Pocket-friendly phones that you may not want to miss!

Oppo 15 and Honor 9X. (Photo: IANS)


The mid-segment and lower mid-segment of the smartphone industry capture the highest amount of market in India. It is in these two segments that one can see maximum innovation. Recently, Chinese mobile makers Oppo and Honor came up with two devices ~ Oppo F15 and Honor 9X respectively. We checked both devices.

Oppo F15: A good camera phone

After a long time, Oppo has come up with something new in its popular F series. Priced at Rs 19,990 for 8GB/128GB, the device has everything that one needs. It has good camera performance, satisfactory battery backup and decent performance but lets down with its lack of glass body. In terms of design, the phone is light, looks good with the two-colour gradient at the back and its curvy edges allow it to fit well in the hand.
 As for display, Oppo F15 has an impressive display size of 6.4 inches, which is an AMOLED capacitive touch screen. It means one can enjoy high definition content. Also, it has a screen resolution of 1080×2400 pixels and has 408 PPI density that makes the colour reproduction very bright and visibility fine in the bright daylight.
 In terms of processor, F15 is equipped with Mediatek MT6771V Helio P70 and runs on ColorOS 6.1.2 on top of Android 9.0 Pie. It runs without any glitch and performs any task or even multi-tasks with ease.
 On the camera front, Oppo F15 is equipped with quad camera ~ primary sensor is a wide lens of 48MP, 8MP ultra-wide lens, 2MP portrait lens and 2MP mono lens.

 Its selfie camera has 16MP with an aperture of f/2.0. Overall the cameras are very good, with picture quality worth sharing on social media. It won’t be wrong to call the camera the phone’s USP. It has a 4,000mAh battery, which very powerful and lasts the whole day. Another interesting part of the phone is that it comes with 20W fast charger, which is VOOC Flash Charge 3.0. This means it charges very fast.

Honor 9X: A budget-friendly phone

In the budget segment, Honor really does well in the market. Its recent launch, Honor 9X, priced at Rs 13,999, is a good phone with decent triple camera and a powerful battery. However, its performance and design let the phone down. The glossy PCB panel makes the phone beautiful but also prone to smudges. It has no notch. Therefore, the front camera has a motorized pop-up selfie camera. It comes up only when you have to take selfie.
 In terms of display, the Honor 9X sports a 6.59 inch LTPS IPS LCD screen, 19:5:9 aspect ratio and a screen resolution of 2340×1080 pixels. It means one won’t face any visibility issue, be it any time of the day. Even the colour reproduction is up to the mark. On the specification front, Honor 9X is powered by a Kirin 710F chip set of Huawei and runs on the EMUI 9.1, based on Android 9 Pie.


 The phone runs fine as long as you have normal usage, but not with the heavy games or multitasking as it gets slowed. Honor 9X is equipped with the triple camera ~ 48MP, 8MP ultra-wide and 2MP depth sensor. It means you will have brilliant pictures in proper daylight, but the same can’t be said in unfavourable lighting condition. Its front 16 MP pop-up camera will definitely please selfie lovers as it takes good pictures. The Honor 9X is equipped with powerful 4,000mAh battery. Once charged one can use it the whole day for moderate users, not extensive users, who may need to carry the charger along.