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Huawei Y9s In-Depth Hands-On

Huawei has launched one of its latest mid-range devices, the Y9s, in the Philippines. It sports a pop-up camera, triple rear cameras, a 4,000mAh battery, and a price tag of just under PHP 14k. Check it out!

The Huawei Y9s comes in two colors, Breathing Crystal and Midnight Black, with our unit here in the former colorway. It’s an absolute eye-candy, particularly with its sky blue to lavender gradient and the rainbow hue that appears whenever the rear catches the light. The device is rather robust, solid, and has a premium feel to it when held. Additionally, it’s also comfortable to hold due to its curved glass back.

The back of the Y9s houses a triple camera setup, consisting of a 48MP primary camera, 8MP ultra-wide, and a 2MP snapper. The module is slightly raised from the back of the smartphone; do expect a bit of a wobble when placing it on a surface.

Upfront, the Y9s has a massive 6.59-inch FullView display with slim bezels on the sides. It’s an almost full-screen display, with thin bezels on the sides and a slightly wider chin. The screen is pretty immersive as there’s no notch nor hole-punch camera module.

Instead of a notch or a hole-punch, what the Y9s does have is a 16MP pop-up front camera, situated up top along with the dual SIM tray and the dedicated micro SD card slot.

On the right, we get the volume rocker and the power button that doubles as a fingerprint sensor. The placement is just right, and the thumb rests precisely on the side-mounted fingerprint sensor whenever the device is held. The left side of the device is bare without any buttons and the like.

Down below, we get a 3.5mm headphone jack, a noise-canceling microphone, a single downward-firing speaker, and a USB Type-C port right between all of them.

Under the hood, the Y9s has a Kirin 710F processor, paired with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage. We ran the device under several benchmarks and yielded the following results:

AnTuTu – 181,845
Geekbench – 318 (Single-core), 1,251 (Multi-core)
3D Mark – 875 (SSE – OpenGL ES)
PCMark – 5,945
AndroBench – 811.97 MB/s (read), 381.39 MB/s (write)

Navigating and swiping through the device was smooth sailing. Basic tasks such as social media browsing, media streaming, and productivity work won’t be an issue with the Y9s. We’ll let you know more about its performance and gaming capabilities once we take the device for a full review.

We took a couple of sample shots with the Y9s’ cameras. With the rear cameras, the photos have ample detail and sharpness to them. However, we think that the colors are somewhat muted. In wide-angle mode, though, the colors appear more vibrant, thanks to a boost in saturation.

Similar to the rear cameras, the selfie camera produces photos that have decent details to them. Although the images look a little washed out and some selfies appear to be overexposed as well.

Other features of the Huawei Y9s include a 4,000mAh battery, storage expansion up to 512GB, and runs Android 9 Pie with EMUI 9.1 on top. It also has Google apps and services pre-installed in it. The Huawei Y9s (6GB + 128GB) is priced at PHP 13,990USD 238INR 20,210EUR 227CNY 1,736.

Huawei Y9s specs:
6.59-inch FHD+ (1080 x 2340) IPS display
Kirin 710F Octa-core Processor
6GB RAM
128GB Storage
Micro SD Card up to 512GB
48MP F1.8 main + 8MP F2.4 ultra-wide-angle + 2MP F2.4 triple rear cameras
16MP F2.2 pop-up front camera
Hybrid Dual Nano SIM
4G LTE
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 4.2
GPS, AGPS, Glonass, BeiDou
USB Type-C
Side-mounted fingerprint scanner
3.5mm audio jack
EMUI 9.1 (Android 9.0 Pie)
4,000mAh battery
163.1mm x 77.2mm x 8.8mm
206g
Breathing Crystal, Midnight Black