Key Features
- Review Price: £449.00
- Dual lens camera setup
- Kirin CPU
- 3GB RAM
- 5.2-inch FHD display
- 3000mAh battery
- Android Marshmallow with EMUI
What is the Huawei P9?
The Huawei P11/P20 might be coming soon, but the older Huawei P9 is now available for less than £300 and even though it’s nearly two years old it’s still a decent phone.
Little was updated in the move the P10, so here you’ve still got those two Leica lenses and a 5-inch FHD display. Read on for our full review.
Huawei P9 – Design
2016 has been a great year for Android fans, and seen the release of some of the prettiest smartphones ever. Highlights have included the super-swish Samsung Galaxy S7, the awesomely metal HTC 10 and the modular LG G5.
The P9 stands alongside these stellar handsets on the design front and is the best-looking smartphone Huawei’s ever made. It has an undeniable iPhone 6S-ish feel, featuring a unibody metal chassis with flat sides. The metal, combined with the P9’s almost bezel-free display gives the phone a feel that’s on par with any 2016 flagship I’ve tested.
Huawei’s also loaded the P9 with a decent portfolio of connectivity. At its bottom you’ll find a USB Type-C port, and along its long right-hand side you’ll find a Nano SIM and microSD card slot. The microSD will let you add a further 128GB of space to the phone’s inbuilt 32GB/64GB. But be warned, if you’re planning on taking advantage of the microSD, the P9 doesn’t support Android Marshmallow‘s Adoptable Storage feature.
Adoptable Storage lets you instruct your phone to treat SD card storage like native storage – meaning you can do things like install apps directly to the SD card. On past handsets, such as the HTC One A9, I’ve found the feature massively helpful, as it let me walk around with my entire music and games library downloaded with space to spare.
There’s a good reason why Huawei, and other phone makers including Samsung and LG, are turning Adoptable Storage off. Running Adoptable Storage means you can’t swap the SD card out without damaging/impacting the smartphone’s performance. Using a cheap SD card will also hamper the phone’s overall performance, so Huawei’s decision is understandable, albeit a little disappointing in my mind.
Outside of this, Huawei’s loaded the P9 with a Level 4 fingerprint scanner on its back. Huawei claims the scanner is a marked step up from the Level 3 scanners seen on competing phones and will be noticeably faster and more accurate than competitors.
I didn’t notice much of a difference between it and competing fingerprint scanners like the ones seen on the Galaxy S7 or Nexus 5X. But this isn’t an issue and the scanner is still more than good enough. It’s super-fast and the only times it failed to recognise my fingerprint was when I was using the phone in rain, or had dirty hands.
Huawei’s also made it so you can use the scanner to enact some basic commands. The controls are activated in the phone’s settings menu and let you do things like pull down the notification panel and scroll through photos by swiping on the scanner. The feature sounds minor, but I found myself using the scanner to check incoming alerts on a regular basis after only a couple of days with the P9.
Build quality is solid. Drop testing it on my wooden kitchen floor, the Huawei P9 survived crack- and chip-free. Though the body’s metal does feel slightly more flimsy than the alloy used on the HTC 10, and can be prone to picking up dirt marks.
The phone’s also not as comfortable to hold as the Galaxy S7 or HTC 10. Its miniscule 7mm thickness, combined with its flat sides, can make it feel slightly slippery – which will be an issue for clumsy users who regularly drop their phones.
Huawei P9 – Display
To spec-heads the Huawei P9’s 5.2-inch display isn’t anything to write home about. The FHD 1080 x 1920 resolution puts it well behind competing smartphones such as the Galaxy S7, which generally have cornea-slicingly sharp QHD 2560 x 1440 resolutions. But being honest, with everyday use I didn’t have any serious complaints about the screen.
There’s been a lot of debate about when the human eye stops being able to tell the difference between resolutions. Some people say it’s when we break the 300ppi (pixels per inch) density milestone, while others think we can spot the difference past 500 ppi. Whatever the truth of the matter, I found the P9’s 423ppi display more than sharp enough. Icons and text are universally sharp and pleasingly free of any signs of pixelation.
The use of LCD screen technology ensures blacks are nicely deep and colours have a good amount of pop, without looking over-saturated. The phone’s colour temperature setting also makes it quick and easy to adjust it to meet your personal preference.
