Honor India to Launch Smartphone With Four Cameras in January, Honor 9 Lite Expected

Huawei-owned brand Honor has said it plans to release a smartphone with dual front and dual rear cameras later this month. The company did not say much about the upcoming handset in its statement, but did mention “the next smartphone is tailor-made for the selfie lovers with dual front cameras.” However, there is no official word yet on the other key features as well as the price bracket the model will be positioned in. The company already has a few smartphones with four cameras in the market. In India itself, the Honor 9i has been released at Rs. 17,999 with dual front and rear cameras.

Considering it has explicitly mentioned the four cameras, it is expected the brand will launch the Honor 9 Lite in late January. It was unveiled in China in December 2017, and went on sale later the same month. At the time of the launch, Honor had mentioned it will be released in 14 more countries, including India, Russia, and the UK. It is yet to hit markets other than China, so India may be the starting point for the global release.

Honor 9 Lite specifications, price

The dual-SIM (Nano) Honor 9 Lite runs EMUI 8.0, based on Android 8.0 Oreo. It bears a 5.65-inch full-HD+ (1080x2160 pixels) IPS display with an 18:9 aspect ratio and pixel density of 428ppi. It is powered by a Huawei HiSilicon Kirin 659 SoC (four cores clocked at 2.36GHz, and four cores clocked at 1.7GHz) coupled with either 3GB or 4GB of RAM.

Honor 9 Lite bears dual camera setups on both the front and back, as we mentioned. In both the front and back, the smartphone sports a 13-megapixel primary camera with a 2-megapixel secondary camera. The rear camera offers PDAF autofocus, apart from LED flash, in addition. The Honor 9 Lite offers with either 32GB or 64GB of inbuilt storage depending on the variant, both of which are expandable via microSD card (up to 256GB) in a hybrid dual-SIM configuration.

Connectivity options on the Honor 9 Lite include 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth, GPS/ A-GPS, 3.5mm audio jack, and Micro-USB with OTG support. Sensors on board include accelerometer, ambient light sensor, magnetometer (digital compass), and proximity sensor. It is powered by a 3000mAh battery that's rated to deliver a talk time of up to 20 hours on 3G, and a standby time of up to 24 days - it charges fully in about 2 hours 20 minutes, the company says. The smartphone measures 151x71.9x7.6mm, and weighs 149 grams.

As for the price, Honor 9 Lite starts at CNY 1,199 (approximately Rs. 11,720) for the 3GB RAM + 32GB storage variant, CNY 1,499 (about Rs. 14,650) for the 4GB RAM + 32GB storage option, and CNY 1,799 (roughly Rs. 17,600) for the 4GB RAM + 64GB storage model.

Other smartphones featuring dual cameras on the front and back include the likes of Huawei Mate 10 Lite, Huawei Nova 2i, Nubia Z17S and Nubia Z17 miniS.