Honor 9X vs Realme 3 Pro: Notch Or Pop-Up Sensor, Who’s Winning Here?

While Honor is gearing up to launch its first pop-up smartphone in the country, it will face some big competition from the budget stalwarts. Realme X is going to be its biggest rival in the range, but the Honor 9X will also have to bear the heat from other top budget devices as Realme 3 Pro and Redmi Note 7 Pro.

Today, we will be comparing the upcoming Honor 9X with Realme bestseller, Realme 3 Pro.

It has been dominating in the market since launch, spurring up a new price war in the mid-budget smartphone segment. The new Honor 8X successor has a great set of features onboard, and most importantly, it’s on a budget.

Let’s begin.

Design & Build

Honor 9X comes with a polycarbonate body on the out, made to look like glass. It’s quite light and also feels premium in the hand. The smartphone features a gradient finish on the out with some cool colour combinations, made out of high-quality plastic. The patterns at the back does look cool and trendy.

Similarly, Realme 3 Pro also comes with a high-quality polycarbonate body. It’s fully plastic, but does feel premium to an extent. The colour schemes on Realme 3 Pro also feature gradient styled designs.

Both of the smartphones doesn’t come with a glass body design as other budget stalwarts like Redmi Note 7 Pro or Nokia 6.1 Plus.

Both the devices are notchless. Honor 9X has a pop-up sensor, while Z1 Pro sports a OnePlus 6T styled water drop notch on top.

Honor 9X has the rear camera module at the left side corner without any physical fingerprint sensor at the back, while the Realme 3 Pro has a physical fingerprint sensor with the camera module on the top left rear corner.

Interestingly, Honor 9X features a side-mounted fingerprint scanner as Samsung Galaxy S10E. It does help the device to remain clean and attractive just like other mid-range rivals with an in-display fingerprint sensor.

Both the devices are quite comfortable to hold without being very large. The weights are okay, overall ergonomics are great, the build quality is good and they are perfectly manufactured. Plastic over glass offers you with an added advantage to survive the accidental falls.

Display

Honor 9X sports a 6.59-inch Full HD+ OLED display with a screen resolution of 1080 x 2340 pixels. The display is quite vibrant with minimal bezels on the sides with a little chin down under and a physical fingerprint scanner on the side. The device has used a pop-up scanner on top to achieve a screen to body ratio of around 91 percent.

Plus, the OLED helps with the best of darks without any shadowing.

In comparison, Realme 3 Pro comes with a 6.3-inch Full HD+ IPS LCD display with a water drop notch on top offering a screen-to-body ratio of around 85 percent with a screen resolution of 2340 x 1080 pixels.

But it’s just a Full HD+ panel if compared to Honor 9X with an OLED panel.

Both the displays are great, and you won’t be able to find any noticeable difference at large. In broad daylight, you won’t face any issue using both the devices.

But if you go deep and try to look closely, the OLED panel does offer some extra advantage to Honor 9X. In terms of viewing experience and angles, the new Honor pop-up smartphone will get an extra point here.

Hardware & Storage

The newly launched Honor 9X runs on HiSilicon Kirin 810 SoC, a new in-house Huawei chip based on cutting edge 7nm architecture. Honor 9X will be available in multiple variants ranging between 4GB and 6GB RAM variants with 64GB and 128GB internal storage.

The new Kirin 810 SoC does offer some top-level performance on a budget.

While, the popular Realme 3 Pro runs on Qualcomm Snapdragon 710, manufactured on an 10nm architecture. It couples with Adreno 616 GPU.

In terms of daily performance, both Realme 3 Pro and Honor 9X can run mid-end games with ease along with extensive multitasking.

There won’t be any noticeable difference in daily use given the memory-heavy apps and social media. Both Kirin 810 and Snapdragon 710 will offer good experience in terms of extended gaming and extensive multitasking. But, given the need for extra performance, the Honor 9X will have an edge here.

Kirin 810 delivers AI performance at par with other flagship chips as Snapdragon 855 or Kirin 980.

Finally, the respective UIs will play their own roles to boost up the real-world smartphone performance. Both these smartphones can be expanded up to 512GB via an external microSD card.

Software

Both Honor 9X and Realme 3 Pro runs on Android 9 Pie. The Honor smartphone comes with EMUI skin on top. The newly improved UI does offer some refreshing features compared to the previous OS with an easy-to-use overall structure and few tweaks.

