Why is the Honor 9X series so priced so brutally?

On July 23, Honor released the new Honor 9X series, with a starting price of 1,399 yuan. Surprisingly, the Honor 9X series is equipped with Kirin 810. With its excellent performance, the Honor 9X series has strong competitiveness in the 1,500-2,000 yuan segment.

This year's mobile phone market is still full of ups and downs, and the road ahead is unclear. According to CINNO research data, domestic mobile phone shipments in the first half of 2019 were 190 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 6%, and the overall market environment is not prosperous. In the manufacturer rankings, Huawei (including Honor) accounted for 34.3% and ranked first, of which the Honor series contributed 46.2% of the total, and its independent operation was very strong.

However, with the frequent supply cuts caused by the Sino-US trade friction and the weak domestic mobile phone market, Honor must work harder in the face of difficulties both at home and abroad. In the market of 1,000 yuan phones with the fastest volume, can the quality and pricing of the Honor 9X series set a new benchmark and win a beautiful game? Without further ado, let's take a look at the product.

Appearance

The device I got this time is the Honor 9X PRO. From the design point of view, the Honor 9X PRO is bound to catch the attention of many users offline this time. The front of the Honor 9X PRO is a 6.59-inch 1080P screen. Due to the lifting camera design, the front screen ratio is very impressive. For a user with small hands like me, the visual effect in my hand is equivalent to a giant screen...

The Honor 9X series uses side capacitive fingerprint unlocking. The stability of capacitive fingerprint unlocking is naturally better than that of screen fingerprint unlocking. The side position is also a plus in terms of aesthetics. Overall, the unlocking speed is "touch and go", and it is also convenient to use with the power button. However, considering the fast unlocking speed, don't press the power button when you encounter the payment interface.

In terms of the back ID design, the Honor 9X PRO Phantom Purple color is a purple-red gradient, with an "X"-shaped vector texture change in the center, and the light and shadow changes are obvious, full of high-end feeling. The back panel is made of glass material, and the edge is designed with a corresponding arc, and the overall grip feel is still very good.

After watching the press conference, I only had one feeling: the Honor 9X series will undoubtedly be very successful in offline sales this time. Even though the full-screen trend has been blowing for more than a year, the mainstream offline mobile phones are still water drop screens or bangs, and the mechanical structure is less involved. The starting price of Honor 9X is 1,399 yuan, which further reduces the lifting camera design. Once upon a time, the screen-to-body ratio effect that only high-end flagships could have, you can now experience it for just over a thousand yuan, which is very competitive.

performance

The core of the mass-market products is nothing more than good-looking appearance, good performance, and sufficient battery life. On this basis, whoever can come up with a more differentiated and competitive configuration will win. In the current "U-only theory", Kirin 810 is the most powerful trump card of the Honor 9X series. Before the press conference, I guessed that the standard version would continue the previous generation of Kirin 710. Unexpectedly, this time Honor 9X adopted the full range of Kirin 810. The bidding comparison of other thousand-yuan products is really unpredictable...

Some of you may not be familiar with Kirin 810, so let’s keep it simple and run the scores as usual: Geekbench version 4.4, 3DMark version 2.0, and the running environment is performance mode.

Kirin 810 outperforms Snapdragon 845 in single-core CPU and is close to Snapdragon 845 in multi-core CPU. It outperforms Adreno 618 in GPU. If we only look at the performance of running points, Kirin 810 is already at the flagship level. In terms of positioning, Honor has classified Kirin 810 as a flagship. It is easy to imagine how competitive it is to put such a powerful CPU in the 1,000 yuan segment.

Currently, Qualcomm's strongest sub-flagship is the Snapdragon 730. Even Redmi, which is known as a price butcher, has only lowered its price to 1,999 yuan. Only the Snapdragon 675 and Snapdragon 710 (2) are left to support it. However, even the Snapdragon 730 cannot beat the Kirin 810, so it is naturally difficult for the remaining younger brothers to compete. From the perspective of the price market, with the support of the Kirin 810, the Honor 9X series has a very strong aggressiveness in the 1,000-2,000 yuan range. It makes sense to buy a "U" and get a free phone...

On the other hand, in terms of platform confrontation, HiSilicon's move still caught Qualcomm off guard. From the perspective of iteration, leaving aside the small modified U with special needs such as Snapdragon 712, Qualcomm's general positioning should be that the thousand-yuan segment is managed by Snapdragon 675 and Snapdragon 710, the sub-flagship is connected with Snapdragon 730, and the flagship belongs to the 8 series. The first fourth-generation Kryo architecture was given to the 6-series U Snapdragon 675 for the first time. Although the single-core is strong enough, Qualcomm castrated the GPU in one fell swoop for balance. Therefore, Snapdragon 675 is more suitable for daily use, while games tend to prefer Snapdragon 710. After all, Qualcomm is best at GPU, and its knife skills are naturally precise. In the end, it also gave Snapdragon 675 an 11nm process to facilitate price reduction.

