Ready for the Honor X9d 5G review? Before we dive in, just so you know, this phone comes in three versions: 256GB with 8GB RAM, 256GB with 12GB RAM (the one I’m holding right now), and the top-tier 512GB with 12GB RAM. Now, let’s get into the nitty-gritty and see what’s a hit and what’s a miss.
Design & Build Quality
Honestly, cramming a massive 8300mAh battery into a phone that is only 7.8mm thick and weighs 193 grams is kind of crazy. I feel like only Honor could pull this off. The phone doesn’t feel heavy or bulky at all, and it feels amazing in the hand. The body is completely plastic, and that goes for both the frame and the back panel.
On the bottom, you’ll find the SIM tray, a microphone, the Type-C port, and the main speaker. The right side has the power and volume buttons, which are easy to reach, so I had no issues there. The top features another microphone and the secondary speaker output, while the left side is completely bare.
The camera island on the back is this huge circle that totally reminds me of Honor’s own Magic flagship series. At first, I wondered why the island had to be so huge when they only put two ordinary cameras in it, but I got used to it after a while.
You can get the Honor X9d in four colors: Midnight Black, Reddish Brown, Forest Green, and Sunrise Gold. I’ve got the Sunrise Gold one in my hands.
But man, let me tell you about the back panel design because I absolutely fell in love with it! It has this mountain-like texture and pattern going on. It’s not actually raised; it’s just a visual pattern, but it gives off major Japanese anime and samurai game vibes.
Since I always prefer matte, textured backs over glossy glass, I really liked this model. It’s completely matte, meaning it doesn’t pick up fingerprints, smudges, or dirt at all.
One of the biggest selling points of this phone is its durability. Honor claims this is the first phone in the world to get the SGS Triple Resistance certification, meaning it’s an absolute beast against drops, water, and dust.
According to lab tests, if the phone falls from 2.5 meters onto a granite surface, it won’t even flinch. Honor used a new reinforced glass and six layers of shock-absorbing material, making it 112% more durable than the previous generation.
On top of IP66 and IP68 ratings, this phone packs a crazy IP69K certification. This means it doesn’t just survive the rain, it was actually tested in a lab under high water pressure, hot water up to 85 degrees Celsius, and humid, salty environments, and it survived. Sure, those are lab conditions, but it shows just how tough this phone is.
I put it through all kinds of torture myself and banged it against different surfaces, but it didn’t care at all. It’s incredibly rugged. I really can’t find any flaws in its design and build, and it’s easily the most durable phone among its competitors.
Display & Audio
The screen on the Honor X9d is a 6.79-inch AMOLED panel with a 1.5K resolution. It can display 1 billion colors, supports a 120Hz refresh rate, and handles HDR content beautifully. For protection, it’s covered by Gorilla Glass Victus 2.
You don’t have a ton of options in the color settings, just Normal and Vivid modes, but it still serves up incredibly vibrant visuals.
The biggest highlight here is the brightness. It’s completely readable outdoors under direct sunlight, peaking at around 1600 nits, which is straight-up flagship territory.
Another awesome feature for people with sensitive eyes like me is that the display uses an insanely high 3840Hz PWM dimming frequency to control brightness. This means that in low light, screen flickering is virtually nonexistent, so it won’t strain your eyes at all.
The 120Hz refresh rate is adaptive. When you lift your finger off the screen in the UI, it drops to 60Hz. It locks at 60Hz in apps like YouTube, Google Maps, and the camera, and stays at 90Hz in Google Chrome and Honor’s own gallery app. Everywhere else, it runs at the full 120Hz. This adaptability really helps save battery life.
The bezels are super thin, with the screen taking up about 91% of the front panel. The optical fingerprint sensor is under the display, and its speed and accuracy are totally solid.
The only tiny issue I noticed is that if you look at the screen from an extreme side angle, it tints slightly green, but it’s really not a big deal.
Speakers: A Lovely Punch of Bass
This phone has stereo speakers, so the audio comes from both the top and bottom. The clarity is good, the volume gets plenty loud, and best of all, the bass is actually deep and punchy, making it really fun to listen to music.
There is a feature that lets you boost the volume up to 400%, but I highly recommend avoiding it because the audio gets totally distorted. The regular volume is more than enough and can easily compete with rivals.
Performance
Honor uses the Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 chipset for the X9d 5G, and the version I am testing has 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
To test its gaming performance and push it a bit, I fired up Call of Duty. Fortunately, the game runs smoothly at 90FPS.
