Huawei nova 9: The separation from Honor looks like this?

How seriously can we take a separation of two companies, if the first smartphones they each develop look almost identical? Visually, you can only distinguish both smartphones by their different labels on the back.

Inside, they both contain a Qualcomm Snapdragon 778 with the integrated Adreno 642L graphics unit, 8 GB of RAM, and either 128 or 256 GB internal storage. The camera elements also look identical, but the Honor 50 offers 108 + 8 + 2 + 2 MP and the Huawei nova 9, 50 + 8 + 2 + 2 MP. With 32 MP, both front cameras again offer similar equipment, and the camera software is also the same in both smartphones.

However, due to the trade limitations, Huawei has to make do without 5G in the nova 9, which means that this function was removed from the Snapdragon 778. In addition, the Android system also does not have access to Google Services, and while Honor uses Magic UI 4.2 as the operating system surface, Huawei uses EMUI 12.

A shorter battery life in the Huawei smartphone

The direct effect of these differences becomes apparent particularly in the shorter battery life of the nova 9. Even though at almost 11 hours, this is still good, it is also far from the 15 hours of the Honor 50. And that, although both have the same battery capacity of 4300 mAh. Looking at the 66-Watt quick chargers that are included with both smartphones, we can also see that there is still a connection between both companies.

And finally, the recommended retail price of the nova 9 is about 100 Euros (~$113) lower than that of the Honor 50. The lack of Google Services and 5G might even be a reason for some people to chose the Huawei smartphone. However, those who are looking for an almost identical smartphone with slightly better equipment will receive for example a better display calibration and better image reproduction with ultra-wide angle and low-light recordings, as well as faster storage in the Honor 50.

If you want to get a more detailed impression about the similarities, it is worth taking a look at our reviews of the Honor 50 and the Huawei nova 9.