I’ve been using the Huawei Y9 Prime for one month. I tested its camera quality, multimedia experience, performance, connectivity, ergonomics, and battery life.
It’s one of the most affordable smartphones to have a motorized pop-up camera but the quality of selfies are inconsistent. Here’s my full review of the device.
The Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 with its pop-up camera.
The motorized pop-up camera results in a notch-less Full-View display and just looks cool when used in front of your friends.
At the back of the phone is another distinctive feature – a two-toned design. However, it’s not very noticeable and simply appears as a divider especially in the black color.
The phone is big but its edges are slightly curved making it easier to hold. The power and volume buttons are on its right side; the pop-up camera module and SIM card tray can be seen on the top; while a 3.5mm audio jack, USB Type-C port and loudspeaker are at the bottom.
Related: Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 Unboxing!
FullView Display
The 6.59-inch display of the Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 is perfect for watching videos and playing games. It’s more immersive because there’s no distraction unlike other phones with a notch or cutout for the selfie camera.
The screen itself looks sharp with a Full HD resolution and colors appear natural. It can use a little additional brightness when used outdoors though.
Moreover, audio can be an issue if you rely on the phone’s loudspeaker. My advice is to use earphones whenever you can. Even the bundled free earphones in the package improve the audio experience a lot.
The triple rear cameras of the Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 can capture good-looking pictures. Here are a few samples:
Sample picture of a flower.
Sample picture of buildings.
Ultra-wide sample picture.Most of the time, the phone uses its 16 Megapixel main lens while the 8 Megapixel ultra-wide camera can be used by tapping a button. However, the resulting pictures have a lower quality compared to the main camera.
Night Mode is where the phone’s rear cameras truly shine. Here’s a sample picture without using night mode and here’s one with night mode turned on. It’s impressive!
Night Mode disabled.
Sample Night Mode picture.
Another Night Mode sample picture.
The motorized pop-up selfie camera of the Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 can produce decent-looking selfies when there’s good lighting. Low light selfies will turn out grainy unless the screen flash feature is used.
On the other hand, taking selfies when there’s too much light will result in over-exposure. It shouldn’t be too bright nor too dark.
Sample selfie.
Sample low light selfie with screen flash.
There are concerns with the durability of this pop-up camera. Thankfully, Huawei has placed precautions including automatically retracting the camera when the phone detects that it’s falling.
Graphics settings while playing Mobile Legends on the Huawei Y9 Prime 2019.
The Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 runs on a Kirin 710F chipset with 4GB of RAM, Android 9 Pie operating system and EMUI 9 software out of the box.
The general user experience is smooth even if several apps are launched one after the other. There are occasional stutters when switching from a game to Facebook and back but nothing out of the ordinary among mid-range smartphones.
Speaking of games, I’ve already published my gaming review here. It can run Mobile Legends at 60 fps, NBA 2K19 at 29 fps and Rules of Survival at 49 fps as measured by GameBench Pro. I highly recommend it for playing Mobile Legends and Rules of Survival with the graphics set to High, not Ultra.
Rear cameras and SIM card tray.
The device supports 4G LTE connectivity and the speeds are good. Its second SIM slot doubles as a microSD card slot but with its 128GB internal storage, I doubt it will be much of an issue.
However, it only has a fingerprint sensor for biometric unlocking. Huawei disabled face unlock using the front camera probably as another precaution for the durability of the pop-up mechanism.
Battery Life Test
A 4,000 mAh battery powers the Huawei Y9 Prime 2019. Just like other Huawei smartphones, it has pretty long battery life. It can easily last more than a day on casual usage.
It scored 12 hours and 7 minutes on the PC Mark battery life test. That’s above the Samsung Galaxy A30’s 11 hours and 16 minutes and OPPO F11 Pro’s 10 hours and 37 minutes.
However, it only comes with a 10W charger and takes around 2 hours and 16 minutes to reach full charge.
For an official price of ₱12,990, the Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 is a good choice for a smartphone. It has a big uncluttered display, good cameras at the back, a cool pop-up camera on the front, decent performance in games, and a long-lasting battery.
Other smartphones in this price range are the Realme 3 Pro, OPPO F11, Samsung Galaxy A30, Cherry Mobile Flare S8 Plus, and Vivo Y95. Among these, only the Flare S8 Plus has a pop-up camera but it has a slightly smaller display and battery.