During my one-hour play session, the performance was completely stable, and I didn’t see any lag. Even though I was playing in gaming mode, the body temperature only maxed out at 41 degrees Celsius, which shows the phone doesn’t get overly hot.
I also installed PUBG, and the settings allowed it to go up to 60FPS. The hardware is stable, but it’s clear that gaming isn’t the main focus of this phone, and it doesn’t offer the absolute best gaming performance for the price.
OS & AI
The Honor X9d runs on Android 15 based on MagicOS 9. It’s a clean, lightweight, and smooth environment that luckily includes handy AI features like object eraser, voice-to-text, text summarization, and image expansion, and they all work pretty well.
The disappointing part, though, is that it only gets 2 generations of Android updates and 3 years of security patches, which falls short compared to its Samsung competitors in this price range.
Battery & Charging
Now we are at the most exciting part of the review! Personally, I am always super picky about battery life because a bad battery ruins the whole experience. The 8300mAh silicon-carbon battery inside the Honor X9d is incredible, and it’s honestly one of the best batteries I have ever tested!
My tests over Wi-Fi yielded amazing results. Playing Call of Duty for an hour only drained 8% of the battery! That means three hours of gaming will take away less than 25%.
Also, an hour of web browsing only used up 6%, and in my next test, watching a Full HD YouTube video for an hour at 50% brightness dropped it by only 4%, which is just insane. The only phone that even came close to this in tests was its predecessor, the X9c, but this phone is a step above when it comes to gaming.
Luckily, you get a 66W brick right in the box, which is excellent for a battery this size. It hits 50% charge in about 32 minutes and gets fully topped up in 75 minutes, which is totally acceptable given the massive capacity.
Another cool feature is that it supports 7.5W wired reverse charging, meaning you can use a cable to charge other phones, basically turning it into a portable power bank.
Camera
To be completely honest, the Honor X9d was not built to be a camera phone, and if taking photos is your top priority, you can find much stronger competitors at this price. But that doesn’t mean the camera is completely useless. Here, we get a 108MP main camera with an f/1.8 aperture, a 5MP ultrawide, and a 16MP selfie camera.
The main camera performs decently during the day. You get average details and sharpness, but the contrast is good, and the dynamic range is decent. In scenes with complex textures, the image can look a bit painterly, and the processing isn’t the cleanest.
The true 108MP high-resolution mode quadruples the file size, but it doesn’t boost details as much as you would expect, so I wasn’t a huge fan.
The ultrawide camera during the day is not impressive at all. Details are lacking, and there is heavy noise across the whole image, in both the shadows and highlights. On the bright side, there isn’t much distortion or warping around the edges, but overall, it’s below average.
The selfie camera during the day is actually awesome. Details, sharpness, contrast, and dynamic range are all great, and the overall look of the image is beautiful. In selfie portraits, the edge detection is clean, giving you high-quality shots.
When shooting at night with the main camera without night mode, the photos have noise, and they lose sharpness if you are far from a light source. Night mode doesn’t work miracles either, and it doesn’t make a massive difference in noise or detail, it just balances out bright light sources like lamps a bit better.
You really shouldn’t count on the ultrawide at night at all. The selfie camera at night, however, shines again, maintaining a good amount of detail and sharpness, and its night mode helps balance the lighting nicely.
For video, the main camera can shoot in 4K and 1080p. During the day, if you keep the phone completely still on a tripod, it captures incredibly high-quality, sharp 4K video with great colors.
But things go downhill the moment you start walking around because the stabilization is just not good, and every single camera shake shows up in the video. It’s the same story at night.
Ultrawide video is pretty bad both day and night, with very low detail. As for the selfie video, it maxes out at 1080p, the stabilization doesn’t work well, and the dynamic range is weak. It takes just a little bit of bright light to blow out the image and turn it completely white, unless you stand perfectly still where the lighting is already balanced.
Should You Buy It?
If I want to wrap it up honestly, I wouldn’t recommend the Honor X9d to two groups of people: first, those who want a phone strictly for hardcore gaming and hours of continuous play at the highest graphics settings, and second, those whose absolute top priority is the camera for professional photography or vlogging.
But if build durability, an amazing screen, high-quality speakers, and most importantly, an absolute beast of a battery are what you care about most, the Honor X9d is a super attractive and gorgeous choice because it excels in all those areas, while still delivering a perfectly fine, average performance in gaming and photography.
I hope this review helps you out. Make sure to drop a comment down below and tell me if you would pick this phone or if you prefer to go with competitors from Xiaomi and Samsung.
