Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 Long Term Review: Affordable Pop-Up Eye Candy

There are lots of mid-range phones in Nepal as of now, there are lots of options to choose from. Brands like Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Samsung, and others have recently launched good smartphones in the 20-30k price bracket. And, despite the recent setback, Huawei has also launched its new smartphone in this price range: Huawei Y9 Prime 2019.

Y9 Prime 2019 is an upgrade to the Huawei Y9 2019. It has a new notch-less display, triple rear cameras, and a pop-up selfie camera. Plus, it’s the only phone in Nepal with a pop-up camera under 30 thousand rupees.

Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 Review

Pop-Up Camera

The pop-up camera located on the top-left takes about 1 second to pop-up. It’s a decent speed for the price. You can feel the click when it pops up but there are no fancy animations of any sort. It houses a 16MP camera. And, as usual, the photos are slightly saturated than normal. The level of detail on the selfies is decent, exposure is good under good lighting conditions; the selfies are decent on overall.

The face is exposed well when the background is bright, but sometimes the background is well exposed whereas the face is underexposed.

Selfies are nice indoors as well. Not the best detail level but the color and exposure is decent.

Talking about the portrait mode, the edge detection is average. In the sample below, you can see that it has blurred out some part of the shirt as well. However, the blur looks fine.

In outdoors, the background might seem washed out in portrait mode otherwise it’s fine. The edge detection is good and the blur amount is fine as well but the bright background has been blown out.

Rear Camera

Main Sensor

Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 rocks a triple camera setup: 16MP primary sensor, 8MP ultrawide sensor, and a 2MP depth sensor.

Photos turn out nice during daylight condition. I was not using the AI, therefore the colors did not feel much saturated, the detail level is average and the dynamic range is good.

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In the Sample “Sample 1 Rear”, you can see that the bright part seems a bit overexposed but its fine on overall. Then in the sample “Sample 2 Rear”, the exposure is balanced even under bright sunlight and its a nice image on overall.

Ultra Wide Angle Sensor

The ultra-wide-angle sensor of the Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 works quite well. There is no visible color difference between the main sensor and the wide-angle sensor. Obviously, we lose out on details with the wide-angle camera but it’s good. Especially the color, it’s not over the top neither flat.

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Night Mode

Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 comes with dedicated night mode as well. And, I have to say, it does help to take improved night photos. The long exposure helps to capture more details, reduces noise and on overall takes better night pictures.

Camera Samples

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Videos

Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 supports video capture up to 1080p 60fps. The video quality is fine, it’s sharp but there is no stabilization. You can capture videos with the wide-angle sensor as well and it quite good. It’s not as sharp as the main sensor but it captures more stabilized videos.

Build & Design

Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 is a design-centric phone and to be fair it looks quite good. The notchless design is likely to attract more consumers and it’s made for people who do not like the notch.

Since it uses the pop-up camera, the phone looks symmetric and it also retains the headphone jack. The fingerprint sensor is located on the rear which has a dual texture design and I quite like it. There are 3 color options for this phone: Black, Sapphire Blue, and Emerald Green.

The back is curved along the edges onto the frame which feels pretty premium. The frame houses power button and volume rocker on the right. There’s a pop-up camera on the top along with the hybrid sim slot which can house two sim or a sim and an sd card at the same time.

On the front, there’s a 6.59 inches display with minimum bezels. the bottom chin is slightly large but the Y9 Prime 2019 boasts an impressive 91% screen to body ratio. The phone is large in size, one-handed use is not great but the overall feel is great. Also, it has a premium look, it’s not slippery and feels robust at the same time.

Display

Y9 Prime 2019 houses a big 6.59 inches LTPS IPS LCD display with a screen resolution of 1080×2340. As expected from Huawei, the colors on the Y9 prime 2019 is vivid and poppy. Brightness is decent as well, I did not have problems using it outdoors.

The multimedia viewing experience on the Y9 Prime 2019 is great because of the notchless display and minimal bezels. Watching YouTube videos and playing games is a joy on the Y9 Prime 2019.

The viewing angle is good, the color is nice even though it’s not an AMOLED display. However, the contrast ratio could have been better.

Performance

Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 uses Kirin 710 chipset along with 4GB RAM and 128GB internal storage. The Y9 2019 also uses the same chipset, but the performance of the Y9 Prime 2019 is better than the Y9 2019.

App opening, App switch, UI navigation, and everything else is smooth. Games run good as well. I played PUBG and Asphalt 9, both of the games ran decent. Y9 2019 did not have the greatest of gaming performance with the same chipset, but Y9 Prime 2019 does better.

Speaker

Talking about the audio output, the single firing speaker is located on the bottom. The output quality is pretty good but I would have liked it even more if the volume was louder.

Battery

Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 is great phone for media consumption because of its notchless design and minimal bezels but what helps more is its massive battery. The 4000 mAh battery on the Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 gives more than a day of battery life on average usage. You could even use this for full 2 days if you use it carefully.

Talking about the charging, it only has a 10W charger and takes almost 2 hours to reach from 0 to 100.

Biometrics

In terms of security, it has a fingerprint sensor on the rear which is fast and consistent. But, it does not have a face unlock feature.

Software

Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 comes with EMUI 9 on top of Android 9 Pie. EMUI is quite straightforward and it has much improved. Also, it is one of the most efficient android OS.

You get standard iPhone like home screen but it does have the option for app-drawer. There’s gesture-based navigation as well if you’d like to use but I prefer the traditional one.

Usual Huawei apps and some third-party apps like Agoda, Netflix, HiCare and Camera 360 are pre-installed but you can uninstall it if you like to.

Huawei also includes its own version of Google’s digital wellbeing: Digital balance. It helps you monitor your phone usage, manage screen time and set a screen time limit for particular apps as well.

Conclusion

So, the Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 is a good phone on overall. It has a premium build, good display, modest performance, and good battery life. The triple camera setup works well as well but the front camera could have been better for the price.

Well, if you want a big phone for multimedia consumption that has an almost 100% screen to body ratio then definitely consider the Huawei Y9 Prime 2019. Plus, it looks stylish and has good performance along with good battery life. Also, it’s the only phone with a pop-up camera at this price tag.