Honor 9i (2018) India Launch Expected at Launch Event on July 24

Huawei sub-brand Honor has sent out invites of a launch event in India scheduled on July 24. At the event, Honor is expected to launch its latest smartphone in the market. The block your date invite does not reveal the name of the smartphone, and only has a hashtag 'NOORDINARYBEAUTY' written on it. However, speculation is rife that the Chinese manufacturer will launch the Honor 9i or Honor Play in India Additionally, rumours suggest that the Honor 9i will be rebranded for the Indian market as Honor 9X.

As mentioned, the launch event invite by Honor has the words 'No Ordinary Beauty' in Blue and Purple colours. Meanwhile, another GIF shared by the company comes with two Os that hint that the upcoming handset will feature a dual camera setup. It is expected that the manufacturer will launch either the Honor 9i or Honor Play in India, since they were the last Honor handsets to be unveiled. However, as per a report from last month, Honor will launch the Honor 9i (2018) smartphone as Honor 9X in the country. The phone will reportedly be priced around Rs 15,000. Honor is also expected to launch the Honor Note 10 soon, though it is unlikely that this handset will make its way to India right now.

To recall, Honor had unveiled the Honor 9i (2018) in China last month as the upgrade of the Honor 9i that was launched in India in October last year. The new model comes with a metal frame and has a mirror-finish back, and there are two storage variants - with 64GB and 128GB options. It runs Android 8.0 Oreo with EMUI 8.0 on top and features a 5.84-inch (1080x2280 pixels) full-HD+ IPS display. Under the hood, there is an octa-core HiSilicon Kirin 659 SoC, coupled with Mali T830-MP2 GPU. The smartphone has a dual rear camera setup with a 13-megapixel primary sensor and a 2-megapixel secondary sensor, along with an LED flash.

The Honor 9i (2018) price in China is CNY 1,399 (approximately Rs. 14,600) for the 64GB storage variant, while its 128GB option is available with a price tag of CNY 1,699 (roughly Rs. 17,800).

Honor Play was also launched by the company in China last month. The key features of the Honor Play are a 6.3-inch display with 19.5:9 aspect ratio and a 'notch', a HiSilicon Kirin 970 SoC, up to 6GB RAM, GPU Turbo technology, and more. The smartphone from Honor also comes with a '4D' gaming experience with real-time recognition of the game scene that vibrates the phone to match. Honor Play runs EMUI 8.2 based on Android 8.1 and sports a 6.3-inch full-HD+ (1080x2340 pixels) with 85 percent NTSC colour gamut. It is powered by the octa-core Huawei HiSilicon Kirin 970 SoC along with Mali-G72 GPU and the built-in NPU (neural processor unit).

In terms of optics, the Honor Play sports a dual camera setup with AI features. It has a 16-megapixel primary lens with f/2.2 aperture and PDAF, and a 2-megapixel secondary lens with f/2.4 aperture. At the front, the smartphone has a 16-megapixel camera with f/2.0 aperture. The Honor Play is equipped with 64GB of inbuilt storage, expandable via microSD card (up to 256GB).

The Honor Play is priced at CNY 1,999 (roughly Rs. 21,000) for the 4GB RAM variant. For the 6GB RAM model of the smartphone, Honor had priced it at CNY 2,399 (roughly Rs. 25,100)