HONOR Philippines finally unveiled the HONOR 90 5G its latest budget flagship smartphone at a special launch event held at La Jolla Luxury Beach and Resort in Bataan.
The new HONOR 90 5G packs all the great features you want in a budget flagship phone. It boasts several flagship-level specs with a large vibrant display, ultra-clear camera, fast charging technology, flagship chipsets, and a unique eye-catching design.
With these spec-wised features sporting the HONOR 90 5G, it will definitely appeal to new users and fans of HONOR.
So let’s dive in as we share our hands-on review of the new HONOR 90 5G.
Unboxing
The packaging of the HONOR 90 5G is simple made of thick cardboard type material clad in an all-white color in matte finish.
There’s no image of the phone as it only bears the models name and an HONOR logo printed in silver foil stamping. A sticker is placed on one side of the box which shows the product specs, IMEI, company info and certifications marks.
Opening the box, you’ll immediately see the unit then a separate compartment box that holds some of the accessories. Removing the compartment box will give you access to the included charger and cable.
Taking everything out of the box we get the following contents:
- HONOR 90 5G Unit
- SIM Ejector Tool
- Quick Start Guide
- Clear Protective Case
- USB-A to USB-C Cable
- 66W HONOR SuperCharge Adapter
- Screen Protector (Pre-Applied)
Design and Build Quality
HONOR made the phone lighter at 183 grams including the battery and a thin as well with a thickness of 7.8mm
The HONOR 90 5G has four stunning colors – Emerald Green, Peacock Blue, Midnight Black, and Diamond Silver the one we have for our review. HONOR claims that the design was inspired by luxurious jewelry and gem pieces.
The HONOR 90 5G looks very appealing, stylish, and strikingly beautiful. We will first go over the rear panel. The back cover panel is made of durable polycarbonate plastic material with a curved edge design.
Our review unit the Diamond Silver has a nice two-tone backplate design that is very reflective and shiny finish. The base color is mostly silver and when light reflects on it or slant the device sideways, you’ll get different color shades.
On the top panel, you get a smooth glossy finish while the bottom half has a diamond-shaped texture dot pattern. You can really feel the etched dotted patterns as you feel it with your fingers. So far, our fingerprint marks and smudges are also visible on the surface. The included protective clear case can help solve this concern.
Typical phones with a glossy finish can be slippery forcing it to slide through your hand. But on the HONOR 90 5G, the back panel offers a kind of grippy feel on the exterior panel that helps improve the grip.
HONOR features a unique axisymmetric dual-ring camera design that is arranged vertically. The positioning of the dual-ring camera is a Mirror Luna design concept inspired by the beautiful moon phases with overlapping circles and ellipses.
The accent rings have a glossy silver metallic finish to match the colors of the back panel. The dual-ring camera module protrudes slightly and wobbles a bit when placed flat on the table.
The top ring holds two camera lenses and the bottom is a single camera lens with an LED flash.
You’ll also spot an HONOR logo and certification marks at the bottom.
It has the standard I/O ports and controls fitted on the HONOR 90 5G. You’ll find on the right-side frame the power/sleep button and a volume rocker that clicks nicely.
The left side frame of the phone is completely clean, with no controls on it.
The top frame is almost clean except for the tiny secondary microphone placed there.
At the bottom, it holds the speaker grille, USB Type-C port, microphone, and SIM card tray.
The front of the phone has a quad-curved edge design and rounded corners for an easy and comfortable hold. The front-facing camera has a tiny punch-hole design.
Display
The HONOR 90 5G boasts a pretty large 6.7-inch curved AMOLED display panel with a resolution of 2664 x 1200 pixels which is equivalent to 1.5K resolution. A pixel density of 435 PPI is plenty enough to get a whole lot more detail for anything displayed on this phone.
In terms of screen-to-body ratio, the device has a 93.3% with an aspect ratio of 19.98:9 allowing for the HONOR 90 5G to have more screen real estate while keeping the device compact.
The screen panel is able to produce 1.07 billion colors and 100% DCI-P3 for a wider color gamut offering a greater range of colors at a more saturated and vibrant level.
It supports HDR 10+ to improve picture quality and colors even further. It’s the perfect device for gaming and watching your best-loved streaming apps like Amazon Prime Video or Netflix.
It’s good to see that the HONOR 90 5G is capable of 1600 nits of peak brightness. Using the phone outdoors in direct sunlight is no problem at all for us.
For smooth smooth scrolling and animations on the screen, it has a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz. You can still choose the amount of refresh rate options from 90Hz medium, 60Hz standard, or Dynamic that automatically switch to lower or higher refresh rates to extend battery life.
