Huawei isn’t slowing down at all since it’s potential ban by the US government to not work with US companies and it’s allies. But the company had been notoriously releasing smartphones on the regular. While introducing entirely new smartphones, it’s also updating older generations bringing new life and design into them. Among those is the newly introduced Huawei Y9 Prime (2019).

Launched just this past weeks and has been another budget smartphone Huawei is sending out in its arsenal of smartphones to combat other big smartphone makers in the industry.

Personally, I’m not a fan of the Huawei Y9 Prime or the Huawei Y series. But that’s not to say its a bad smartphone. Else, we wouldn’t be talking about it here afterall. Huawei’s target with the device are people who probably don’t want to spend too much on just a smartphone or maybe who just want a second smartphone and that happens to be an Android device.

The Huawei Y9 Prime is everything budget-friendly. Even though it lacks some powerful functionalities and the fact that Huawei never made a pro version of this device meant tha its not really a targeted at different audiences. A practice Huawei is known for.. Which is trying to sell the same product either trimmed up or down to different customers based on their budgets. Its a really great concept.

The Huawei Y9 Prime would’ve been a close contender against the Honor 9X but this time around, unlike the previous generation of both devices, the Honor 8x and the Huawei Y9 2019, the Huawei Y9 Pime seems to still be stuck behind.

Beautiful design though and the fact that this device has no notch whatsoever makes it amazing. It also feature the mainstream slideout camera which seems to be the newest trends in smartphones. It seems smartphone makers had evolved past Apple’s notch.

Triple camera setup, a USB Type-C connection for quick charging and fast data transmission as well as little chin to its giant 6.59 inch display is awesome enough. The Huawei Y9 Prime also excelled in different parts such as bigger storage and RAM which all makes the device faster and fluid when in use.

Back in June when the device was announced I requested a review unit which was sent over here to The Brumpost HQ something that looked quite attractive when first unboxed.
Taking apart the paper covers was the device well wrapped up in a plastic bag while other parts of it were well tucked away under the casing.

Among those parts were the charger, a USB Type-C cable as well as an earphone. They also included a transparent silicon casing because this plastic back device attracts dusts and fingerprints. Also the casing is very flexible and you might never need to really buy a fancy casing to your device.

A powerful 4000 mAh battery as well as sensors such as Gyroscope are parts of what makes this device quite exciting. Not minding the fact that it’s a quite budget friendly device, it contains most features you’d expect from a mid ranger to a premium flagship.

With its 4GB of RAM as well as 128GB of storage, this is definitely an upgrade from the previous Huawei Y9 2019 earlier released placing the phone among the lines of Redmi Note 7 Pro 

Hardware and Design

I must confess, looking at the Huawei Y9 Prime is eye catching and that’s because of how the design was planned out. Although it looks great, it still doesn’t entirely feel very great especially when you move closer or handling the device. It feels cheap. 

Maybe because of the fact that it’s made with plastic case cover around its back but the reflective coating it has makes the eye catchy effect real. There are two main colors of the phone namely: Emerald Green and Sapphire Blue. Just like modern Huawei smartphones, when light turns at the back of the device, it glitters showing various effects. 

One obvious addon to this is device from the older Y9 2019 is the removal of the notch as well as hole punch but the introduction of a pop-up camera. Even though it looks as though it was a job done hurriedly, it still doesn’t feel all that horrible when handled. 

Generally, the device’s thickness is about 8.8mm while weighing around 196.8 Grams. Placing it right beside the Redmi Note 7 Pro which is août 186 Grams to compare the weight, the Huawei Y9 Prime is slightly lighter. There is even another Realme X which is about 191 grams. 

Even though the plastic back is still cool, without its silicon casing, when held, the curved back makes it easy to have a good grip meaning its big screen won’t be a problem even if your hands aren’t the biggest but remember the back still needs to be cased because it simply attracts fingerprints so deal with it. 

At 6.59 inch display, the usage of IPS LCD panel is quite common in budget smartphones like this. The same was noticed in Honor 8x or even the upgraded Honor 9x. The device has a Full GD+ display with an spect ratio of 19.5:9. It also feature Corning Gorilla glass protection that makes the screen quite resistant to scratches. 

The display is really great. And the eye care is another addition to the device which makes it fantastic. So you wouldn’t have to strain your eyes whenever you starring at direct lighting because you can tune down the blue color to a brownish color with the Eyecare mode. I literally turned this feature on all the time while reviewing the device. 

Also as far as the design is concerned, mid rangers aren’t ditching the 3.5mm headphone jack port just yet even if majority of premium flagship smartphones have done so as we’ve seen in the likes of Samsung Galaxy Note 10. Also the fact that the headphone jack is at the bottom of the device makes sense meaning you can tuck in the device right in your back pocket and connect your charging cable to a powerbank and listen to music at the same time.

Back in the days when smartphones had to receive different hardware from different holes planted in different positions making the device horrible especially while trying to charge and connect headphone jack.

Also the speaker sounds really clear and great. Don’t think it’s firing from one direction, it’s actually loud enough to fill in a room when increased to the maximum. Also you can hear the details of the music you’re playing especially if the song is of high quality audio output.

I also like the fact that the device doesn’t really have a big chin or jaw or whatever its called…the lower bezel of the display screen. Unlike the narrower chin on the Honor 9x, the one on the Huawei Y9 Prime is still visible. And thank goodness, Huawei didn’t place its branding on the chin of thr device. It would’ve been horrible. Or maybe it’s just a personal preference, I don’t like over branding of products.

