After a relatively quiet first year and a half since splitting from Huawei, Honor has really stepped it up in 2023, with the global launch of a premium flagship phone and foldable phone earlier this year. And now it’s back with a mid-range that is among the most comfortable phones I’ve ever held.
The Honor 90 packs a 6.7-inch screen, so from straight on it looks like one of dozens of Android phones on market. But turn it sideways or hold it in the hand and its sleekness stands out: the phone weighs 183g and measures 7.8mm in thickness. Both of these figures are rare, if not unheard of, in a phone with this size of screen in the last few years.
That’s not all: that 6.7-inch OLED screen has quad curves on all four sides, so when you hold the phone, there aren’t any sharp edges or corners—something I can’t say about the iPhones or Samsung Galaxies. Add the grippy textured glass back and we have a phone that I very much enjoy holding. Maybe it’s because I’ve been testing the relatively bulky Google foldable phone, but the Honor 90 was a breath of fresh air every time I picked it up.
The screen is gorgeous: FHD+ resolution and it features the 3840Hz PWM (pulse-width modulation) dimming, which isn’t a catchy or marketable feature, but highly important, because it means the screen flickers less in low light situations. Our human eyes don’t see it, but displays all flicker at low brightness, and these flickers aren’t healthy for our eyes. I put a camera with fast shutter speed at the Honor 90 side by side against a much pricier Android phone and the Honor 90’s screen noticeably flickers less.
The phone’s insides are quite good, though not all the way flagship territory. There’s a Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 chip from Qualcomm, a 5,000 mAh battery—uncanny considering how thin the phone is—and 8GB or 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM.
There’s also a new 200MP camera that can do the same tricks that Samsung and Xiaomi devices in the past have done. Essentially, you use the 200MP sensor to capture pixel-binned images cramming 16 pixels into one for a shot with much more dynamic range and light intake ability. Or, you can shoot in full 200MP resolution, after which you can crop into a display much easier.
The front facing camera is also a headline grabber: a 50MP sensor with ultra-wide field-of-view that allows for easier group selfies or solo travelers to get sweeping views.
It’s not all good news, however. The Honor 90’s software, MagicUI, looks outdated compared to other Android skins, and to be honest, still looks far too similar to Huawei’s software for my liking. Honor really needs to design its own software language to stand out. It’s not just aesthetics I’m griping about. It’s a myriad of things, like the lack of an app tray, or that you can’t access app icon information directly via long-press of the app.
But to Honor’s credit, its software zips around smoothly, and it plays very nice with other Honor products via Honor Share and other seamless integration like the ability to connect an Honor phone to an Honor laptop with a tap.
The Honor 90 is priced at €550 in the EU for 8GB RAM and 256GB storage. The phone will also go on sale throughout Southeast Asia. While pricing will vary, it will certainly be slightly cheaper than the European price.
At its price point, the Honor 90 is a good looking, great feeling, well performing phone that ticks a lot of boxes.
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