Huawei P9 Specs, features, price and feedback

Huawei has launched the Huawei P9 in August, 2016. The unique selling point of the new offering from Huawei is its camera. The phone has been designed in association with Leica Camera AG, who are the world leaders in camera and sports optics arena. The phone is available in Ceramic White, Haze Gold, Rose Gold, Titanium Grey, Mystic Silver and Prestige Gold color options.

Design and bulid

It features all metal unibody design. It is quite slimmer and lighter in comparison with other competing devices. The physical dimensions read 145 x 70.9 x 7 mm and it weighs 144 grams. The screen curves over the edges giving it a rounded appearance. The phone is quite easy to handle with its 5.2 inch display.

Display

Huawei P9 has a 5.2 inch full HD IPS display. The pixel density reads 423 ppi. Some of us can feel disappointed with the lack of quad HD display given the high price point that the phone has been targetted at. However, there are no reasons to worry, the screen is quite bright and provides a great deal of clarity. Color temperatures seem to be on a warmer side, though you can set it as per your preferences. The display does come with Corning Gorilla Glass protection.

Hardware

The Huawei P9 is powered by Kirin 955 octa core processor that clocks at 2.5 GHz. The internal storage reads 32 GB, coupled with a whopping 3 GB of RAM. The storage capacity is expandable by another 256 GB. For the uninitiated, Huawei uses its own processors in its devices.

Software and performance

The smartphone runs on Android Marshmallow. We are aware of the goodies that have been brought with the Marshmallow update like the Doze, improved RAM management and permissions management. The software has a personalised skinning by Emotions UI. It does come with an excellent phone app.

The phone does run quite smoothly and effortlessly with the high end processor and a 3GB RAM. Resource hungry games and apps work seamlessly and do not stutter.

Cameras

Well, as said before, this is the best ever feature on Huawei P9. The rear camera has a resolution of 12 MP, but what makes it stand apart is the dual sensors for the rear camera. One of the sensors handles the RGB, while the other is for Monochrome. The monochrome sensor takes care of how much light is let inside the the camera and the RGB sensor manages to capture the colors. The software then combines both those sets of information and arrives at a single image. The autofocus system is again quite experimental with a combination of laser auto focus and phase detection. However, there is no Optical Image Stabilisation. The camera app comes with three modes viz standard, vivid, and smooth. Low light photography is quite excellent. Having said those positive things about the camera, I am a little disappointed with the lack of 4K video capability. The phone supports slow motion and time lapse video recording.

What I liked about it?

Well, the camera is indeed impressive. Agreed, there are a few shortcomings, but still it is one of the best. The able hardware and RAM make it a winner when it comes to the performance. The display size makes it one of the best phones when it comes to comfortability.

What I did not like?

Well, nothing much comes to the mind in terms of negative aspects of the device. The Emotions UI appears a little out of date and dull. The interface is not classy as it should have been at the price point that the device has been launched.

Price and availability

The Huawei P9 has been priced at Rs. 39999. It is available on Flipkart which is the official E Commerce partner for Huawei. You may also buy it on the official Huawei store.

Huawei has launched one of the expensive device in the market with the release of P9. The price in the Indian market is going to be 39999 RS as per the news sources. It is available on Amazon and the official website. If you check the specification with other devices of lower price, you'd find that P9 doesn't offer any ground breaking features and specifications.

Camera : Though camera has higher resolution, you'd find that for a phone priced 39K and with 12 MP doesn't give picture quality that replaces DSLR camera of price lower than itself. It has auto focused f/2.5 shot something you'd not prefer for the nature and the motion photography. This model also has P9 Lite version which however takes images with better sharpness. However for the casual photography, the camera is good enough for the normal users who want to take the images of their everyday life and other places.

Network: Device support EVA-L09 NFC standard. As for the network band support it has support for most common asian 2G, 3G and 4G spectrum. For the India release expect it to be supporting the spectrum as per Indian standards. Apart from network and NFC, you'd find regular Bluetooth, Wifi and hotspot support included.

Hardware: The device has Type C -1 reversible connector. So you may have to buy the OTG cable accordingly. Also the device has the microSD support of 256 GB. It has the 3GB and 4GB Model with the base storage of 32GB and 64GB. The device has octa core Cortex-A53 processor so you can expect the device to perform good for gaming and other high CPU tasks.

Battery : Based on the reviews so far, the battery life is good with and without network enabled as per the tests. There is also battery saver mode that helps keeping the processes to minimum. The physical battery is non removable Li-Ion 3000 mAh battery.

Android Custom ROM: The device has the Emotion ROM based on the Marshmallow version of the android. Though the tweaks are mostly cosmetic, you don't find much gain from the available set of the features in the ROM. However it has lot of small improvements over the vanilla install of android.

Though the device has powerful hardware specification, you should not choose it for the camera. As the camera isn't that impressive based on some of the photography tests. Also for price like this you can expect it to have better specs as it can be replacing the DSLR camera for some people. It has really good specs for the gaming, image manipulation, video editing etc. And you'd find the device to be performing really good.

Some of the displayed features of the phone are - long scroll screenshot. This feature is not exclusive to this phone or even the android version in the phone. As this feature is already existing in the MIUI 8 and other android updates in other phones.

Here goes the details of Huawei P9 smartphone that includes user feedback as well.

The Physical Details
Released on April 2016, this smartphone from Huawei comes with the Dimensions of 145.00 x 70.90 x 6.95 (mm) weighing 144.00 (g). The phone has four colour variants Gold, Silver, White and Grey.

Display
The Screen size of the phone is 5.20 (inches) that has a Resolution of 1080x1920 pixels with 423(PPI).

The Hardware
The Huwaei P9 has a powerful Processor of 1.8GHz octa-core HiSilicon Kirin 955 make. The phone has a huge RAM of 3GB with a massive Internal storage of 32GB which can be further expanded through a microSD up to 256 GB.

The Software
The Huawei P9 works on Android 6.0 Operating System with a Skin Emotion of UI 4.1.

The Camera
With such expensive price tag, the Camera of the phone is a bit disappointing as the Rear camera is only 12-megapixel and the Front camera is of 8-megapixel.

Connectivity
The phone has the basic and standard connectivity features like
Wi-Fi of 802.11 a/ b/ g/ n/ ac, GPS, Bluetooth of v 4.20, NFC,
But it doesn't have FM. It has Support for 3G, 4G/ LTE.
Yes it does have USB OTG functionality.

Sensors
The phone is having these following sensors:
Compass/ Magnetometer, Proximity sensor, Fingerprint, Accelerometer, Ambient light sensor and Gyroscope. But it doesn't have Barometer and Temperature sensors.

Battery
The Huawei P9 is powered with a 3000mAh capacity non-removable battery.

The GoodThough the Camera is of not that high megapixel one, the phone is rated with quite good camera performance with an impressive low-light shooting feature. It has an attractive look with a sturdy and well-built body. The fingerprint sensor is quick in response and works accurately.

The Bad
The phone is over priced for the packed in features which are now available in lesser priced phones. There is no OIS or 4K video recording facility. The Performance even falls short from that of flagship levels.

Price:
Rs. 39999