Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 Review: Full Screen Experience

This is the first full-screen phone from Huawei with a pop-up camera for selfies. Read through our full Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 review.

Huawei has proudly launched a new full-screen smartphone with a pop-up camera, the new Y9 Prime 2019. Y series from Huawei has always been targeted towards the youth. With vibrant designs, bright colors and a value-focused price, Y series in markets like Pakistan proves to be a great seller. To build up from last year’s Y9 2019 — which was actually announced in 2018, the brand has drafted up the latest Y9 Prime 2019 and we will be taking a detailed look at it in this complete review!

To remove the need for a notch, over the past few months, we have seen brands come up with unique solutions. Some resorted to sliding backs, while others went with a pop-up camera. However, regardless of whatever the solution was, all devices were priced within the flagship range of 800-1000 USD. Changing that, Huawei has promised to provide users a full-screen experience at a much lesser price through Y9 Prime 2019. Utilizing the phone as a daily and thoroughly testing it, here is our detailed review!

Huawei Y9 Prime, Review

Here are the tech specs for Huawei’s Y9 Prime 2019:

  • Network: (GSM / FDD / TDD / WCDMA)
  • Display: 6.59-inch Display (2340 x 1080, 391 PPI)
  • Processor: Hisilicon Kirin 710F
  • OS: Android 9.0, EMUI 9.0
  • Camera Rear: 16MP + 8MP + 2MP
  • Camera Front: 16MP FF
  • Connectivity: USB Type-C, Bluetooth and 3.5mm Headphone Jack
  • Memory: 4GB RAM + 64GB Storage / 4GB RAM + 128GB Storage
  • Dimension: 163.5 x 77.3 x 8.8 mm
  • Battery: 4,000mAh

Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 Review: Exterior and Design

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Huawei’s philosophy with phone design has really been refined over the past few years. The brand, after numerous phone releases, has developed a unique identity for itself which is quite hard on its own. For Y9 Prime 2019, the phone follows a very similar design layout as to older Y9 2019. For materials, the complete chassis is plastic — we are seeing a lot of this on new value phones.

Going around the phone and starting from the front, this is where Y9 Prime 2019 shines! Thanks to the pop-up camera module, the front display has no notch and quite minimal bezels. This detail alone gives Y9 Prime 2019 a great advantage over its competitors in the same price bracket. As there is no notch, you really feel that you are holding a glass slab! Further, there is an earpiece up-top as well. Due to such minimal bezels, the proximity sensor from the top had to be removed which means the phone sometimes has difficulty turning the screen-off during a call. But, once you get used to holding it correctly, its not a major problem just a slight adaptation. That’s it for the front.

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Before we move on to other sides, the front pop-up camera deserves some attention. Placed slightly offset to the left, the front camera automatically gets activated when an app requests to utilize it. There are motors placed that raise and lower the camera. While you can use software to assign sound to pop-up function, having those off, the motors don’t make considerable noise. Further, Huawei has managed to do a great job in integrating the pop-up module into a standard design as users who are unexpecting of it would not be able to guess that there is a pop-up camera as there is no evident bump. In our tests, the functionality was reliable and not once did the camera fail on us.

Inspecting the back, we had our unit shipped in the beautiful Emerald Green color. For other options, there is Midnight Black and Sapphire Blue. Uniquely, Huawei has gone with a dual-tone finish, where the top quarter of the phone is a darker shade and rest is lighter — similar to Pixel’s design. Also, the phone is curved from the edges which makes it easier to hold and feels a bit narrower in the hand. There is a fingerprint sensor on the back and new from last year, are three rear-facing cameras.

For each of the sides, all buttons are placed on the right edge just like other Huawei phones. There is a USB Type-C port at the bottom, speaker grill and also a headphone jack as well. For the left side, this is left completely blank. For the top edge, there is the SIM tray and also, the front camera as well.

Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 Review: Internal Hardware and Performance

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– Display

Absence of notch and minimal bezels are two things which make Y9 Prime 2019’s display such a pleasure to use. For technicals, the display technology being utilized is TFT LCD (LTPS) at a resolution of 2340 x 1080. For what it is, the colors are quite vivid and text is crips as well.

