New HONOR X9c 5G: A feature-packed winning package that's tough as nails

With its advanced AI capabilities, a wide array of features, and exceptional durability, the new smartphone stands out as a remarkable choice

Drop it or drown it, but you can't destroy it. The new Honor X9c 5G is pretty much indestructible and built like a tank.

This new smartphone from HONOR is the latest offering from the company in its X9 Series, which has featured some very significant models for HONOR, both technologically and in terms of market success.

The X9c's predecessor - the successful X9b - was a breakthrough for HONOR when it came to toughness and durability. It was the unbreakable hero product that garnered attention worldwide and allowed HONOR to greatly increase its market share especially in the Middle East and Africa region, where the model saw an 80 per cent rise in sales over the X9a, the phone that it replaced.

And now, with the latest iteration of the series - the X9c - HONOR has gone several notches better than the previous versions, making it a worthy successor in its "Unbreakable AI Smartphone" series.

While the X9b’s unbreakable design led to great success for the model in the region and cemented HONOR’s quality and innovation credentials in the region, while boosting its share of the market, HONOR has now built on the strengthened brand presence and customer loyalty that the robust and reliable device gave it to position itself as a leader in the durable mid-range smartphone segment.

The new X9c is the result of this positioning - a phone that takes the most desirable features of its predecessors, improves upon them and then adds some new innovations to finally arrive at a smartphone that is one pleasing, super-durable and desirable package.

The most obvious of these improvements is the increased all-round toughness and durability. The X9c is now triple resistant to drops, heat and water, earning it an SGS Gold Label certification for durability.

According to HONOR, this is achieved through the materials used to make the device as well as its design. This phone is made out of ultra-tough aggregation material and super double tempered glass, and its design incorporates shock absorber materials and what HONOR calls a quadrilateral Bezier curve design. With a claimed drop resistant height of 2-metres, it was too tempting not to test this claim out. So, we dropped our test piece repeatedly at various angles from around that height, trying to make it land at all sorts of angles so that the impact caught every little corner of the device. The result was not even a scratch, leave alone a crack or any other damage. The X9c's ultra tough material just took the falls in its stride, aided by the design.

Next, we turned our attention to the extreme temperature resistance that HONOR claims for the X9c - of withstanding 55 degrees Celsius of heat while still providing over 30 hours of call time and 19.7 hours of navigation in those searing temperatures, and also working just as well in a deep freeze of -30 degrees. While we had no way of actually testing either in a real-life setting, being located in Dubai and testing it in November, we did throw it in the freezer for a couple of hours and found upon extraction that it worked just fine.

On the heat side of things, HONOR shows the phone being immersed in water that is hot enough to cook meat in, in its promotional videos - and still emerging completely fine, unscathed and in full working order. Social media is rife with content creators successfully replicating this experiment, and while we did not go to such extreme lengths, we have no problems taking their world for it.

Those same promo videos from HONOR also show how the phone resists a water jet powerful enough to cut through a soda can, a block of wood and a whole watermelon, and even de-husk a coconut, so we were completely confident in conducting our own water-resistance test. The IP65M rating for dust and 360-degree water pressure makes this phone as safe as a vault, the result of a triple layer of protection. So, we were not surprised when it emerged in complete working order after a quick dunk into a bucket of water, which included a few seconds of the device resting on the bottom at least around a foot from the surface.

But while this toughness and durability may provide peace of mind, what really matters for us in everyday usage is how well the phone actually does its job - the job of being a smartphone. And here too, HONOR has equipped it with all the right bells and whistles.

For starters, the screen is a magnificent, curved 6.8-inch OLED that is 2,700 by 1,224 pixels in resolution and a whopping 4,000 nits in peak brightness with a 12Hz refresh rate. Under direct noonday sunlight, our Honor X9c review unit offered great legibility and clarity with the brightness maxed out. Colour rendition is excellent as well, with lifelike hues and pin-sharp text. Whether under the brightest sunlight or inside a dark movie theatre, the screen never disappointed and remained a highlight of the X9c, punching way above its price-class. In our usage we found bright, vibrant and stunning images, whether watching videos, playing games or clicking photos.