The fingerprint scanner is very fine and of course resides in the right position where it should be. Maybe when Huawei Y9 2020 is released, we might see some drastic changes again on the device but for now, all seems well and good for the mid ranger.

Performance and Battery life

No lies even if this device suffer in other aspect such as its plastic back cover or you hate the sliding pop out camera, you’ll definitely love the fact that this smartphone gives you a lot of juice to burn through the day.
I might call Huawei dubious for over flooding the Mobile market with so much smartphones every year but I won’t dare call them that for the battery performance of this smartphone.

The battery lasts long and it’s hard to conquer it no matter how much a gamer you might be. The smartphone also performs smooth. Thanks to its 4GB RAM which is made to power up its HiSilicon Kirin 710 chip.

Although this is a bit of a disappointment considering the fact that the previous Huawei Y9 2019 uses the same SoC, we’d expect Huawei to have gone farther beyond that. Like the Honor 9x for example which uses the upgraded Kirin 810 or the Honor View 20 with its Kirin 980 SoC. Of course the latter mentioned smartphones are quite more expensive but Huawei could at least improve on the device.

Since there isn’t a pro version of the Huawei Y9 Prime, somehow, you’re stuck with the 4GB RAM version. 3hioe the device is expandable with a microSD card, this is a big advantage if you feel the 128GB of storage still isn’t enough for you to operate.

One other thing I find amusing about the smartphone is the fluidity of its user interface, the EMUI 9.0. Its very great and smooth. Swapping application and coming back is very fluid. One thing I noticed is that Android would quickly kill some applications for the others while they’re minimized. That could be annoying especially when you’re trying to use two major applications together at a time.

Creating content and swapping the text pad application for the Chrome browser usually have to end up with me restarting the Chrome application sometimes while the Text application works. I guess it’s because the simple text application demands just little to no memory at all.

But still, the Turbo mode enhances game performances because it kind of allocate more memory to the game so it can process faster. So big graphic games like PUBG would work very great. Also the device is fast in response. For example, the face unlock doesn’t take too long while I’ll always favor the fingerprint sensor over the face recognition, sometimes you just want to put in your face instead of your finger.

All in all, speed isn’t a problem with the Huawei Y9 Prime and there isn’t any real glitch as far as the software is concerned. Multi-tasking is very fluid and switching between multiple applications isn’t a problem by any means. That makes the device really useful.

The camera

The Huawei Y9 Prime comes with a triple camera setup sat the back with the primary lens being just 16MP camera that has a f/1.8 aperture and a 8MP ultrawide lens and then a smaller 2MP depth sensor lens. Coming to the front of the device, it maintains the same 16MP camera as its selfie camera which is hidden away inside the pop-up module at the top edge of the device. 

How the whole “Pop-up” works is that each time you launch the camera application, the selfie module slides out from with the top edge of the device revealing the camera. One thing is that the module is made to retract itself in the case of accidental dropping of the device. Huawei has also stress-tested the pop-up mechanism and claims that it can withstand a pressure of 15Kg.

While the Huawei Y9 Prime might seems to be a mid-ranger amidst others, its far behind its counterpart from the Honor brand, the Honor 9x with whom it shared quite a lot of resemblance with in their previous generations (the Huawei Y9 2019 and Honor 8x). Because now, the Honor 9x features a much more better camera setup which makes the Huawei Y9 Primes ‘s camera quote disappointing especially when I tried to use the front facing camera. 

Taking pictures in the dark produces quite horrible quality photographs. Because of the smaller sensors on this device, you might need to stay in a really great lighting setup before you can capture really good pictures.
Also, the front facing camera would add some excessive tuning to pictures making your skin tone unnecessarily smooth even when the beauty mode is turned off.

Video recording from this device isn’t grade A at least. And if you plan to use this device for mobile filmmaking, you’d better get some pairs of extra lenses to mount on the top of the main camera. There is of course no OIS and no 4k recording. But at least we’re left with a great 1080P@30FPS which isn’t bad for common video footage.

Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 specs

Should you buy?

The Huawei Y9 Prime isn’t for everyone for sure especially if you really want something quote affordable but can still work in the premium arena. While the likes of Honor 9X or the Honor View 20 might seem quite great option, other mid rangers includes the Redmi K20 which isn’t bad at all. But of course these devices cost much more than the Huawei Y9 Prime. It is much more tuned down to the arena of the other Huawei Y series like the Y6, Y7 and so forth. So it’s probablement of escaping that isn’t so sure but we hope that happens next time the device is updated to another version probably next year.

If you just want a smartphone that just works but you wouldn’t mind to ditch some high quality aesthetics such as look and feel or camera performances, then the Huawei Y9 Prime might be a good guy for you. As said earlier, this device isn’t for everyone and so it depends on what your expectations are, that would determine if you should get one yourself or not.

Verdict

The Huawei Y9 Prime isn’t the best smartphone and it isn’t the worst as well. But because of the range where it sits, it occupies that very well. Because of its reliability and speed, it is a device you should consider investing in because of how much juice it can offer.

You might je disappointed sometimes with the inconsistency of the camera basically due to your environment and lighting, this inconsistency would in fà t be more visible if you’re taking some amateur photographs which might look quite unattractive or great sometimes.

But the fact that this device offers you that battery reliability makes it a really great thing. You can be rest assured that it just won’t turn off any how. Of course that doesn’t make it the strongest Huawei smartphone. Nearly all Huawei smartphones has that big battery capacity these days but at least that would give you some security about how far you can go with the battery.
Also in terms of performances, the device doesn’t lag in any way. The 128GB storage would be great deal for the price while you can still expand this with a microSD.