Staring at the screen of a smartphone for long hours can trigger eye fatigue, compromise sleep quality, or irreversible eye damage at worst.
To help address these concerns, the HONOR 90 5G is equipped with an array of eye comfort display features such as a 3840 PWM Dimming, Dynamic Dimming, Circadian Night Display, Circadian Color Temperature, and TÜV Rheinland Flicker Free Certification.
The HONOR 90 5G is one of the industry-leading brands to offer a 3840Hz PWM dimming feature providing a “flicker-free” display at low brightness for a comfortable viewing experience.
It has also received the TÜV Rheinland Flicker Free Certification to achieve the risk-free dimming level. You can spend more hours on the phone watching videos or playing games knowing that your eyes are safe.
Enabling the Circadian Night Display feature will automatically change the screen’s color temperature to emit warmer colors reducing the amount of blue light that might help users get better sleep at night. The feature will enable users a 20% increase in melatonin levels for a longer comfortable sleep.
Performance
Inside the phone, it is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 Octa-core processor with clock speeds of up to 2.5GHz paired with an Adreno 644 for its GPU.
It has a bigger storage capacity of 512GB and 12GB RAM with HONOR RAM Turbo technology which can add up to 7GB of extra RAM to the phone, allowing even more multitasking.
HONOR claims that the new chipset will have smooth graphics and quick response with its GPU performance increasing by 20% and AI performance by 30% compared to its other previous models.
Sharing our benchmarks scores on the HONOR 90 5G:
- GeekBench 6 CPU: 1051 Single-core Score / 2853 Multi-core Score
- GeekBench 6 GPU: 2621 GPU OpenCL Score
- PCMark: 11739 Work 3.0 Performance Score
- 3DMark Wild Life: 3214 (Average frame rate 19.20 fps)
- CPDT: 496.67MB/s Sequential Write (4MB) / 722.83MB/s Sequential Read (4MB)
I had no issues using the phone for whatever task I can perform on it. I was able to watch YouTube videos, binge-watch my favorite episodes on Netflix, post on my social media apps, browse the internet, and play games for hours.
Speaking of games, it performed smoothly with no lags like popular games like PUBG, Mobile Legends, Call of Duty, and even the less demanding graphic games.
The phone has a large 4483 mm2 vapor cooling chamber increasing it to 147% compared to its previous model. This gives the device efficient heat dissipation to stay cool every time when you’re playing graphically demanding games or multitasking on the phone.
The audio of the phone is mostly coming out from its bottom-firing speakers. It has no 3.5mm jack so you may need to use your wireless headphones or connect a USB-C to a 3.5mm dongle.
The sound quality is pretty decent with clear vocals, mid and high tones are good but the presence of bass needs a little improvement.
It supports HONOR Histen 7.1 for a better immersive audio experience when your headphones are plugged in. It’s far better if you want vibrant and crisp audio quality.
Camera Lenses
The camera of the HONOR 90 5G is a stand-out feature. It offers a triple-camera setup that comprises a 200MP main camera at f/1.9 aperture, a 2MP depth camera at f/2.4 aperture, and a 12MP ultra-wide and macro camera at f/2.2 aperture.
The 200MP main camera has a large 1/1.4-inch sensor enough to capture a decent amount of light for better details and improves low-light performance.
The ultra-wide camera has a 112-degree field of view to capture wider shots like landscapes, group photos, etc. The macro camera has a focusing distance of 2.5cm to shoot close-up photos.
The 2MP depth camera will help portrait shots easily produce a blurred background for the subject to stand out.
For selfies, you have a 50MP front camera with an aperture of f/2.4. It has a wide front camera with a 100-degree field of angle to capture group shots much easier. You can also have a nice selfie with the beautiful landscape background included in your shots.
Users can take advantage of the 16-in-1 pixel binning when shooting under low-light conditions to create one large pixel that can gather more light to generate well-lit photos.
Camera App
The HONOR 90 5G camera app is simple, and the interface is properly laid out. With easy access to the standard shooting options and modes, you need to take a photo or video.
There are five standard shooting modes available on the camera app with Aperture, Night, Portrait, Photo, Video, and Multi-Video.
There are an additional twelve shooting modes when you select more options. The extra modes are Pro, Slow-Mo, Panorama, HDR Photo, HDR Video, Time-Lapse, Stickers, Super Macro, High-res, Solo Cut, Story, and Scan Document.
By default, you have 0.6x, 1x, and 2x, zoom switch options accessible in the viewfinder of the camera app. At the top end of the viewfinder, you have the QR code scanner, moving photo, AI photography, flash, color filter, and settings. The digital zoom can go as far as up to 10x.
The viewfinder, when used for the front camera, will have zoom switch options of 0.8x, and 1x. Along with the zoom switch options are bokeh and beauty filters.