Speaking of taking photos, the X9c's camera system is another highlight of the phone. The main array at the rear features a 108Mp F/1.75 ‘Ultra Sensing' camera and another 5Mp F/2.2 ultra-wide unit, while a 16Mp camera handles selfie duties in the front. One very welcome addition in the X9c's imaging department is the addition of optical image stabilisation, which was missing in its predecessors - so props to HONOR for including it on this one.

The camera set-up enables the rear dual lenses to shoot at up to 2x and 3x lossless zoom, as well as up to 10x digital zoom for stills and up to 8x zoom for videos. Video capture is provided at up to a superb 4K@30fps resolution or 1080p@60fps. The former is a boon for vloggers and such was the clarity and vibrancy of the videos we shoot that had we not been novices at composing, we'd have unhesitatingly used this phone as our primary shooting device for YouTube videos. Even the 16Mp shooter at the front has up to 1080p@30fps video capture, which is more than adequate for video and Zoom calls, and even the occasional video selfie, though it understandably lacks zoom.

Overall, the X9c returned sharp images and videos with great colour rendition, detail and clarity, whether shot in bright daylight or at night. We would advise going easy on the digital zoom, as that sometimes had the effect of making the details a little soft and blurry, but stick to the 1x, 2x and 3x lossless optical zoom and you'll get pleasing and usable shots every time.

Those pleasing shots are also enhanced by the X9c's Artificial Intelligence (AI) features that work in several ways to enhance the user experience. For example, when we tried shooting action shots of birds in flight with the phone, the AI Motion Sensing setting proved to be a boon, toggling the camera so that it could intelligently capture such action shots without relying on our mere human reflexes.

The AI Eraser feature also proved to be another welcome addition, especially on a midrange phone such as this, allowing us to selectively delete unwanted parts of shots, such as some overhead wires and cables that were spoiling the composition of the flying birds.

AI features such as these give the Honor X9c a substantial leg up on its opposition, and HONOR's MagicOS has some other AI features included in it, such as Magic Capsule, Magic Portal and Parallel Space.

With the Magic Capsule feature, certain applications will be able to run in the background even while you’re working on other tasks. For example, if we were listening to music or recording audio, the Magic Capsule displayed the status in real time and we could access it straight away instead of having to go through the app.

Meanwhile, Magic Portal ensures quicker access to files even while on other apps. With this AI feature, we extracted both text and images from one app, dragged them to other apps and had them open up instantly. This can prove very handy especially in work situations, when you’re hard pressed for time and need to access several apps quickly.

Another AI feature we loved was Parallel Space, which allows for the creation of a partitioned version of the phone so that two copies of an app can run independently of each other for privacy or security reasons. This is also a space where important documents and files can be stored, or even personal applications, preventing anyone else from accessing them.

For a phone that comes as loaded with features as the X9c does, HONOR has ensured that its tank can hold enough juice for it to keep running for a long time. The X9c's 6600mAh silicon carbon battery gives it a claimed three days of power on a full charge, and we consistently got over two-and-half days even with the heavier-than-usual use that we subject our review phones to. HONOR says the battery provides 25.8 hours of YouTube video viewing or 21 hours of voice calling, and while we could not test each claim independently, the overall usage that we obtained on every full charge - which was a mixture of various uses - was highly satisfactory and more than what we expect of a smartphone in this class.

Not only is the battery capacity high, but refilling it is a quick process, too, with HONOR's 66W SuperCharge feature that tanks up the battery in a mere 62 minutes, which is faster than most competing phones. And when you’re really in need of quick power, a 10-minute charge yields a high 24 per cent battery power, another space where the X9c has the competition beat.

With four colourways - Jade Cyan, Titanium Black, Sunrise Orange and Titanium Purple if our test piece - the HONOR X9c's looks and finish are on par with its excellent performance.

But one of the best things about it is its very reasonable price: Dh1,299. And for those who pre-order the X9c, the package will include HONOR Choice Earbuds X5, a manufacturer's 12-month warranty, and HONOR's smartphone case for the X9c.

Overall, when you factor in the X9c's specs, AI capabilities, its plethora of features, and most of all its tough-as-nail durability, it's a winning package from HONOR.