After an absence of nearly three years, smartphone brand Honor is back with a bang with the Honor 90, an upper-mid-range model that retails at INR 37,999 onwards for the 8 GB/256 GB model but is available with some deep discounts in the ongoing festive sales. This segment is highly competitive, so has Honor done enough to claw back lost ground?
Boasting of a sleek 7.8 mm profile, the Honor 90 is a striking piece of kit in the matte-finish Emerald Green variant that I had in for review (there’s a silver and black variant as well). The curved rear panel and excellent weight distribution (183 g) give the device an excellent in-hand feel, even if I wasn’t the biggest fan of the attention-grabbing chrome accent rings around the camera modules.
Yet it’s around the front that the magic lies, in what is arguably the best display in this segment. The 2,664x1,200-pixel resolution, 120 Hz capable, 6.7-inch quad-curved display certainly looks rather premium. It boasts of class-leading 1,600 nits of peak brightness and an industry-first support for ‘3,840Hz PWM dimming’, the latter allowing for flicker-free viewing at low-brightness levels and reduced eye fatigue. In use, the screen is bright and vibrant, and if the feature can help with my late-night doom scrolling, I’m not complaining.
On cameras, the Honor 90 has a 200 MP Samsung HP3 primary sensor, with a 12 MP ultrawide/macro, a 2 MP depth sensor and a 50 MP selfie shooter. The phone lacks optical image stabilisation, so while it does well to capture detailed photos and accurate colors in good light, videos and low-light images are slightly inconsistent.
Under the hood is the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 Accelerated Edition chipset, which along with 8 or 12 GB of memory and up to 512 GB of storage offers an efficient, everyday performance package which can run games like Battlegrounds Mobile at high frame rates (you’d want to consider the OnePlus 11R purely on performance).
Android 13-based MagicOS 7.1 runs smoothly on the device, but Honor needs some catching up on its update policy if it is to compete with the big boys – two major OS updates and three years of security patches isn’t going to cut it. Battery life is a reasonable and it supports 66 W charging (30 W charger included), and big props to Honor for packing in a 5,000 mAh battery in a device this slim. If eye-catching looks and display are big for you, the Honor 90 is worth a closer look.
Rating: 7/10
Price: INR 37,999 onwards
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