Honor 90 5G review

Honor 90’s display is one of the best things about the device. It sports a 6.7in quad-curved AMOLED screen with a resolution of 1200 x 2664 pixels, a pixel density of 435 ppi, an adaptive refresh rate of 120Hz and a peak brightness of 1600 nits. Plus, the phone comes with support for HDR 10+ content. On the sheet, it is decent for a mid-range phone but in real-life use cases, it's actually better than decent. The display performed admirably under the sun, even when the brightness was not actually full. Using it in low-light conditions at night was also (surprisingly) easy on the eyes. 

The Honor 90 5G has ultra-thin bezels that give a sense of more screen real estate, with the only interruption being the hole-punch camera. Honor has also taken eye strain and comfort quite seriously. The Honor 90's display supports 3840 Hz PWM dimming, which means it eliminates flicker, making it easier on the eyes, this explains why we experienced less stress while using the phone in the dark. Furthermore, the phone offers automatic dimming with 400-grade adjustment.

It's a bit puzzling why Honor didn't put as much more effort into the audio as they did with the dazzling display. There is only one down-firing speaker and it's a tad too easy to accidentally muffle with your hands while binge-watching your favourite shows. The audio doesn't get distorted when you pump up the volume, so it's okay for casual video watching. However, for a more immersive experience, we found ourselves reaching for the headphones.

The pixel-dense main and the selfie camera are 200MP and 50MP, respectively. Alongside those, there's a 12MP ultrawide lens and a 2MP depth sensor hanging out on the rear camera setup. It's essential to note that more megapixels don't always translate to better photos. In fact, cramming in too many megapixels can sometimes impact a camera's ability to capture light effectively. That's why many smartphones opt for a sweet spot around 48MP or 50MP for their sensors.

The photos it produces are pretty solid, though it tends to crank up the contrast and colours a bit, especially in outdoor shots but the images definitely have good details. The ultrawide shots also impress. It doesn't mess around with colours too much. And, since it supports autofocus, you can even snap some respectable macro shots. When it comes to portraits, these are quite on point. The camera strikes a nice balance between background blur, subject skin tone and contrast. The camera app only gives you a 2x zoom toggle, but feel free to pinch and zoom up to 10x – anything up to 5x looks pretty sharp in daylight. You can also shoot in full 200MP resolution. You'll get larger images that you can zoom in and crop. However, snapping one of these high-res photos takes a solid second and a half, and you might lose some of the benefits of pixel binning, which could affect dynamic range.  The lack of Optical image stabilisation (OIS) makes it a bit of a challenge when it comes to locking focus on moving objects, so a steady hand or some extra stability is a good idea.

The selfie game on the Honor 90 is a bit of a mixed bag though. It tends to give your selfies a smoothing effect and occasionally plays around with colour correction. However, there's a silver lining. Unlike some phones that force beauty mode on you by default, Honor lets you decide whether to enable it or not. Plus, its digital depth blur effects do a pretty convincing job, so you can add that touch of artistry to your selfies if you like. Shifting gears to video, this phone can crank out 4K 30FPS videos, and it's not just limited to the primary camera, even the selfie camera joins the party. The videos come out pretty stable, thanks to EIS (Electronic Image Stabilisation).

Another cool feature of the Honor 90 is its AI recommendation system. When you start your video recording session, you'll spot the AI recommendation option at the top, waiting to assist you. It analyses the scene and suggests the best shooting mode for the situation.

There is also an AI instant movie feature that does the editing for you. Plus, there is AI noise reduction onboard. Whenever you're shooting a video, it cleverly drowns out the background noise, making your voice the star of the show. These features can actually prove very useful for those who use vlogging to earn their living. 

The Honor 90 is equipped with a Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 from Qualcomm "Accelerated Edition"  and runs at 2.5GHz. The whole thing is paired with 12GB LPDDR5X RAM and 512 GB UFS 4.0 of storage. Normal usage feels fluid on Honor 90. We didn’t encounter any lags, stutters or overheating issues while using it. It’s not the best in terms of gaming in this price range but there are bangers like the iQOO 7 Pro if you’re looking for gaming performance from your smartphone. The smartphone runs MagicOS 7.1, which is based on Android 13 and Honor promises two software updates and three years of security patch.

We already told you this phone looks slick. The screen size matches up with the iPhone 14 Pro Max and plenty of other top-notch Android phones but Honor has still managed to keep it slim and sleek at 7.8mm thickness. To show the ruggedness of the smartphone, Honor CEO Madhav Sheth shared a video where he used the phone's screen side to crack open walnuts. We decided to give it a shot as well and the smartphone cracked a couple of walnuts. However, there's no Gorilla Glass guarding that display, and it's not winning any water-resistant awards either. We dropped it once (on its back) and it got a tiny crack in the corner. We could only imagine what would happen if it took a nosedive with its precious circular camera module facing the floor. So, if you're keen on preserving this stylish device, our advice – slap on a protective case, pronto!

Lastly, when it comes to unlocking your phone, you've got options — fingerprint and face recognition. The under-display sensor is located quite near the bottom edge of the phone, which can make one-handed unlocking a bit of a balancing act. However, I have no complaints about its speed or accuracy.

The Honor 90 is equipped with a 5,000 mAh battery that supports 66W charging. While it might not boast the absolute largest battery on the market, it's quite the workhorse. During typical use (excluding intensive activities like gaming, video recording, or HDR content marathons), this smartphone can easily keep you company for more than 14 hours. However, it's worth noting that when the device hits a low battery level, it tends to discharge pretty rapidly.

It has a gorgeous screen, a 200MP main camera and of course, the 512GB storage is quite good. It looks nice and we have no complaints about the performance either. However, if you love gaming or if you have butter fingers, we suggest you think twice.

Honor’s return to the Indian market may not be as disruptive as its glory days but worth a look if you want more megapixels than you know what to do with…