Honor 90 Smart Smartphone Review – Honor announced the Honor 90 Smart in April 2024, and the smartphone went on sale the same month. Like other Honor smartphones, the Honor 90 Smart has been released globally and will be available for purchase in more regions. This is designed as a budget mid-range smartphone, so it has all the specs needed to make it a decent mid-range, including 5G connectivity.
The inclusion of 5G in this price range will surely enhance the user experience and impress a lot of people. The phone also follows the same design and looks quite premium. Honor hopes that the new phone will do well in the mid-range market but competition is fierce. So, let’s begin with a detailed review of the Honor 90 Smart and see if this smartphone is worth purchasing.
Table of Contents
Honor 90 Smart Smartphone Review
Highlights
- The Honor 90 Smart has a 6.8-inch IPS display with 90Hz high refresh rate support.
- The Honor 90 Smart has the MediaTek Dimensity 6020 5G chipset that is capable of reaching up to 2×2.2GHz clock speeds.
- The smartphone comes with Android 13 OS with a MagicOS 7.2 user interface that has a lot of features.
- The main rear camera of the smartphone has a 108MP triple camera system with an 8MP selfie camera at the front.
- The smartphone is powered by a Li-Po 5330 mAh battery with a 35W wired fast charger support.
Design and Display
The design of the Honor 90 Smart follows the same design language as the Honor 90 series, which is a good thing. It looks quite premium but the same cannot be said when you hold the smartphone since it has a plastic build, which is common in budget phones. It has a flat boxy design with a flat side and mid-frame that doesn’t slip out of your hands easily.
On the rear side, you will once again find a flat panel with two camera islands consisting of four lenses. Overall, it’s a fantastic design. The colors on this smartphone are also quite interesting. It is available in Emerald Green and Midnight Black. As for the display, the Honor 90 Smart features a 6.8-inch IPS display with 90Hz high refresh rate support for a smoother experience.
The panel features an FHD+ resolution and accurate colors, so watching content on the screen will be a pleasure. The display can also get as bright as 850 nits under direct sunlight, so using the smartphone outdoors won’t cause much of an issue.
Memory and Internal
The Honor 90 Smart comes equipped with the MediaTek Dimesnity 6020 5G chipset, which can deliver a clock speed of up to 2×2.2GHz. This is impressive considering the price point of the smartphone. The chipset has enough raw power in this chipset to run all your everyday apps and games decently well.
As for gaming, this chipset has the Mali-G57 MC2 GPU, which can run high-end games like PUBG mobile, CODm, and even Summoners War at relatively smooth framerates. The Honor 90 Smart is running on Android 13 OS with a MagicOS 7.2 user interface that has a lot of features. However, Android 13 is too old at this point and it’s incredibly disappointing to see that.
However, Honor decided to include 5G as well which delivers high-speed connectivity and low-latency gaming. The smartphone is available with 4GB of RAM and up to 256GB of internal storage. However, there’s no support for a microSDXC expansion slot but there’s a 3.5mm headphone jack, which should delight many users.
Camera
The Honor 90 Smart comes with a 108MP triple-camera system. The main camera features a 108MP sensor, which is capable of capturing some great pictures with good detail levels and high dynamic range. We were expecting less considering the price but Honor certainly surprised us. The other two camera sensors are completely useless and only there for the show.
On the front of the Honor 90 Smart, there’s an 8MP selfie camera. This selfie camera can take selfies that are good enough to post on social media but don’t expect anything huge. As for video recording, the Honor 90 Smart can shoot at a maximum of 1080p@30FPS from both the rear and selfie cameras. There’s no support for any form of video stabilization.
Battery and Others
The Honor 90 Smart has a Li-Po 5330mAh battery, which is a high-capacity battery capable of providing excellent battery backup. The battery should last for 2 days or even more with lighter usage that includes social media, texting, light browsing, YouTube, and so on. But with heavy gaming, the battery will drain faster and may not even last a full day.
As for charging, the smartphone supports 35W wired fast charging, which can fully charge the battery in about an hour and a half. Apart from that, the phone also has Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.1, a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, GPS, NFC, and a USB Type-C port. The smartphone is available for purchase at $345 (Rs 28,799 in India) approx.
Honor 90 Smart Specifications Detail
Down below you can see the full specifications of the Honor 90 Smart smartphone.
| Specifications | Honor 90 Smart |
| Network | 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G |
| Announced | April 2024 |
| SIM | Dual SIM |
| Dimensions | 6.56 x 3.01 x 0.32 inches |
| Weight | 199 g |
| Size | 6.8 inches |
| Display | IPS LCD 90Hz 850 nits brightness 20:9 ratio ~389 PPI density |
| Protection | No |
| Resolution | 1080 x 2412 pixels |
| OS | Android 13, Magic OS 7.2 |
| 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 | 4GB |
| Internal | 128GB, 256GB |
| Camera | 108 MP (wide), PDAF 2 MP (macro) 2 MP (depth) LED flash, HDR, panorama Max – 1080p@30fps |
| Selfie | 8 MP (wide) Max – 1080p@30fps |
| Loudspeaker | Yes (stereo speakers) |
| 3.5mm jack | Yes 24-bit/192kHz Hi-Res audio |
| WLAN | Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct |
| Bluetooth | 5.1, A2DP, LE |
| GPS | GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, BDS |
| NFC | Yes |
| Infrared port | No |
| Radio | No |
| USB | USB Type-C 2.0, OTG |
| Sensors | Side-mounted fingerprint, accelerometer, compass Virtual proximity sensing |
| Battery | Li-Po 5330 mAh 35W wired |
| Colors | Emerald Green, Midnight Black |
| Expected Price | $345 (Rs 28,799 in India) approx |
Conclusion
Honor wanted to deliver a strong mid-range phone in the budget category and they managed to do that with the Honor 90 Smart. It has all the necessary features needed to be a decent mid-range smartphone, including a decent display with a high refresh rate, decent performance, decent rear camera performance, battery and even charging.
It even has 5G connectivity, which is missed out on a lot of budget phones. Honor has indeed managed to deliver a decent mid-range smartphone but its price tag definitely doesn’t fall in the budget category. It’s not significantly high, but it’s not budget either. The Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 offers much better specs than this while also offering a lower price tag.
The Redmi phone is the one I would recommend instead at this price point, but if you find the Honor 90 Smart at a discounted price, then go for it. However, the final decision is up to you, so it is better to choose a smartphone based on your requirements and needs.
