Honor 90 Lite Smartphone Review – The Honor 90 Lite was launched in June 2023 as a budget alternative to Honor’s flagship smartphones, Honor 90 and Honor 90 Pro. The smartphone has been released globally. Most flagship smartphones cost a lot and are often not feasible for the average user. Honor wants to change that with the Honor 90 Lite. They want to bring premium features such as 5G connectivity, high-capacity storage, FHD+ resolution, and more.
The Honor 90 Lite follows the same design language as that of its bigger brothers, the Honor 90 and 90 Pro. Since Honor split from Huawei, they have been making a name for themselves in the global market by releasing terrific smartphone launches But the specifications alone do not justify the value of a smartphone. Find that out with this detailed review of Honor 90 Lite and see if this smartphone is worth purchasing.
Table of Contents
Honor 90 Lite Smartphone Review
Highlights
- The Honor 90 Lite features a 6.7-inch IPS LCD display panel with a 90Hz high refresh rate.
- It is powered by the 7nm MediatekDimensity 6020 chipset for a balanced performance.
- The Honor 90 Lite runs on the latest Android 13OS with a Magic UI 7.1 user interface for better customizability.
- The Honor 90 Lite features a 100MP triple-camera system on the back and a 16MP selfie camera at the front.
- The Honor 90 Lite also features a Li-Po 4500 mAh with 35W fast wired charging in Europe and 22.5W fast wired charging for global regions.
Design and Display
The design language of the Honor 90 Lite smartphone follows that of the Honor 90 and 90 Pro. Like its bigger brothers, it features a similar rear camera module and overall patterns. However, there’s one significant design change and that has to do with the edges and the side frame. Instead of curved edges and the curved side frame in the Honor 90 and 90 Pro, the Honor 90 Lite features sharp edges with a completely flat side frame. The body of the smartphone is constructed from polycarbonate materials and is very sturdy.
The flat side frame helps provide a very firm grip, so it won’t slip out of your very easily. The smartphone is slim and light at just 179 grams. On the front, you get a 6.7-inch IPS LCD display. This is a display with extremely narrow bezels, which gives the smartphone a very premium look. The display panel also comes with FHD+ resolution and a 90Hz high refresh rate. The inclusion of high refresh would ensure that animations play smoothly and you get an overall better user experience. However, a better nits peak brightness and an AMOLED panel are expected from a device of this segment.
Memory and Internal
Honor90 Lite is equipped with the newly released 7nm MediatekDimensity 6020 chipset and it can reach up to 2×2.2GHz clockingspeed and it can easily handle anything you run on it. The chipset is well-optimized and has a lot of performance to offer, for regular daily use.
Thanks to the 7nm manufacturing technology, the chipset doesn’t overheat even when running games and it can deliver consistent gaming results for longer periods of time without any throttling. The Mali-G57 MC2 GPU in the chipset has decent performance capability and can play games such as CODm and PUBG mobile at relatively smooth framerates under normal graphic settings. Anyway, don’t expect heavy gaming performance from this smartphone.
Apart from the chipset, the Honor 90 Lite has support for 8GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage. The Honor 90 Lite also comes with the latest Android 13 OS with MagicUI 7.1 user interface running on top of it. The Honor 90 Lite also supports 5G connectivity with near gigabit speeds, which can download your favorite movies and TV series in a matter of seconds. However, there is no support for an SD card slot, and a single variant is offered by the brand makers.
Camera
The Honor 90 Lite features a triple-camera system on the back with a 100MP sensor as the main camera, a 5MP sensor as the ultra-wide camera, and a 2MP sensor as the macro camera. The main camera with the 100MP sensor managed to capture some great shots with a terrific level of detail, high dynamic range, perfect white balance, and saturated colors. However, the same cannot be said for the 5MP ultra-wide camera.
Honor provided the ultra-wide camera for the sake of providing an ultra-wide camera, but it’s not going to be something you will want to use regularly. The details are very low, so the textures look soft. The camera performs below average, which is a drastic decrease in quality compared to the main camera, and let’s not even get started on the 2MP macro sensor. The poor performance of the secondary cameras is overshadowed by the terrific performance of the main camera.
