Huawei did a media launch for its latest device in the Y Series, the Huawei Y9 2019 on the 18th of October.
At the launch, Huawei Head of Eastern Africa Mobile Steven Li during said the company believes that the Huawei Y9 2019 will be a favourite, mainly amongst Kenyan youth due to its favourable price and superior features. We already highlighted the specs which you can read about here.
I got a chance to interact with the device for just about two weeks and there are definitely a few things I loved about it.
The Huawei Y9 2019 features a 6.5-inch FullView Display with 3D curved design and 2340 × 1080 pixels resolution. The display has an aspect ratio of 19:5:9 with 91 per cent screen-to-body ratio. This display size is probably one of the things I loved about the device. If you’re looking to get a new big-screened phone then Huawei Y9 (2019) should maybe be in among your top list. It’s a fantastic display to watch movies and even play your favourite games.
I also need to mention that Huawei has also included the ‘Smart resolution’ setting on the Huawei Y9 (2019) that lets the phone decide the best resolution for you. It also changes it over time which helps to consider the battery. You know how leaving your phone at the highest resolutions really drains your battery, well the smart resolution setting fixes this and also helps you the hustle of manually setting your resolution all the time.
At the top of the display we have the notch which, well, I know so many of you will not like. The good thing is that the Huawei Y9 2019 has an option of disabling it so you don’t have to worry about that. It also here that you have the dual selfie camera for taking all your favourite selfies.
There is nothing much below the display apart from the navigation keys. I loved the fact that the device gave me an option of rearranging them to my preference or even hide them.
At the back, you have the dual rear cameras (13-megapixels and 2-megapixels) with LED flash located at the top left and the fingerprint scanner.
The volume and power buttons are all located on the right side while the opposite side houses separate slots for the two SIM cards and microSD card.
At the bottom, you have the microphone and the standard microUSB port. The headphone jack is located here.
The cameras on the Huawei Y9 2019 are AI so be sure to capture some really great shots when you enable the AI feature. When AI is enabled, all you will need to do is point on an object and the camera will be able to detect what the subject is and optimize the settings for you. According to Huawei, the Y9 2019 integrates AI machine learning algorithm which really improves with use and creates different category labels including Portrait, Blue Sky, Snow, Ancient Building, Fireworks, Greenery, Cat, Dog, Text, Food, and Car.
I managed to capture a few shots with the AI feature enabled and disabled which you can check below. I feel like the AI added so much colour to the photos though and I ended up with photos which didn’t actually look ‘real’. All the other details are however captured perfectly.
More photos are available on our Instagram page.
Selfie sample shots
Huawei Y9 2019 is powered by an octa-core Kirin 710 processor with ARM Mali-G51 MP4 GPU. It comes in two variants – 4GB RAM with 64GB storage and 6GB RAM with 128GB internal storage. We had the 4GB RAM64GB ROM variant. Both the variants are expandable up to 400GB with microSD. The phone runs on Android 8.1 (Oreo) with EMUI 8.2 and is backed up by a 4,000mAh battery which should keep you going for more than even a day.
I actually loved the battery. The phone is just not about the cameras, the battery does an incredible job.
The fingerprint scanner is also very fast to set up and is also really fast. You can use it to unlock the device, answer calls, and a lot of other things. You also have the Face unlock as a biometric option which just as the fingerprint is also very easy to set up and works really well in good lighting conditions.
I also need to mention that when you purchase the device, it comes in a standard white box Huawei usually ships its phones in, don’t expect anything new. Some key information about the phone including the device name, the colour, model number are printed on the box.
Inside the box, you have a standard and big 5 volt and 2-ampere charger. Huawei usually ships this with most of its midrange smartphones.
Just like any other smartphone, the packaging includes a USB Cable, a set of earphones, a SIM ejector pin, and some documentation. Huawei also included a rubber transparent case inside the box.
The phone is available in two colours; Midnight Black, Sapphire Blue. Huawei is selling it at Ksh 24,990 and you can grab one from Jumia or Huawei retail shops across the country from the 27th of October.
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