According to the habit of previous iterations, if nothing unexpected happens, there will be no successor to Qualcomm Snapdragon 730 this year, and the appearance of Kirin 810 directly broke the dream of Snapdragon 730 as a sub-flagship, and the pricing of the Honor 9X series directly broke through Qualcomm's layout line from the thousand-yuan segment. For domestic manufacturers relying on Qualcomm platforms, the impact of Huawei's future competitiveness is self-evident. Whether it is launching new products or sinking, Qualcomm's next "knife show" is still worth looking forward to.

From the actual game test, Honor 9X PRO did not disappoint. In the test of the two games "Honor of Kings" and "Peace Elite", Honor 9X PRO maintained high frame rate and smoothness. In addition to the fierce hardcore performance, Honor 9X PRO is also equipped with e-sports level liquid cooling, which can achieve uniform heat dissipation through capillary action. After running the game for half an hour, the temperature of the back of Honor 9X PRO is still good and feels comfortable.

As for the core competitiveness of Honor 9X, it is still believed that it lies in Kirin 810. Through lower pricing and differentiated experience, Honor 9X PRO can easily gain the voice of "really fragrant". However, from a deeper perspective, the greatest success of the Honor 9X series lies in the victory of research and development. Since the establishment of the Kirin project, there have been mixed reviews along the way, and the success of Kirin 980 and Kirin 810 also confirms Huawei's strength in promoting research and development. Cutting through thorns and brambles, when it has greater autonomy in technology, it will be more flexible in the market. Under the aggressive pricing strategy, the differentiated experience of Kirin 810 is difficult for other manufacturers to actively catch up, and the Honor 9X series will naturally be more attractive to consumers.

Photograph

The Honor 9X PRO adopts a rear triple-camera design, which includes a 48-megapixel main camera, an 8-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera (120°), and a 2-megapixel depth-of-field lens; the front lifting camera is 16 million pixels and provides multi-level beauty effects.

Directly on the picture:

In terms of photography, Honor 20 PRO has already won the third place with a score of 111 points, which shows Honor's tuning skills in photography. This time, Honor 9X PRO has not only strengthened its photography capabilities but also enriched its photography gameplay through the triple-camera design. In the same price range, Honor 9X PRO is better with the support of night scene algorithm.

Battery life

For offline users, battery life has always been a core concern. The Honor 9X series has a 4000mAh battery, which is more than enough for daily use in theory. The Honor of Kings high-definition test was conducted for half an hour, with high-performance mode turned on and the screen brightness at half, and the final power consumption was 8%. Even for gamers, the Honor 9X PRO series still has the ability to continue fighting.

Using 3C Battery Monitor to monitor the battery level, it takes about 2 hours to charge from 2% to 100%. For daily users, overnight charging is more suitable for usage habits.

Summary: Steady yet outstanding

To sum up the characteristics of the Honor 9X series, after experiencing it, I think "robust yet outstanding" is very suitable for them. The product selling points are robust enough, whether it is the lifting camera, 4000mAh battery, or Kirin 810, they are intuitively attractive to users. The product price is outstanding enough, with so many robust selling points and such a competitive price, it's all good.

In the interview, Honor President Zhao Ming said that "the configuration of 9X is better than that of competitors, but the price is still very affordable." Faced with cost pressure, Honor 9X must sell 20 million units. On the one hand, the new machine is launched during the summer vacation, and the aggressive price is conducive to attracting young users, but the deeper reason is as Zhao Ming said, "We hope to set a benchmark and model for competitors through accelerated innovation and product iteration, and tell the market what the performance and configuration of the future 1,500 to 2,500 yuan range should be."

To understand from the literal meaning, Honor hopes to fight a "fast attack" with the Honor 9X. No one can deny that the current mobile phone market is in a "twilight of the gods" situation. In the face of the biggest crisis, various manufacturers are constantly iterating products to eagerly find a breakthrough.

So we saw iQOO appear under the once beauty-loving vivo, and the reverse launch of the Snapdragon 845 flagship to show off its performance muscles; so we saw the "science student" Xiaomi come to its senses and launched the Xiaomi CC series, promoting beauty selfies; so we saw the once "carefully dressed" OPPO immerse itself in black technology, and deployed periscope zoom and under-screen cameras.

Where is the next intersection? Is it the ultimate screen-to-body ratio, the zoom that is within reach, or the best price-performance ratio? Like a sponge that absorbs water, whether it is technology or price-performance ratio, manufacturers need to constantly accommodate everything and accelerate iteration to survive this crisis.

When the chef picks up the gun, it means the situation has changed. The aggressive pricing of Honor 9X is just picking up the gun a step earlier. The Kirin 810 is put on the market with enough differentiation in performance and AI plasticity. On this basis, creating a "benchmark preset" through price advantages is not only beneficial to the sales of Honor 9X itself, but also has a constructive effect on the brand tone of the Honor X series in the future. For other manufacturers, differentiated technology and subdivided categories will become the next direction.

The arrival of 5G will inevitably stimulate a new round of volume exchange dividends, but before the overall market breaks through and is reborn, this bleak winter will continue for some time.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.