White levels are slightly muddy compared to competing handsets, but are far from terrible, and viewing angles, while not the best I’ve seen, are suitably wide. All in all, the P9’s screen isn’t the best around – that title goes jointly to those on the Galaxy S7 and HTC 10 – but it’s more than fit for purpose. 99% of people will have no issue with it.
Huawei P9 – Software
Huawei’s insistence on loading its God-awful Emotion skin onto handsets has been a constant problem. I’ve never liked Android skins, as they generally add bloatware, make needless changes to Android’s now excellent user interface and delay how quickly devices can get upgraded to new versions of the OS.
Despite Huawei having actively worked to tone down EMUI, the skin is still guilty of at least two of these sins and is, in my mind, one of the worst available.
For starters, the OS reworks Android’s user interface to the point that it’s all but unrecognisable. Android’s app tray has disappeared, so all installed applications are now displayed on the phone’s home screens, the same way they are on iOS. Useful shortcuts, like the torchlight in Quick Settings, have also been inexplicable removed. This makes the UI feel alien to even the most seasoned Android user. Considering Android Marshmallow’s awesome Material Design, I can’t help but feel Huawei’s making changes for the sake of it.
Hats off to Huawei for reducing the amount of bloatware on EMUI in recent years, but there’s still more of it than I’d like. Out of the box the phone still runs duplicate Huawei apps that offer either equivalent, or inferior, services to Android’s native versions. Key offenders include the messaging, calendar, email and gallery apps. I’d really like Huawei to take a page out of the HTC 10’s book and stop loading duplicate apps onto its handsets.
It’s too early to say if my third issue with Android skins will repeat itself on the P9. To know we’ll have to wait and see how quickly it gets upgraded to the final version of Android N later this year – though given Huawei’s poor track record with software updates I don’t have high hopes.
Huawei P9 – Performance
I may not be a big believer in Huawei’s software, but I have nothing but respect for its hardware. Past phones powered by Huawei’s Kirin chips have offered excellent performance.
With real-world us I found this remains true on the P9. The P9 is smooth to use 99% of the time. It glides between menu screens and launches applications in milliseconds. I found the P9 plays intensive 3D games, like Riptide GP3, chug- and stutter-free – though prolonged gaming did on occasion cause the phone to heat up, and lead to instances of CPU throttling.
Unlike past phones running EMUI I’m also yet to experience any unexpected application crashes on the Huawei P9. Outside of a few small bugs causing occasional stutters I haven’t noticed any serious issues with the P9’s performance.
My real world impressions rang true when I put the P9 through Trusted‘s standard series of synthetic benchmark tests.
On AnTuTu, which offers a general measure of a phones’ performance, the P9 scored a respectable 98,008. This puts it well above the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810-powered Nexus 6P, but behind competing Snapdragon 820 handsets, such as the Samsung Galaxy S7. The Nexus 6P scored 50,030 while the Galaxy S7 scored 129,468 by comparison.
The P9’s Geekbench score was a little more interesting. The P9 ran in with respectable 1,750 single-core and 6,281 multi-core scores. The multi-core score is particularly impressive and puts the phone on a par with the Galaxy S7, which scored 6,307 on Geekbench and means the P9 should be great at multitasking.
Gaming performance is less promising. On the GPU-intensive 3DMark Sling Shot benchmark the P9 scored 966. This puts it below most 2016 flagships – the Galaxy S7 scored 2,129 on the same test.
Huawei P9 – Camera
The Huawei P9’s dual-lens Leica camera setup is without doubt its most interesting feature. During the P9’s launch Huawei made so many grandiose claims about the camera that my laptop keyboard all but melted as I manically tried to type them all down.
The big central point is that Leica helped create the camera hardware and software. For non-photography types, Leica is a powerhouse camera brand that has a strong track record of producing premium and ludicrously expensive snappers, and was the company that popularised 35mm film.
Specs-wise the camera rig is pretty impressive. Each of the cameras has a 12-megapixel Sony IMX286 sensor, an LED flash and hybrid autofocus. The only difference between the two is that one sensor is set to capture monochrome images, while the other captures the RGB (colour) spectrum.
Huawei claims the dual setup will help the camera pull off all manner of snazzy shot types and radically improve low-light performance – apparently the black-and-white sensor can capture as much as 300% more light than regular smartphone cameras.