Buy the Honor 90 Lite for its good main camera performance and not for its other cameras. Even the night photography is more than great. Combine the exceptionally optimized 100MP sensor with Honor’s night post-processing algorithm and you get magic. The photos taken at night are quite great and better than other smartphones in the same price range. On the front, you get a selfie camera with a 16MP sensor, which manages to capture a good amount of detail with natural color and skin tones. For video recording, the Honor 90 Lite can shoot up to 1080pvideos@30FPS from both the rear and selfie camera systems. The makers could have provided 4K recording support and a gyro-EIS sensor on the device.
Battery and Others
The Honor 90 Lite has a Li-Po 4500 mAh battery, which can easily last about 1 – 2 days of daily usage with some video streaming, instant messaging, Instagram, and more. However, with gaming, the smartphone will not last a full day and may require a charge before midnight. However, that shouldn’t worry you so much as the smartphone is equipped with fast charging technology.
If you live in Europe, the Honor 90 Lite will have support for 35W of wired fast charging, which can charge the Honor 90 Lite to 55% in just 30 minutes. Other regions, on the other hand, will only have 22.5W fast charging technology, which is slower than the 35W charger. Apart from that, the smartphone comes with a side-mounted fingerprint sensor, Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.1, NFC, and GPS. The price of the Honor 90 Lite starts at $199 (Rs 16,590 in India) approx.
Honor 90 Lite Specifications Detail
Down below you can see the full specifications of the Honor 90 Lite smartphone.
| Specifications | Honor 90 Lite |
| Network | 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G |
| Announced | June 2023 |
| SIM | Dual SIM |
| Dimensions | 6.41 x 2.93 x 0.30 inches |
| Weight | 179 g |
| Size | 6.7 inches |
| Display | IPS LCD 90Hz ~391 PPI density |
| Protection | No |
| Resolution | 1080 x 2388 pixels |
| OS | Android 13, Magic UI 7.1 |
| Chipset | 7nm – Mediatek Dimensity 6020 |
| CPU | Octa-core 2×2.2 GHz Cortex-A76 6×2.0 GHz Cortex-A55 |
| GPU | Mali-G57 MC2 |
| Card slot | No |
| RAM | 8GB |
| Internal | 256GB |
| Camera | 100 MP (wide), PDAF 5 MP (ultrawide) 2 MP (macro) LED flash, HDR, panorama Max – 1080p@30fps |
| Selfie | 16 MP (wide) Max – 1080p@30fps |
| Loudspeaker | Yes |
| 3.5mm jack | No 24-bit/192kHz audio |
| WLAN | Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct |
| Bluetooth | 5.3, A2DP, LE (5.3, France) |
| GPS | GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, BDS |
| NFC | Yes (market/region dependent) |
| Infrared port | No |
| Radio | Unspecified |
| USB | USB Type-C 2.0, OTG |
| Sensors | Side-mounted fingerprint, accelerometer, compass Virtual proximity sensing |
| Battery | Li-Po 4500 mAh 35W wired 22.5W wired (Global) |
| Colors | Titanium Silver, Cyan Lake, Midnight Black |
| Expected Price | $199 (Rs 16,590 in India) approx. |
Conclusion
The Honor 90 Lite comes with some great specs considering the price point. The main camera is also fantastic if you can ignore the secondary camera. The 100MP sensor is properly optimized by Honor to deliver some exceptional photographic capability. The same goes for the design and battery. They are all pretty good considering the price point. You even get 5G performance while for downsides. There is the absence of an AMOLED panel and better nits peak brightness.
However, there are various other smartphones in the market in and around the same price point that even offer more than decent secondary cameras, including an ultra-wide camera. If you can live without secondary cameras and are okay with what you get with the Honor 90 Lite, then it’s an easy recommendation. But if you want an alternative smartphone with an ultra-wide camera, then you can also consider the Samsung Galaxy M34. However, the final decision is up to you to choose which is better. Choose a smartphone based on your requirements and needs.
