Huawei’s sub-brand Honor is expected to officially introduce the upcoming Honor 9 smartphone on June 12, with press invites for the unveiling event having already emerged online, and the smartphone now returns to the spotlight once again thanks to a new leak that indicates the device will not run Huawei’s usual EMUI proprietary user interface. Instead, the leaked image at hand suggests that the Honor 9 will borrow its software from the Honor Magic and run Magic Live UI instead.
The Honor 9 was initially expected to run EMUI 5.0 based on Android Nougat but judging by the latest leak, it would appear that at least one of the expected three main Honor 9 variants will run the company’s other proprietary UI based on artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, namely the Magic Live version 1.0.533. Magic Live was first introduced alongside the Honor Magic smartphone in December 2016, and the software promises more personalization options compared to EMUI, as well as a wide range of AI-powered features. This includes WiseScreen which can be described as a two-layer security functionality designed to detect both the user’s eyes and hands, as well as FaceCode Intelligent Recognition which prevents notifications to be shown on the lock screen when the smartphone is picked up by a person other than the owner. The smartphone shown in the leaked image is identified by the model number “STF-AL10” which is the same Honor 9 variant that received its certificate from TENAA in May 2017.
Regardless of what operating system the Honor 9 will employ, the smartphone is expected to make use of a 5.15-inch display panel with a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, as well as Huawei’s in-house Kirin 960 system-on-chip (SoC) housing eight 64-bit CPU cores making use of the big.LITTLE architecture, and the Mali-G71 MP8 eight-core graphics chip. The device should also incorporate 4GB or 6GB of RAM, a dual camera setup comprising a 20-megapixel and 12-megapixel sensor, an additional 8-megapixel front-facing shooter, a fingerprint scanner embedded in its physical home button, and a 3,100mAh non-removable battery wrapped in a body made of metal and glass. More details on the Honor 9 are expected to follow soon, no later than Monday, June 12.