It’s been quite a while since I’ve held a phone in my hand that isn’t a Samsung or an iPhone; this is mainly because there has not been any other brand of phone that has appealed to me as much as these brands have over the years. Will Honor be that brand that wins me over?

Whether it was just chance or our anonymous technological lords that read all my cookie data, literally one day after seeing a TikTok video on the Honor X9b, I had one on my desk in the exact same colour as in the post. It’s an electrifying bright orange that I absolutely love.

Honestly, I wish more companies would amp up the excitement and release their phones in something other than a shade of white or grey. Anyway, back to the meat, no one will read this and then head off to buy a phone just because I said it looked cool with an orange, leather-like back cover.

While the Honor X9b is not one of Honor’s flagship devices, it doesn’t mean you should immediately scratch it from your list. Even though it has its flaws, it still manages to do most things you’d want your phone to do and do them well.

Right off the bat, you’ll recognise the curved edge display that was quite popular when the Samsung S7 Edge was around. Honor hasn’t really done anything extraordinary with it, like the Edge display when Samsung had it, but the curve does make the screen feel bigger and purer when you don’t have those dreaded bezels on all sides. It makes the 6.78-inch display feel a whole lot bigger than it really is.

The display is nice and bright, but the darker areas lack depth, meaning the colours don’t pop as much as one would like, even though it is AMOLED. It can also push out 120Hz, which is always a pleasure to use on a mobile device. The screen transitions and swipes feel buttery smooth, and there’s no pixelation when quickly scrolling through your WhatsApp messages trying to find that password you sent to yourself three years ago. A 19.9:9 aspect ratio and 1200 x 2652 pixel resolution might look a little strange on paper, but this takes into account the edge display. In reality, the display is closer to a 19:9 aspect ratio and FHD+ resolution. Sticking to standard aspect ratios is what you want to look out for, as it’s never fun using apps that have been slightly trimmed on the edges as they don’t fully fit the display. *Cough* Flip 4, I’m talking about you *cough, cough*.

The Honor X9b boasts a triple-rear camera with a 108MP primary sensor, a 5MP sensor with an ultra-wide camera and a 2MP sensor with a macro lens. While the phone takes some pretty pictures in good lighting, the pictures can get soft and muddy as soon as you enter a slightly dim room. Sure, night mode does help, but I don’t want to have to use night mode at three in the afternoon because the sun is hiding behind a cloud. It also feels like the software processing the image is trying to smooth everything over, even with all the AI features disabled. It can help for a good selfie, but it does give the image a filtered and softer look.

Low light camera issues aside, there are a few other features on the Honor X9b that are more impressive.

One of them is durability. The Honor X9b comes with Honor Ultra-Bounce Anti-Drop Display 360° Anti-Drop Protection, which is a mouthful and certainly sounds like a lot of protection. According to the lab results, this new system will protect the phone from drops as high as 1.5m, so, I tried a 1.5m drop onto a carpeted floor, and it went swimmingly. I can also confirm that the phone did ultra bounce all over the place, but I think that was more due to the carpet than Honor’s new too-long-to-pronounce protection. The phone is IP53 dust and water rated, and can survive being submerged in water for up to 15 seconds. While I wasn’t brave enough to thoroughly test the phone’s durability, Honour ran a marketing campaign where 80 paintballers shot over 2,500 paintballs at the Honor X9b. The phone was also used to split wooden boards in half, and it looks to have survived both of these escapades without a scratch. I will add that the phone does feel hardy in my hand, but even after all those paintballs, Honor still recommends you try not to drop your phone in the fine print.

The next thing Honor tries to sell you on is the Honor X9b’s performance, and since we’re all gamers here, of course, we had to test this one out. Happily, the Honor X9b plays games quite well. The 120Hz screen feels smooth and responsive while gaming and I played some PUBG Mobile and Pokémon Unite to see what this phone can do. PUBG Mobile had the graphics settings set to “Ultra HDR” and the framerate set to “Ultra”, and I didn’t notice a dip in framerate once during my game time. Pokémon Unite was also set to maximum, with the graphics on “Highest” and the framerate on “High”. Besides Vodacom letting me down during one of my games, I also didn’t pick up any stuttering here. Add to that, I took home the chicken dinner in every match I played on PUBG Mobile so I’d say the Honor X9b performs quite well while playing games. I swear it’s not the bot-filled servers like I know you haters out there are thinking.

It is worth noting, though, that the device has the Snapdragon 6 CPU inside, which is two generations old, and when we ran a 3D Mark Sling Shot test, the device was comparable to an iPhone 12 Max, scoring 5,542, about half the score of Samsungs Galaxy S23.

The last of the major highlights of the Honor X9b is its massive 5,800 mAh battery, and this, my friends, is where the Honor X9b really shines. They brag about three-day battery life in their advertising, and while we all know that’s usually a bunch of hogwash, the Honor X9b almost gets there. I comfortably got through two days of usage on the phone. Taking a few photos, shooting a bit of video, an hour or three of doom scrolling, and even a game or two didn’t bother the battery at all. It was always nice to have the phone ready with enough juice in the tank, even when Loadshedding decided to take 46 hours longer than it should have.

Other things that made the Honor X9b a good daily driver, aside from the superior battery life, were how the phone just worked during daily use. The face recognition was flawless, even in the middle of the night and can also detect your face with a mask on. The Honor X9b also has dual swipe-down functions, with notifications on the left and settings on the right. The phone’s built-in eye comfort feature works really well, especially at night when blue light messes with your brainwaves. I know many other phones include these features, too, but on the Honor X9b, these features flowed with the phone’s usage rather than feeling like extras that were added later. Overall, it was a very comfortable and easy phone to use.

While the Honor X9b might not be as exciting as its orange vegan-leather back cover leads you to believe, it is still a good phone. Not a great phone, but a good phone.