OPPO F9 vs Honor Play: taking the competition in the mid-range a notch above

“The F9 comes with OPPO’s ingenious waterdrop notch design and premium glass-sandwich design as compared to Honor Play’s conventional metal-clad construction”

After a lot of teasing and speculations, OPPO recently launched its F9 and F9 Pro smartphones in India. These smartphones come with an ingenious waterdrop notch, the likes of which we have earlier seen on Essential Phone (first impressions) and more recently, on OPPO’s own R17. The Chinese brand has positioned the F9 under Rs 20,000 and at this price point, the smartphone goes up against Honor’s mid-range gaming phone the Honor Play. If you are in the market for buying a sub-Rs 20k smartphone and are confused regarding these two phones, you are in the right place. We pit the OPPO F9 against the Honor Play to see which one comes out on top. Stay with us to find out.

Design and display

While more and more smartphones these days feature glass bodies, the Honor Play is sticking to the conventional design and comes with an aluminium construction. The rear panel of the smartphone has a matte finish, which makes it less prone to smudges, and that’s a plus in our books. The OPPO F9 on the other hand, comes with an eye-catching glass-sandwich design with a petal-shaped pattern on the back. Further, the brand is offering the handset in three gradient hues Sunrise Red, Twilight Blue and Starry Purple, all of which reflect different colours based on the angle at which light hit them. Needless to say, if you are looking for a smartphone that will turn heads, the F9 is the way to go.

Coming to the display, both the OPPO F9 and Honor Play are notch-toting smartphones with a taller aspect ratio. The Honor Play comes with a 6.3-inch Full HD+ 19.5:9 display with a layer of 2.5D glass on the top. The F9 also comes with a 6.3-inch display with an FHD+ resolution. However, thanks to the waterdrop notch the OPPO handset has a higher screen-to-body ratio of 90.8 percent as compared to 83 percent on the Honor Play.

Hardware and software

Under the hood, the OPPO F9 comes powered by the MediaTek Helio P60 chipset, which is typically used in mid-range smartphones. In contrast, the Honor Play flaunts the flagship processor from Huawei HiSilicon Kirin 970. The SoC has also been fabricated using a die size of 10nm, ensuring a good balance between stellar performance and battery efficiency. The chip is further assisted by the brand’s GPU Turbo technology and also comes with a dedicated Neural Processing Unit for enabling AI capabilities. While P60 is also quite power efficient thanks to its 12nm fabrication, it can’t match up to the performance offered by the Kirin 970. As far as storage is concerned, both phones ship with 4GB RAM and 64GB ROM. You can also expand the memory further by making use of a microSD card. Interestingly, the smartphones also come with 6GB RAM variants which are priced at Rs 23,999. Interestingly, OPPO has termed the higher-end variant of its latest smartphone as the F9 Pro, while Honor Play is simply available in two different models.  

On the software front, both the Honor Play and OPPO F9 boot Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box. However, while the former runs Huawei’s EMUI 8.0 interface, the latter gets ColorOS 5.2 of OPPO, so it all boils down to your personal preference. 

Camera and battery

OPPO as a brand is known for its camera-centric smartphones and the F9 carries the legacy forward. The smartphone comes with a 16-megapixel sensor with f/1.85 aperture backed by a 2-megapixel secondary shooter with LED flash on the rear. For selfies, you get a 16MP snapper with Sensor HDR technology and AI Beautification 2.1 Technology. It must be noted that the F9 Pro ships with 25MP shooter at the front. 

The Honor Play also gets 16-megapixel + 2-megapixel setup on the back with bokeh support. There’s 16MP sensor at the front too. However, the smartphone misses out on Beautification features as well as AI capabilities available on the F9. 

As for the battery, the Honor Play comes with a 3,750mAh battery with support for fast charging. The F9 comes with a slightly smaller 3,500mAh cell but with support for OPPO’s VOOC Flash charge. The brand claims that the latest technology can juice up the battery up to 75 percent levels in just 30 minutes.

Closing thoughts

With the price being identical for both, this is the classic case of what you’re looking for playing an important role in decision making. Those who prefer to multitask heavily and play intensive games on their smartphone will be better off with the Honor Play, which comes with a flagship chipset, good cameras and a sturdy build quality. The OPPO F9 on the other hand, will appeal to the fashion brigade, who like their smartphone to be on the stylish side and love watching movies as the waterdrop screen will enhance that experience. Furthermore, the F9 will also appeal to those who like to purchase smartphone from their neighbourhood retailer. 

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