Arranged in a taller screen ratio, the screen size is 6.59 inches diagonally hence giving it a narrower grip which is easier to hold. For brightness, the display gets adequately bright in indoor usage as well as outdoors.

– Processor, Storage and RAM

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Coming towards the internals, Y9 Prime 2019 makes use of Huawei’s own HiSilicon 710F chipset. This processor performs really well for a value oriented phone and has a strong focus on efficiency which is a big plus. For our tests, we ran loads of apps on the phone, piled up multiple apps at once and found that Y9 Prime 2019 was able to handle it all quite well! For daily tasks, there were no hiccups or problems or even slow-downs.

For RAM, the phone comes with standard 4GB but there is a choice of internal storage either 64GB or 128GB. Glad to see Huawei offering the same RAM regardless of which storage capacity a user picks. Further there is support for microSD card as well for storage expansion. Also, we did run AnTuTu benchmark and here are the results:

– Battery

Huawei’s Y9 Prime 2019 comes with a large 4,000mAh battery module. Combined with the efficient chipset and great software, we are glad to report this phone is easily a one-day and more phone! With features such as 4G LTE, Bluetooth enabled and utilizing apps heavily, we were able to get a complete day’s worth of usage and more for the next day. If you use your phone diligently, battery can easily be extended to two-days. For onscreen time, we were averaging about 8 hours on a single charge!

Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 Review: Camera

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Stepping up from Y9 2019, Y9 Prime 2019 has a triple rear-lens setup. The distrubition goes as 16MP main sensor, 8MP ultra-wide angle lens and a 2MP module for better bokeh shots. We appreciate Huawei inlcuding a wide-angle lens as it seems the most practical for any dual or triple-lens camera phones. Further, the phone has support for HDR, AI and Night Mode. All in all, the camera experience is quite competitive on the Y9 Prime 2019. The photos that come out are really good and if there is adequate lighting, you can grab some stunning photographs.

For lowlight shots, there is a dedicated Night Mode that works spectacularly. Obviously, you wont be able to grab as crisp photos as P30 Pro but for the price, Y9 Prime 2019 has a great Night Mode setup. The photos have less noise and the are processed quite well. Definitely take a look at these beautiful shots we were able to capture with Y9 Prime 2019’s camera:

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Night Mode

Lastly, the front camera experience. It is great as well! The 16MP resolution makes for sharp selfies. Further, you can take portrait shots which is a big plus. Moreover, there are loads of software features for modifying your selfies and the changes reflect right on the live viewfinder rather than only showing up in final photos.

Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 Review: Software

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Y9 Prime 2019 utilizes Huawei’s premiere EMUI software skin. The version shipped on Y9 Prime 2019 is EMUI 9.0.1 which is based on Android 9.0 Pie. Customization and efficient are two words which describe the overall experience quite well. There are loads of options to customize and tweak. Further, EMUI comes filled with number of optimization functions that are focused on giving you best performance and the best battery life.

Default bundled Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 Apps and Features:

  • Phone Manager: This is sort of a central app provided by Huawei to overview your phone stats and monitor it. It is helpful for cleaning out junk from storage and seeing which apps use the most RAM and all of that sort.
  • Themes: Huawei provides this Theme app from which you can download extensive themes for your EMUI device. The good thing is, it has a variety of selection and you can easily filter through.
  • HiGame: A sort of redundancy towards Google Play but HiGame basically provides the best games which Huawei has helped in development for its smartphones. Good to browse through when you are searching for an optimized game for your phone.
  • Mini Screen View: This built-in mode allows you to shorten the whole display towards the bottom of the screen so that you can use the phone effectively with one hand.
  • Huawei Clone: For users transferring from older smartphones, Huawei Clone offers you to copy over older SMS, photos and other user data to your new Y9 Prime 2019 quite effectively and automatically.

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Taimur Akmal
Taimur Akmal

Devoted writer, enjoys developing code. Appreciates excellent food, exceptional coffee and great company. He is also into sublime design and nicely built cars.

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