Huawei P9 – A stunning camera with mobile in it (Review)

It is becoming increasingly difficult for the mobiles to stand apart and stand tall. Innovation in the mobile industry is coming to a grinding halt. These days flagship devices are all about specification. Only a handful of mobiles are leading their flagship to a better user experience path. Huawei P9 is here to give you a better camera experience among all those powerful flagship devices. It has a high-end specification as well. The Huawei P9 is available from 17th of August for Rs.39,999 in India, sold exclusively via Flipkart.

Design

The Huawei P9 is a very light weight and thin mobile. It has solid build quality and impeccable craftsmanship. The edges are finely chamfered and the display glass has a curved edge to meet the metal seamlessly. The mobile has a flush flat design and there is no camera protrusion. The front has the 5.2 inch full HD display. On top of the display is the multicolored LED, front facing camera, earpiece and usual set of sensors. The right side has the volume and power keys. The left has the hybrid sim tray.

The 3.5 mm audio jack and the USB-C port are at the bottom. The back of the mobile has a dual camera setup, developed by Huawei in partnership with Leica. Perhaps this is the unique highlight of this mobile and we will talk about it in detail later in this post. The display and the camera strip are protected by Gorilla Glass 4. The fingerprint sensor is at the back and it is incredibly fast.

The design of P9 is a class above and it has quality construction. The size of the mobile is perfect for one hand usage and it has been a while since I have enjoyed a flagship device with a manageable size.

Display

As mentioned earlier, the Huawei P9 has a 5.2 inch Full HD Display. It is an IPS LCD Panel and it supports 1,920 x 1,080 resolution. The 1080p display is great on the P9. It has excellent black levels, which have seen only in AMOLED displays so far. It also has vibrant colors and the white balance is perfect. Sunlight readability is good, but I found it difficult to inspect photos on direct sunlight.

Hardware and Performance

The P9 is powered by Huawei’s own Kirin 955 processor. It has four cores clocked at 2.5 GHz and 4 cores at 1.8 GHz. It has 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage. During my test period, the mobile performed on par with any flagship device in the market right now. It may not have excellent score on benchmark test, but real life performance is what matters. The UI was handled smoothly and the mobile handled games and apps with ease. I loaded over 10 resource intensive games and the mobile handled them all with ease. But the mobile did heat up after a while of usage.

The 32GB storage can be increased up to 128 GB, but you will have to sacrifice on the dual sim capability. The Mobile has dual band WiFi, BT 4.2 and NFC. Sadly, it does not support VoLTE bands. The sound from the inbuilt speaker is loud and clear for your hands free calls. But it may not be a quality solution for watching movies or listening to music. The mobile has DTS audio and it is best enjoyed with headphones plugged in.

The fingerprint sensor on the mobile is very fast and accurate. It just takes 6 taps to register a fingerprint. It senses a fingerprint from any direction. It has multiple functions, like swipe down to bring notification, click pictures, app lock, etc…

Check out the specifications of Huawei P9

Software

P9 runs on Android 6.0 with Emotion UI or the EMUI running on top. The visual design language of EMUI is flat and simple. The UI has a lot of transition animations, which could have been avoided. It offers a lot of customization options. There is no app drawer and it has app desk like iPhone or MIUI. The EMUI has a bunch of features which come in very handy. Though the Huawei P9 is a 5.2 inch mobile, long press on the multi task button and you will get dual screen mode. In this mode you can use two apps at the same time. Swiping down the home screen with open the search bar on which you can search for any apps on the mobile.

In Battery saving mode the screen is black with large white icons. These icons point to only the critical apps in the mobile while data and other connectivity is disabled. There are other useful features like floating dock, motion control gestures, One Hand UI, voice control, etc… The mobile has an inbuilt activity tracker application, which is always on and tracking your steps. It can also track activity by GPS location. Though the tracker app is not very accurate and it cannot be disabled, it is a very handy feature.

Camera

Camera is the flag bearer in this powerful Huawei P9 mobile. The front has an 8 MP shooter and the rear has 2 x 12 MP sensors.

The front camera has a wide-angle lens and can shoot sharp details when there is ample light available. The display will light up with white light to serve as flash, if needed. It also that so-called beautification mode and I am not a big fan of it. So I take my selfies with skin smoothening algorithm turned off.

Huawei has teamed up with Leica for imaging solutions on their mobile and the P9 is the first mobile out of this partnership. Leica has closely worked with the lens manufacturers to make sure that it is compliant with Leica standards. Also Leica has worked with Huawei to make the camera software, the best out there. One of the sensor captures the actual image in all its RGB glory while the other sensor gives depth and contrast information.

It must not be considered that the other lens can shoot BW, if you hide the RGB sensor. The BW sensor captures the contrast information and interlaces it with the color details from the other sensor to capture stunning images. Now that is a very clever idea. Normally a single sensor system will be overloaded with both the information and the processing may not be good. With the dual lens arrangement the workload is shared and hence effective performance.

The camera performance and its UI is covered here.

Battery

As with many mobiles, battery is the achiles heel of the Huawei P9 as well. It hs a 3000 mAh battery but the battery runs out in less than 15 hours under normal usage. It has a fantastic camera and if you are on a trip and clicking a lot of pictures with it, make sure you carry a power bank along. It does gets charged up pretty quickly though.

Verdict

The P9 is a flagship device for Huawei. It carries the best of hardware and software which Huawei can bring out today. It is a perfect powerhouse in your pocket. It has a uber slick camera implementation, thanks to Huawei’s collaboration with Leica. But when you compare it with the other flagship devices available in the market, it would make you think twice before making the choice. Apart from the camera, the P9 has very little armor to fight with the competitors. It is priced at Rs 39999. It is definitely an expensive mobile, but this is not a mobile for everyone. It is a camera centric mobile and a piece of art. It is a perfect blend of technology and art. This mobile would be a best buy for anyone who appreciates photography and art.

It is available in Flipkart and available in 3 colors. Competitors for the Huawei P9 have 2k display, water proofing, high fidelity audio, powerful battery and so on. But the P9 does not offer any of those. It has a solid construction and sleek metal uni-body design. It has a decent display and a powerful processor. All this comes along with the package and the star attraction here is the camera. In the camera department, I don’s see any worthy competitor for the P9. So if you are looking for a powerful mobile with out of the world camera performance, Huawei P9 is the one for you.

Buy it here.