The portrait mode can shoot nice closeup shots or selfies with adjustment tools to adjust the bokeh of your background or enhance your look. The bokeh can be fine-tuned from a value between f/0.95 to f/16.
When shooting in a low-light environment, the HONOR 90 5G has a Night mode to automatically get a good exposure of the subject undergoes image processing to improve details, lesser noise, and balance the light and shadow of your photos.
If you want your vlogs to stand out, the multi-video mode can record videos from the front and rear cameras at the same time. It’s a great feature to see both perspectives and use both cameras efficiently. You can choose the type of shot you want with a picture in picture, rear/rear, front/rear, rear only, or front only.
Camera Video
As for the video, the HONOR 90 5G can record resolutions from 4K, 1080p, and 720p. The 4K quality can only shoot at 30fps but in 1080p or 720p resolution the frame rate is available at 60fps and 30fps.
The stabilization of the phone is also good. On the top of the camera app is an AI Video Assistant that enhances your video recordings like noise reduction, recommends the best video mode, enhances audio quality, etc. This feature needs the frame rate set at 30fps applicable in all resolutions.
Camera Test
The main camera on the Honor 90 5G supports a bigger sensor having a 1/1.4-inch size for better low-light performance. There’s no shutter lag as the camera can take photos very quickly. There’s a slight delay when viewing the photos due to the image processing time but so far it produces good quality.
The images we took on the main camera produced great image quality and color, especially during good lighting conditions.
The 12MP ultrawide camera also offers good-looking photos during the daytime with minimal distortion at the edges.
In low light conditions, the main camera and ultrawide have soft details, good color reproduction, and less noise. I would suggest using the night mode which helps enhance the photos with a few adjustments on the detail, town down noise, and color.
The front-facing camera offers a wide field of view that’s perfect for group selfies or includes some nice landscape backgrounds. The image quality of the selfies has good facial details, natural skin color, and contrast.
Video recording on 1080p resolution with the HONOR 90 5G produced good details, vibrant colors, and decent stabilization. You can also use the multi-video mode that allows the user to shoot video using two cameras at the same time.
Sharing these photos we took using the HONOR 90 5G.
0.6x Ultra-wide, Outdoor, Sunny Weather
0.6x Ultra-wide, Outdoor, Sunny Weather
1x Portrait mode, Outdoor, Sunny Weather
1x Photo mode, Indoor, Ambient Lighting
Group Selfie, Outdoor, Sunny Weather
1x PRO mode, Outdoor, Cloudy Weather
Selfie, Outdoor, Low Light
Selfie Portrait mode, Outdoor, Low Light
0.6x Night mode, Outdoor, Low Light
Portrait mode + Bokeh adjusted, Outdoor, Ambient Lighting
0.6x Ultra-wide, Outdoor, Sunny Weather
Software
The HONOR 90 5G runs with HONOR MagicOS 7.1 based on Android 13.
The phone comes with Google services that we use daily during work like Chrome, Gmail, Drive, Maps, Meet, and especially PlayStore if you need other apps to be installed.
You also get a bit of bloatware with apps such as Booking.com, Facebook, Netflix, TikTok, Trip.com, and games. If you don’t like some of these apps, you can easily uninstall them.
HONOR’s own proprietary apps are also installed along with WPS Office an all-in-one office suite to open and edit Microsoft Office files.
There are several customization options that you can do on the phone. You have a wide selection of themes, change your wallpaper, always-on display (AOD) styles, and magazine unlock that shows different images on the lock screen each time you open your screen.
It supports HONOR’s wireless sharing technology with the HONOR Share. The HONOR Share allows users to quickly transfer files, photos, videos, or documents between an HONOR smartphone and a PC that supports HONOR Computer Manager.
You can do more with the HONOR 90 5G to boost your productivity at work or school with multi-screen collaboration, wireless projection, link to Windows, or even connect a printer.
One feature that I find very useful is the Magic Text which intelligently recognizes text on an image and allows it into an editable text. It can extract the text coming from a product flyer for you to dial a number, copy the email address, or click a URL link to open the website.
Biometrics
Now for biometrics, the HONOR 90 5G will give you the choice to safely unlock it either with the in-display optical fingerprint reader or face recognition via the punch-hole selfie camera. Any biometrics you’ll choose will unlock the phone very quickly.
It has the regular lock screen PIN options for additional security with a 4-digit PIN, custom PIN, Pattern, or Password.
Connectivity
You get a good set of connectivity features like Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, NFC, OTG, and Android Auto if you wish to integrate the device into your car’s entertainment system.
