Huawei P9 review - The Verge
The P9 is a flagship phone in every respect but the price. In the UK, this smartphone costs £450, which is less than Samsung’s regular Galaxy S7, less than LG’s G5 without any modular extras, and a lot less than HTC’s 10. I’ve spent ample time with each of these devices and I can say with confidence that Huawei’s cheaper price doesn’t translate into a poorer design. Purely in terms of ergonomics, my favorite phone from this bunch is Huawei’s.
Measuring just 6.95mm in thickness, the Huawei P9 is easily the slimmest from among the recent cadre of big-name Android releases, and it manages to accommodate two cameras on its rear without any extra protrusions. At the same spot where Samsung and HTC have camera bumps, Huawei goes the opposite way with a shallow valley accommodating the P9’s fingerprint sensor. This phone is light enough to be effortless, but not so slight as to be insubstantial. It is encased in an aluminum unibody, after all. The sides are straight and regular, but they’re not sharp and don’t dig into my palm. The USB-C port at the bottom is finished with perfect smoothness, whereas I’ve experienced many phones, the iPhone among them, that have a sharp edge to their charging ports.
I look at the P9’s design, ask myself how it could be improved, and I find no easy answers. Even the chamfers of the metal body are perfectly judged. This is an exceedingly common design feature these days, but on the P9 it’s somehow done better. No, this isn’t an empirical measure, but yes, it will be something you notice and enjoy while using the phone.
The biggest spec compromise that Huawei makes to hit its lower price point is in the resolution of the P9’s screen, which is a 5.2-inch 1080p IPS LCD. I’d make the same choice any day of the week, as none of the Quad HD alternatives present a tangible advantage to their greater resolution. That might change once mobile VR content becomes enticing enough for me to care to get a headset — those things benefit immensely from higher resolution — but for general smartphone use, the P9’s display is perfectly sufficient. To be fair to Samsung, HTC, and LG, their displays are more vibrant and prettier to look at, but that’s a matter of higher-quality components rather than having more pixels crammed in.
The battery doesn't last as long as its size would suggestHuawei keeps pace with its more reputable competitors by offering storage expandability via microSD card — the slot for it sits on the same tray as the nano-SIM card — and a 3,000mAh battery. Only the Xiaomi Mi 5 can compete with the P9 for the title of being the thinnest and lightest smartphone with a battery of that size. Unfortunately, the P9 differs in one important respect and that’s the actual battery life.
Even with its large battery, this phone consumes a lot of power when connected to LTE and runs out of juice comparatively quickly. On one particularly intensive day out at meetings — where I took notes on Google Keep like a true Born Mobile millennial — I found myself needing to recharge the P9 by the afternoon. I’m usually an extremist when it comes to power management and not being able to complete a productive day’s use without recharging came as an unhappy surprise. I shot photos, browsed the web, tweeted some wisecracks out into the ether — but I don’t think I did anything that would have tripped up, say, the HTC 10 in quite the same way. The Huawei difference? It uses the Chinese company’s own Kirin 955 processor rather than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 that has quickly become the flagship standard this year.
Like any other smartphone, the Huawei P9 is great at idling and lasts for a good couple of days if only connecting to Wi-Fi, but unlike its 2016 rivals, its efficiency when actually doing things is not impressive. This is one aspect of Huawei’s product design that hasn’t improved: I felt similarly let down by the Kirin chip inside 2014’s P7. One note of optimism for prospective US buyers: if the P9 makes its way to American shores, it’s highly likely that it will do so with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 powering it. In that case, you can probably expect battery life similar to that of the Xiaomi Mi 5, which has the same battery size and display specs.
No imaging revolution here, but still a good camera for most peopleMy feelings toward Huawei’s dual-camera system fluctuated from initial disdain — yet another imaging gimmick to avoid talking about how much better Apple and Samsung are — to substantial enthusiasm once I started taking pictures with it.
The way it works is straightforward: both rear cameras fire at the same time, with one taking a regular color image and the other taking only a black-and-white snap. Because it has no color filters, the latter sensor is able to absorb twice as much light and thus it provides useful contrast information that is integrated into the composite 12-megapixel image. This manifests itself nicely with some extremely sharp and noise-free closeups.
Co-branded with Leica, this camera system produces above average results that exhibit some pleasing post-processing. Like the iPhone, Huawei’s P9 punches up saturation and contrast — it makes strawberries redder, skies bluer, and twilight scenes brighter than they truly are — which serves to liven up images. It’s the Beats headphones of cameras, sacrificing a faithful reproduction of reality for a less accurate but actually more pleasing image.
What I don’t like about the P9’s camera is its inconsistency. Sometimes I’ll get a shot that makes me marvel at its precision, but on other occasions I’m greeted by disappointing mediocrity. Huawei isn’t shy about obscuring image noise with the help of blurring and post-processing, which tends to discard a lot of the finer detail in less than ideal lighting. I do like the way that the company has designed its image processing; I just happen to think others do this trick better than Huawei. Apple, Samsung, and LG retain more detail while still amping up the images to look more exciting. I consider the P9’s camera above the "good enough" threshold to satisfy most smartphone users, and it does take some lovely black-and-white shots with its monochrome sensor.
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