Honor 90 5G Review: Bouncing back in style

Honor 90 5G Review: HTech has launched the Honor 90 5G smartphone in India. The smartphone is loaded with some top-notch features like a 200MP main camera, a quad-curved display, 3840 Hz PWM dimming technology and much more. Do these features hold any value in day-to-day life? Let's find out in the detailed review.

Honor 90 5G Review: Variants and price

The Honor 90 5G is available in three colours - Emerald Green, Diamond Silver and Midnight Black - and two RAM and storage variants of 8GB + 256GB and 12GB + 512GB. They are priced at Rs 37,999 and Rs 39,999 respectively. Here I am using the latter in Emerald Green colour.

Honor 90 5G Review: Design

Talking about the design of the Honor 90 5G smartphone, it has curved edges both on the front and the back, making it quite comfortable to hold. It feels good to grab the smartphone because of its slim form factor. The smartphone is just 7.8mm thick and weighs around 183 grams, despite the fact that the company is providing a 5,000mAh battery inside the device. The Emerald Green colour comes with a slightly textured back and it makes the device almost resistant to smudges and fingerprints.

Considering this is the first device by HTech, it has done a remarkable job in terms of design. The Honor 90 has a plastic body frame and toughened glasses on the back and front - but not the Gorilla Glass protection. Also, it doesn't come with any IP rating — which is a bummer for a smartphone in this price range.

The smartphone features a USB Type-C 2.0 port, a SIM card tray, a microphone and a speaker at the bottom. You can use two SIM cards in this device but it doesn't support a MicroSD card. On the top you will get the secondary microphone and on the right is the power button along with the volume rocker.

Honor 90 5G Review: Display

The Honor 90 5G smartphone has a 6.7-inch quad-curved display. This means that the display is curved not just on the sides but also on all four edges. This adds to the premium quotient of the device. The display comes with an adaptive screen refresh rate of up to 120Hz and also supports peak brightness of 1,600 nits - which lets you use the device comfortably even under direct sunlight. It also offers a touch sampling rate of 360Hz and the industry’s highest Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) dimming frequency of 3840Hz — much higher than what is available in best flagship smartphones.  This means that you won't notice any flickering even at very low brightness. In a nutshell, it has a feature-loaded display.

In day-to-day usage, scrolling through browsers feels quite smooth and I even enjoyed content consumption - be it watching YouTube videos or sci-fi movies on this phone. The display produces quite vibrant and life-like colours. Also, you get a video enhancer option. As the name suggests, it enhances the colour and contrast of full-screen videos for a vivid viewing experience. The features support platforms like YouTube and Netflix. The smartphone comes with a mono speaker which is loud enough and offers clear audio quality. However, stereo speakers are a must for devices in this price range. But if you are someone who loves to use earbuds while watching videos on your device, the company's decision to use a mono speaker will hardly make any difference to you.

The smartphone offers HDR10+ and Widevine L1 support, so you can easily watch your favourite movies and web series on Netflix.

Honor 90 5G Review: Performance and software

The Honor 90 has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 Accelerated Edition processor under the hood. Now this is not the latest generation of the chipset, but you need not worry as it is capable of handling all your daily chores quite easily. I haven't faced any lag or stutter during my usage and there are no heating issues either in regular usage.

You can easily play video games like Asphalt 9 and BGMI but then you can encounter some heating issues. While the device can easily handle your daily errands, this is definitely not made for serious gamers.

The smartphone runs on the latest Android 13-based MagicOS 7.1. It is quite optimised and comes with several useful features. The animation looks cool and has hardly any bloatware. Also, there are a lot of customisation options available for users. The company is promising two years of software updates and three years of security updates.

Honor 90 5G Review: Battery and charging

The Honor 90 5G comes with a 5,000mAh battery and supports 66W of fast charging which can easily juice up your device from zero to 100 per cent in less than an hour.

The battery is capable enough to last for an entire day in case of general usage and is at par with other smartphones present in this price segment.

Honor 90 5G Review: Camera

The Honor 90 5G smartphone has a triple camera system at the back that has been placed beautifully in a dual-ring design. The primary camera is a 200MP and is accompanied by a 12MP ultra-wide and macro camera and a 2MP depth sensor.

The 200MP main camera clicks images with dynamic range. However, there is no Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS) so it falls behind when it comes to clicking images of moving objects. Ultrawide camera and macro camera to click good images without any major deviation in colours.

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The portrait mode of this smartphone works really well and creates a good bokeh effect with nice edge detection. Also, the camera clicks good shots for the price range in low-light situations.

In the front, the smartphone has a 50MP punch-hole camera which is capable of capturing good selfies in both daylight and lowlight conditions. These images have good dynamic range and are close to natural colour tones with some softening effects.

Honor 90 5G Review: Verdict

Before I talk about the final verdict, it is important to note that Honor is no longer associated with Huawei and is an independent brand now. So, the Honor 90 5G smartphone is the first smartphone launched by HTech, a fully empowered partner for selling Honor smartphones in India in collaboration with PSAV India. And, in this regard, HTech has done a commendable job with its first offering.

The Honor 90 5G can be a good option for those who don't mind spending some extra bucks. It has a very good display, eye-catching looks, and decent performance with a clean interface and good camera capabilities. However, the smartphone doesn't have any IP rating, there are no stereo speakers and most importantly OIS is missing.