Review: Honor X9c

The Honor X9c is a mid-range smartphone has been punted as an “unbreakable” AI phone.

At the media launch, we had the opportunity to test its durability, which you read in our launch post. It retails for R10 999.

There are not many smartphone makers who dare you to use the phone’s screen like a hammer, drop steel balls onto it, put it in boiling water on a stove, or try to take pics on it while fully submerged underwater.

Some of these items were sent with the review unit, which can be seen in our home tests on our TikTok.

From a durability point of view, the X9c nails it. So if you’re the type who drops your phone often or have your kids playing with it, this is the phone for you.

Let’s look at the camera

The X9c has a camera consisting of a 108MP ultra-wide angle and 5MP ultra wide lenses; and a 16MP selfie camera. The duo rear camera is slightly different to last year’s camera with an additional 2MP macro lens.

The camera bump at the back is on the large side, which means it won’t sit flush when you put it down. I found that it slips a lot when it’s placed down because of the design.

The main camera offers various modes that you are familiar with, like HDR, pro, time lapse, slow-mo, panoramic and then it can scan documents and you turn a watermark on.

There’s also a video editing Story Mode and Scenes option to help you make better edits using dual view mode with both lenses or adding transitions, frames, stickers and other effects, and AI movie, like what we first saw on the Honor 90.

The main camera takes good photos, and you can switch between wide angle and zoom in digitally. You can also have the AI button on, but I didn’t see a big difference with that during the day for regular shots.

Here are some images from the main camera. Click to enlarge:

I also tested AI Eraser. On my first attempt I got a fail error. This was my next result, I think it did a good job on this. Click the image to enlarge:

Before

After

But as with similar features on other phones, it’s still new tech so it’s fair to say it can be hit or miss.

I’m not a big selfie taker but here are three shots in different light conditions:

The front camera shoots in 4K HD while the front shoots in 1080p HD, plus there’s facial recognition. The camera offering is good for its positioning and price point.

Performance and under the hood

As mentioned in our X9c vs. X9b comparison post, the X9c is powered the same Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 chipset as its predecessor, with a base of 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. It also has the same 6.78-inch screen but it now offers 4000nits of brightness.

The biggest difference here is that the battery has been given a huge bump, up from 5800mAh last year to a whopping 6600mAh, which ensures your phone will last a full day and into the night. It also has faster charging, the supplied plug is 66W and fully charge in 62 minutes.

I also love that Honor is using its silicon carbon battery on the X9c, previously found on its flagships. Honor says it is more energy dense, supports faster charging, and better performance.

The phone has NFC, dual SIM, WiFi Direct and Bluetooth 5.1 support.

I found that accessing the camera and snapping pictures was quick enough, it didn’t lag when I took pics in succession. One thing to note when editing with AI Eraser is that you need an internet connection, so the speed/results of that may depend on your connectivity.

Otherwise, with regular usage and switching between apps, I didn’t think it was slow. I watch a lot of videos on mobile, so I’m switching between Youtube, TikTok and Instagram and found it acceptable. What has become a habit over the years is killing off apps so they are not running in the background, plus I added the “boost” widget to my home screen.

Magic OS, apps and AI

The device is powered by Android 14 and Honor’s Magic OS 8 overlay. I’m saying this because it still needs to be said: Honor has full access to Android and the Play Store and comes preloaded with Google’s suite of apps.

However, the interface is familiar because it was once owned by Huawei; and is user friendly. The one criticism I have, is that the Magic overlay means it comes with bloatware that Honor preloaded on the device, which is a duplicate of Google’s apps and not actually needed.

The X9c has NFC so it supports Google Wallet and contactless payments, which is great for a phone at this price point.

Some AI features it comes with include Magic Portal, Magic Capsule and Parallel Space at an OS level, and AI motion sensing and AI eraser on the camera.

Parallel Space is another great addition to this mid-ranger, which you need to go in to activate. It then allows you to create a second virtual phone on the device if you want to separate your personal and business life.

Final Thoughts 

Given the increase in the price of smartphones today, there are not a lot of phones that stand out for offering more phone for your money but the Honor X9c offers exactly that for R10 999.

Buying a mid-range phone certainly comes with compromises, and in this instance, last year’s chipset and no wireless charging. But other features make up for it: its durability, camera, NFC support and battery life.

If you want to consider another phone at the same price point, check out the Samsung A56 5G.