On this occasion, we want to thank the Homtom company for leaving us this Homtom S9 Plus to review and put it to the test.
The terminal comes in a black cardboard box with the brand name. At the bottom, the model and the characteristics of the airport appear. When opening it, we find the terminal on the right side and the left an elongated box.
In this box, we find the micro-USB cable, a 5V and 2A output European current charger, and a micro-USB USB cable. A package under the phone includes a screen protector, a transparent hard case, and a small instruction manual.
Design and Screen
What is most striking about this Homtom S9 Plus is its design. It is a gigantic and very square phone with very straight lines, with the sides and back in silver chrome color.
Like most phones, it is a unibody terminal that cannot remove the battery. It is made of metal, and its weight is 228gr. Its dimensions are 74.5 mm wide, 158.8 mm long, and 8.2 mm thick.
The screen is a 6″ diagonal IPS LCD, with a screen format (or aspect ratio) of 18:9. The valuable surface of this is 78%, and it has a glass with 2.5D rounded edges and hardly any edges. The resolution is HD + with 1440 x 720 pixels and a density of 268 dpi. In whole light, it looks good, but on apparent days, you will have to strain your eyes a bit. The screen’s brightness does not vary much from the middle of the brightness bar.
Above the screen, you have a small traditional speaker for calls, and just below, you have the central “Start” button and the fingerprint sensor. To the left of this is the selfie camera. In this case, next to the main switch, it does not have physical navigation buttons that will appear on the screen when we need them. I think it is a mistake since there is wasted space.
The rear area has a smooth chrome metallic finish (mirror effect). At the top left is the dual camera with a led flash. These cameras have a slight relief of 1mm. At the bottom is the brand logo.
And although it may seem silly, I did not like finding the on and off buttons, and volume down and up buttons on the left, leaving the right part completely free and leaving the slot for SIM cards. At the top is the 3.5mm headphone jack, and at the bottom is a row of holes for the speaker, microphone, and slot for the micro-USB cable.
Power and Hardware
This Homtom S9 Plus is a mid-range mobile, around €130. It incorporates a MediaTek MT6750T 8-core processor with a clock frequency of 1.5GHz with a dual 64-bit ARM Cortex-A53 architecture. As for the graphics, it has an ARM Mali-T860 MP2 GPU and has 4Gb of RAM so that we don’t have to close applications.
And to get an idea of the phone’s power and to be able to compare it with others, I subjected it to the AnTuTu version 7 performance test, and the terminal obtained 56084 points.
After testing it for a week, it has behaved correctly during everyday application use. When I started testing applications when switching between them, I noticed a bit of “lag” or delay, but nothing that could affect the regular use of the phone.
I have had some more problems in the games, not only because there was more delay when starting the games, but because despite pressing the screen, the game did not respond immediately, and I had to insist several times. It was complicated for me to play.
It has 64 GB of storage space, which leaves us with 54.10 GB for our own use if we remove what the operating system occupies.
The device is heard loudly, reaching 75 DBS in the ringtone, although it is not of high quality since it shows sound distortions.
Software
This mobile brings the Android 7.0 Nougat multilanguage version under a customization layer that includes native Android applications such as a video player, a calculator, a file manager, and FM radio. This layer adds a splash of color and makes the icons look like you might have Huawei, LG, or Samsung. On the other hand, you have Google services without having to install anything: the Play Store application store, the Chrome browser, Gmail, and the Maps application.
As in previous versions of Android, in the main Settings menu, we find the “schedule on and off” function, the internet sharing function, and several applications to configure the screen, notifications, and a screen assistant.
It also has a fast boot mode, which reduces the time it takes to power up.
