The Huawei Y9s is a mid-range smartphone with a large, notch-less display, triple rear cameras, motorized pop-up selfie camera, Kirin 710F chipset, and 4,000mAh battery.
I used it for more than a month and tested its performance, camera quality, battery life, and more. Here are my experiences with the device and full review!
Huawei Y9s Breathing Crystal
The Huawei Y9s smartphone follows the same design language and color scheme as the Huawei P30 Pro especially the Breathing Crystal color variant. This makes it look premium and trendy.
Its power button and volume buttons are on the right side with a fingerprint scanner embedded on the power button. The 3.5mm audio jack, USB Type-C port, and speaker grille are at the bottom while the card tray is accessible on the top.
This is a pretty large smartphone since it has a big display surrounded by average-sized bezels. One-hand usage can be difficult but not totally uncomfortable.
Huawei Y9s display
The Huawei Y9s has a 6.59-inch FHD+ FullView LTPS display with a screen resolution of 1080 x 2340 pixels. It looks sharp, has decent brightness, and supports up to 10 touch inputs.
I’ve used the device for watching three episodes of the sci-fi Netflix series Lost In Space season 2 while we were traveling for a weekend. I preferred it over other smartphones I’m currently reviewing since its screen is big and doesn’t have a punch-hole nor a notch.
This is because the phone’s selfie camera is hidden using a motorized pop-up mechanism. It automatically pops-up when the front camera is enabled and retracts when closed. An automatic drop detection feature is also present to protect it from accidents.
The Huawei Y9s uses EMUI 9.1 software.
The Huawei Y9s uses a Kirin 710F chipset coupled with 6GB RAM. This combination provides the device with a good performance for gaming, multi-tasking, and simple everyday smartphone tasks.
Opening apps is quick enough, scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed doesn’t produce stutters, and it can handle popular games in medium to high graphics settings. There are still a few hiccups when the device is pushed to its limits though.
In my Huawei Y9s gaming tests, the device scored a perfect framerate of 60FPS while running Mobile Legends: Bang Bang. It also achieved good framerates on Call of Duty Mobile (59FPS) and Rules of Survival (55FPS). Here’s the full Huawei Y9s Gaming Review.
Gaming test results of Mobile Legends on the Huawei Y9s.
Meanwhile, it scored 181,174 points on Antutu Benchmark, 865 points on 3DMark Slingshot Extreme, and computed 1 million digits of Pi in 3.77 seconds using RealPi Benchmark.
I admit that I have my doubts with the Kirin 710F chipset since it’s the same chip that powered the Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 that was released last year. However, pairing it with an ample amount of RAM results in improved performance.
For photography, the Huawei Y9s is equipped with triple rear cameras and a single 16MP motorized pop-up selfie camera. The triple rear cameras include a 48MP main camera, 8MP ultra-wide camera, and 2MP depth sensor.
The main camera uses pixel binning technology and sets the image resolution to 12MP by default. It combines 4 pixels into 1 to improve image quality.
Here’s how the pictures look like:
Huawei Y9s sample picture (auto mode).
Huawei Y9s sample picture (food, close-up, auto mode).
Huawei Y9s sample picture (cacti, close-up, auto mode).
Huawei Y9s sample picture (food, top view, auto mode).
Huawei Y9s sample picture (auto mode).
Huawei Y9s sample picture (ultra-wide mode).
The Huawei Y9s takes bright and sharp pictures with natural colors. It can use a slight increase in saturation and a substantial increase in dynamic range though. This can brighten up the images especially in the shadows and make the colors more vivid. Still, these are definitely better than the pictures produced by its predecessor, the Y9 Prime 2019.
Its ultra-wide camera does the job of capturing a larger portion of the scene but there’s a marked drop in image quality. There are less detail and more grains or artifacts.
Low light shots and dedicated Night mode shots do make up for it. Photos look sharper, colors are more striking and the dynamic range is automatically improved. It takes a few seconds to take a Night mode picture though.
Huawei Y9s sample picture (night mode OFF).
Huawei Y9s sample picture (night mode ON).
Huawei Y9s sample picture (night mode ON).
For selfies, the motorized pop-up camera of the Huawei Y9s has slight improvements over its predecessor, the Huawei Y9 Prime 2019. The selfies look sharper and the color saturation has been improved.
However, bright backgrounds and even the light shining on your face easily blow out the image. It’s a tell-tale sign of a narrow dynamic range. It can still take decent selfies but it takes some effort to find good lighting.
Here’s a sample selfie:
Huawei Y9s sample selfie.
The Huawei Y9s is a dual-SIM smartphone with 4G connectivity. I’ve used it with a Sun Cellular SIM card which uses the Smart 4G LTE network and it provides a fast and stable mobile data connection. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth functions also work without any problem.
It supports USB OTG via a USB Type-C port and has a 3.5mm audio jack for audio output. The audio quality of the free earphones included in the box is decent but the wires are a bit flimsy.
Meanwhile, the phone’s loudspeaker has just an average loudness although it lacks bass. Thankfully, voice calls through the earpiece sound okay.
Unboxing the Huawei Y9s…
The Huawei Y9s comes with 128GB of internal storage. Around 118GB of that is free for the user’s files, photos, videos, and apps. It can also be expanded with more storage using a microSD card.
For security, the device has a fingerprint scanner embedded in its power button which is located on the right side. It unlocks the phone swiftly and the location is perfect for ergonomics.
However, there’s no built-in Face Recognition feature on the device. Other smartphones usually have this feature but Huawei might have opted to disable it to protect the pop-up mechanism of the selfie camera.
Huawei Y9s battery life test.
A 4,000mAh battery powers the Huawei Y9s. Just like other Huawei smartphones, it has a long battery life and can last almost two days in a single charge.
It achieved a PCMark Battery Life 2.0 test score of 14 hours and 8 minutes. This is one of the highest scores I’ve measured in the smartphones that I have reviewed!
Meanwhile, re-charging the device from 0% to 100% battery capacity takes 2 hours and 5 minutes using the original charger and USB Type-C cable.
The Huawei Y9s and its box.
The best features of the Huawei Y9s are its large FullView display, trendy design, and long battery life. It’s average in terms of camera quality (both front and rear cameras) and gaming performance.
Perhaps the only real issue with the device is the durability of the motorized pop-up selfie camera. Huawei ensures that the contraption can work flawlessly for a long time but mechanical parts are still subject to natural wear and tear.
Finally, I recommend the Huawei Y9s for consumers who prefer a good-looking smartphone with a large display and long battery life.
