Honor’s Australian launch has been a solid one, starting with the flagship Magic V5 and mid-range 400 Pro, further expanding the lineup with the Magic 8 Pro, X9d 5G, and X6d 5G last month. It’s time to kick the tires on their rugged X9d 5G.
After their launch in Australia last year, Honor expanded their range of smartphones last month with the Magic 8 Pro, X9d 5G and X6d 5G rounding out a range of devices for everyone.
We took a look at the Magic V5 last year and were impressed with the design and performance of their flagship foldable. This time Honor have sent over their durable X9d 5G for review, sending the Reddish Brown model.
The phone launched on April 23 and is available now through Harvey Norman, The Good Guys JB Hifi for $699.
Offering a durable body that’s built to survive almost anything, the phone includes a massive 8,300mAh silicon-carbon battery giving up to three days of use on a single charge.
There’s a massive 108MP camera sensor on the rear with AI editing tools included offering on-device editing including AI Eraser, AI Cutout and more.
I’ve spent a couple of weeks using the Honor X9d 5G trying to run down that massive battery, and using it for day to day use. It’s launching hot on the heels of some top notch mid-range devices we’ve been checking out, and here’s how it stacks up.
Weighing in at just under 200 grams, the Honor X9d is still fairly light in the hand, and with a 7.76mm profile it sits comfortably in the hand, or slips easily into a bag or pocket.
The phone is available in three colours, Reddish Brown, Midnight Black and Sunrise Gold.
The Reddish Brown review unit looks gorgeous, with the gold frame accenting the colour nicely, and giving it a premium look. It has matching buttons which are nicely clickable, with the ports and buttons looking good in the gold frame.
The soft-touch leather-like material on the rear has a warm feel to it. I like this material, but it can be a bit divisive in terms of long-term wear.
The phones design belies the ruggedness of the phone, which has a quadruple IP66 & IP68 & IP69 & IP69K Water-resistance and Dust-resistance rating, with the IP69K letting it survive high-pressure water jets at up to 80°C for a few minutes.
The phone can also resist drops up to 2.5 metres using what Honor calls their Ultra-Bounce Anti-Drop technology, and the Ultra Tough Tempered Glass on the display helps keep it intact.
That large 6.79” AMOLED display has minimal bezel, offering a 94.6% screen-to-body ratio with the front-facing camera in the punch-hole notch the only real interruption to a lovely display.
The display is bright enough to view during the day, and has 120Hz refresh for smooth scrolling or gaming.
The colour reproduction is excellent though set to vivid by default which can be a little overwhelming – but you can change this quite easily in settings. The AMOLED display supports over a billion colours, and 100% of the DCI-P3 gamut, so you can get some very good images out of it.
The display is powered by the Adreno A810 GPU, paired with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 with 12GB RAM and 256GB of on-board storage (no microSD support).
It’s a decent processor for the price range. Boot up times are under 30 seconds, and it has good app load times – though you may take a second longer than higher end processors, and multi-tasking is decently snappy.
As usual, we ran the phone through 3DMark and Geekbench benchmarks, and while there’s no real measure for performance – they do give you a way to stack them up against the competition.
The phone includes dual-band Wi-Fi 6 support with Bluetooth 5.2, but uses a slower
USB 2.0 port which can make for slow data transfers if you connect to a PC – but doesn’t affect the charging speeds.
The Honor X9d comes with dual Nano-SIM support – but there’s no e-SIM support, an oddity in 2026, but not out of the ordinary and just something to be aware of.
The connectivity is excellent for me, but as usual your mileage may vary with your telco’s coverage in your area.
It’s hard to ignore the large camera ring on the rear of the phone, it’s dominant and contains a108MP main camera sensor which includes Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS), a 5MP ultra-wide angle camera and a 16MP camera embedded in the punch-hole notch.
The 108MP main sensor takes great shots during the day in good lighting, with decent quality low-light shots enhanced by AI. The ultra-wide sensor offers a wider field of view, capturing more in the frame – but at a reduced resolution.
As usual, the decision to not include a telephoto sensor is more budget related than technical. Honor has given you a 3x digital crop that works decently in a pinch, and you can blast it out to 10x digital zoom, but it does lose a lot of clarity.
There’s an 8300mAh Silicon Carbon battery inside the Honor X9d, with support for 66W wired charging but no wireless charging.
As far as usage goes, Honor lists up to three days battery life. While three days of use is possible, I found a comfortable two days of fairly heavy use before I wanted to charge.
On the charging front, as is sadly the norm these days, there’s no charging brick included with the phone. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like Honor sells their 66W charger here in Australia, but it does support PD charging.
I used a 100W PD USB-C charger and got from 0% to fully charged in just under an hour and a half.
The phone runs Android 15 with the December 2025 security patch out of the box, but there’s an immediate update to Android 16 with Magic OS 10 with the March 2026 Security Maintenance Release (SMR) as soon as you check.
It looks like Honor will be doing two OS updates for the X9d 5G, with
The UI of Magic OS is familiar enough to anyone who has used Android, and includes Gemini built-in, as well as Honor AI features including AI Subtitles, AI Translate and AI Writing help.
Honor AI has a few neat tricks including Magic Text which lets you extract text from an image, Knuckle Circle which lets you circle on the display and instantly find search text, find a product on ebay, Temu or more.
While Magic OS has a lot going for it, one thing it also has is bloatware.
During setup you’re asked if you want to install a large number of games – which you can simply unselect all and continue. Unfortunately, that’s not the only bloatware, with apps including Facebook, TikTok, Booking.com, Temu, LinkedIn and ReelShort installed by default.
There’s also a list of what appears to be ‘suggested’ apps in a folder called ‘Popular apps’ and ‘Top Apps’. These apps are from the HONOR App Market rather than Google Play. These folders do differ slightly in that the Top Apps folder has WPS Office, Trip.com, Agoda and Brick Blast installed, whereas the ‘Popular App’ folder appears to simply be placeholders which prompt you to download the app.
It’s annoying, but it is what it is. Spend a few minutes uninstalling the ones you don’t want.
The Honor X9d 5G is a great mid-range phone that truly shines for anyone needing extended battery life or a phone that’s going to keep up with them under some difficult circumstances.
At 9 it’s one of the best options for a phone that’s ruggedised, as well offering great battery life, but options including the Nothing Phone 4(a), Reno 15 series, Motorola Edge 70 series and even Samsung’s A-series devices are valuable options at this price point. You can even jump into options for Pixel and Apple devices if you extend your price range a little higher.
That said, the Honor X9d 5G offers a lot of performance, style and battery life in a body that will last.
You can find the Honor X9d 5G on-sale now through JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman and The Good Guys.
Daniel has been talking about, learning about and using tech since he was able to toggle switches and push buttons. If it flashes, turns on or off or connects he wants to use it, talk about it and learn more about it. Like this article? Buy me a coffee!
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