Based on the latest Android 9 Pie, the EMUI packs in a bunch of user-friendly features and functions.

On the other hand, Realme 3 Pro runs on the new Color OS 6 UI based on Android 9 Pie. The improved UI does offer some refreshing features with an easy-to-use structure. It’s a big upgrade over the last generation Color OS.

Based on the latest Android 9 Pie, it new UI packs in a bunch of user-friendly features and tweaks.

Camera

Honor 9X comes with a dual camera setup at the back featuring a 48MP f/1.8 primary sensor and a 2MP depth sensor. The additional third lens is available with the Pro variant, the 9X Pro. It features the third 8MP wide-angle lens. On top, Honor 9X sports a 16MP f/2.2 pop-up camera.

Realme 3 Pro also features a similar rear dual camera setup.

The latter features a camera system comprising of a 16-megapixel Sony IMX 519 primary sensory with an f/1.7 aperture, coupled with a secondary 5-megapixel depth sensor offering an f/2.4 aperture.

The primary sensor was used in last OnePlus flagship, OP 6T.

Up front Realme 3 Pro smartphone comes with the same 25MP Sony IMX 576 sensor with an f/2.4 aperture.

Both Realme 3 Pro and Honor 9X do a fair job offering a great dynamic range with almost accurate colours irrespective of lighting conditions. Though, Realme 3 Pro will have some in some areas with the additional imaging sensor.

Realme 3 Pro can take good detailed and sharp pictures in bright light with accurate colours. In poorly lit conditions, Realme 3 Pro and Honor 9X both manage to click decent photos with almost accurate details and colours.

Battery

Honor 9X is backed by a 4,000 mAh battery unit with a Type-C port. The chip supports fast charging support, but we don’t know whether Honor will ship a fast charger with the smartphone in India or not.

In comparison, the Realme smartphone has a slightly smaller battery.

Realme 3 Pro comes with a 4,045 mAh battery powered by VOOC 3.0 fast charging technology. It’s a Micro USB powered charging technology, offering 20W charging. It can charge up the device to 100 percent under 80 minutes.

Pricing & India Launch

Honor 9X has been launched in China at a very affordable starting price of CNY 1,399 (around Rs 14,000) for the base model with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage. The mid-end model with 6GB RAM and 64GB storage has been priced at CNY 1,599 (around Rs 16,000).

Finally, the top model with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage has been priced at CNY 1,899 (around Rs 19,000). The device will probably launch in India in August or early September.

In comparison, Realme 3 Pro is available in three models starting at Rs 13,999 for the base model with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage, Rs 15,999 for the mid-tier model with 6GB RAM and 64GB storage, and finally the current top-end at Rs 16,999 for the 6GB RAM model with 128GB storage.

Realme 3 Pro is available exclusively via Flipkart, Realme India online store and Realme offline outlets.

CONCLUSION: Honor 9X vs Realme 3 Pro

Backed by sleek and flagship-level features, both Realme 3 Pro and Honor 9X have something good to offer at a budget pricing. The newly launched Realme 3 Pro targets the under 15,000 crowd, while Honor 9X will be targeting the mid-range space in the country.

Realme 3 Pro does have some great features to challenge the likes of mid-budget bestsellers like Redmi Note 7 Pro and Galaxy Samsung M30. The list is now joined by another stellar smartphone, Vivo Z1 Pro.

In India, Honor 9X may start at around Rs 14,999. While there’s a lot of rivals available in the same range, the new Kirin 810 chip will help the Honor smartphone to stand out in the crowd.

If we go head to head, Realme 3 Pro does excel in a few departments, it may suit you if you don’t like mechanical sensors.

But again, Honor 9X will have some edge in terms of premium experience. The new device has a ton of great features at a very budget pricing.

If the company can fix up the price right in the country, it can turn out to be a bestseller in the range. The Huawei sub-brand is going to challenge Realme X directly with such similar set of features and performance. Realme X is also the closest rival of it in the range.

The new Honor smartphone has almost everything on-board you would need on a mid-range premium smartphone, and Realme 3 Pro would only suit the budget needs. The presence of an OLED panel, a top-range chip at a budget price, pop-up sensor and a few other features does help Honor 9X excel in the space.