It’s already 5G ready so expect higher download speeds when using mobile data, lower latency, and more network capacity. It has provisions for other network bands for 2G, 3G, 4G, and LTE.
The HONOR 90 5G is a dual-SIM mobile that accepts Nano-SIM.
Battery
Battery life is incredible providing a large 5,000mAh cell battery that can last you throughout the day. To quickly juice up this massive battery, the HONOR 90 5G supports 66W HONOR SuperCharge fast charging technology.
With the 66W HONOR SuperCharge, we were able to charge from 0% to 40% in 15 minutes. Then after 15 minutes, it went to a 67% charge. It took us 49 minutes to fully charged the phone from 0% to 100%.
The device has a wired reverse charging feature but doesn’t support wireless charging.
There’s a built-in AI power-saving management technology on the HONOR 90 5G to maximize the efficiency of the battery and adjust the power according to your usage.
What We Like
- Design Looks Stylish And Premium Looking
- Thin and Lightweight
- Large Screen
- 120HZ AMOLED Display
- Flicker-Free
- Eye Comfort Features
- Bigger Storage Capacity
- RAM Expansion with HONOR RAM Turbo
- Good Performance
- Large Vapor Cooling Chamber
- 200MP Camera Offers Great Image Quality
- 5,000mAh with 66W HONOR SuperCharge
- 5G Ready
- Smooth UI
What We Want
- Stereo Speakers
- Expandable Storage
- 4K@60fps
- Telephoto Camera
Conclusion
The general design of the HONOR 90 5G looks amazing and well-built. Our Diamond Silver colorway is slick, lightweight, thin, and very attractive.
The AMOLED display can produce vivid colors, sharp images, and very bright perfect to watch videos or play games. You also get a 120Hz refresh rate to scroll smoothly when you view your social media apps or browse the internet. After long hours of use, HONOR equipped the phone with eye comfort features such as 3840Hz PWM dimming, dynamic dimming, and circadian night display to protect your eyes.
Performance is pretty decent, it can handle multitasking with no lags thanks to its hardware boasting a Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, 12GB RAM with virtual RAM expansion, and its large battery.
The camera can shoot some pretty good photos, especially during well-lit conditions. In low-light scenarios, you still get a pretty decent quality with less noise, but using the Night mode will help improve your photos. There will be a little bit of oversaturation of colors due to the conversion of raw images trying to process it to a much nicer-looking picture.
I would suggest on the next models, HONOR would skip the 2MP depth sensor and place a telephoto camera instead. But other than that the HONOR 90 5G can produce great photos.
Overall, the HONOR 90 5G is undeniably a stand-out mid-range phone at its price point. With an array of towering features, you’ll expect only on top flagship phones such as an impressive 120Hz AMOLED display, plenty of storage capacity, flagship chipset, extensive battery life with support for fast charging technology, and gorgeous design.
HONOR 90 5G – Full Specifications
- Price: PHP0.00
- Colors: Diamond Silver, Emerald Green, Peacock Blue, Midnight Black
- Design: Symmetrical Slim Design, Quad Curved Display, Axisymmetric Dual Ring Camera
- Display: 7-inches AMOLED Quad Curved Floating Display
- Refresh Rate: 120Hz
- Resolution: 2664 x 1200 pixels
- Peak Brightness: 1600 nits
- Color: 07 Billion
- Aspect Ratio:98:9
- Color Gamut: 100% DCI-P3
- Display Technology: HDR 10+
- Amazon Prime Video, Netflix HDR Certified
- PPI: 435
- Screen-to-Body Ratio: 93.3%
- Eye Comfort Features: 3840 PWM Dimming, Dynamic Dimming, Circadian Night Display, Circadian Color Temperature, TÜV Rheinlad Flicker Free Certification
- Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 Accelerated Edition 5G
- GPU: Adreno 644
- RAM: 12GB
- Storage: 512GB
- Rear Cameras: 200MP Ultra-Clear Camera (f/1.9) 1/1.4-inch CMOS size, 12MP Ultra Wide and Macro Camera (f/2.2), 2MP Depth Camera (f/2.4)
- Front Camera: 50MP (f/2.4)
- Video Resolution: 4K@30fps, 1080p@30fps/60fps, 720p@30fps/60fps
- Battery: 5,000mAh
- Fast Charging Technology: 66W HONOR SuperCharge
- OS: MagicOS 7.1, based on Android 13
- Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, OTG, NFC, 11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax, 2×2 MIMO
- Positioning: GPS / AGPS / GLONASS / BeiDou / Galileo
- SIM: Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by)
- Network Band: 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G
- Biometrics: Fingerprint Sensor, Face Unlock
- Dimensions: 9 x 74.1 x 7.8mm
- Weight: 183 grams (including battery)
