ll see how good this camera is, not only in identifying the scenes but also how good it is capturing the scene.
The quick use of the Huawei Y9 2019 was a good with smooth transitions and no lagging. The phone will be tested with various styles of use by multiple users to tell how does it perform in varying situations. Stay tuned for an in-depth review coming in a few days.