According to Huawei the dual sensor also means the P9 is the first phone in the world that will be able to capture a “professional Bokeh effect”. That’s the funky-looking aesthetic that a camera creates from heavily out-of-focus areas of the frame.
Ordinarily I’d have taken all these claims with a pretty big dose of salt – after all HTC made pretty much the exact set of claims when it unveiled its UltraPixel tech on the original One. But because of Leica’s hand in the P9 camera hardware and design I was a little more optimistic.
After a fortnight with the device I can confirm the P9 is capable of taking great photos that match, if not beat, those from the Samsung Galaxy S7 and iPhone 6S on quality. But getting the most out of the P9 can be tricky.
The auto setting works fine in regular light 90% of the time, but at times suffers from a few weird quirks. Pictures are all more than usable, but I noticed the camera has a tendency to add a subtle vignette effect. The camera also sometimes struggles with exposures in bright conditions, resulting in unbalanced images with slightly inaccurate, exaggerated contrast levels.
The weird anomalies likely stem from the dual-camera tech working a little too well and came as a slight surprise. Outside of the dual-lens tech, the P9’s cameras fall behind some competing top-end camera phones, like the Galaxy S7 and HTC 10, on two key areas – pixel size and aperture.
The P9 sensors have 1.25μm-size pixels and the lenses have a solid, but not best-in-class, f/2.2 aperture. As a rule of thumb a bigger μm and wider aperture (lower f-number) mean the camera sensor will be able to capture more light and perform better in darker situations. The Galaxy S7 has an f/1.7 aperture and captures 1.4µm pixels while the HTC 10 has an f/1.8 aperture and captures gigantic 1.55µm-sized “UltraPixels”.
I also had some issues with the colours. Reds in particular on occasion came out far too strong and ruined otherwise well-balanced shots when I was using the automatic mode.
Low-light performance is solid, but not the best I’ve seen on a smartphone. Images taken in dim conditions are good enough to share on social media. But the moment you even moderately blow them up on a large screen you’ll begin to notice noise and pixelation – though being fair this happens on pretty much every smartphone I test.
Luckily the majority of these issues can be fixed if you take advantage of the phone’s robust selection of shot modes and manual controls.
The P9 offers a range of 14 shooting modes. These include standard options, like High Dynamic Range and Panorama, as well as Huawei’s custom Light Painting, Beauty, Video, Bokeh and Monochrome options.
All the standard shot modes work a treat. The Panorama mode in particular is a highlight and among the best I’ve tested – unlike on competing handsets the mode is pretty stable and generally doesn’t end up with any overlapping or tears in photos.
Huawei’s Light Painting and Monochrome modes are also fun and make it easy for non-photographers to take artsy-ish shots in low light. The settings instruct the camera to continue shooting until the user manually tells it to stop. The resulting effect is an artistic photo showing moving light – like a long-exposure photo from a DSLR.
The Monochrome mode also performed far better than competing rivals. Black-and-white images close to universally had great contrast levels and a suitably noir feel.
Others are a little hit and miss. The Beauty mode remains a strange beast that doesn’t really have a place on the western market. It’s a feature that’s designed to make people in photos look prettier, but from what I’ve seen it does little more than increase people’s eye size and flatten their skin tone. Testing the mode on several of the Trusted team, the results were… interesting.
The Bokeh shot mode also isn’t as perfect as Huawei claims. It brings up a slider that lets you digitally adjust the sensor’s aperture. At anything but its lowest setting the mode is too extreme and will bring up blurry anomalies and inconsistencies. It’s still the best I’ve seen on a smartphone, though, and it easily outperforms the versions I’ve tested on past Samsung and HTC phones. If you are careful and use it sparingly you can produce some nice macro shots.
Generally, though, I got better results using the phone’s Pro camera mode. The Pro mode is accessed by swiping up from a small on-screen bar at the bottom of the camera app’s UI. It offers manual control over key settings such as focus, ISO, shutter speed, exposure and white balance. Using it I created much better low-light shots and more realistic bokeh effects – though this requires more time and a little technical knowledge to take advantage of.
The front-facing 8-megapixel rear camera is also more than good enough for taking selfies and video calling. Though again I’d recommend giving the Beauty mode a miss.
Huawei P9 – Battery
Smartphones’ battery lives haven’t evolved at the same rate as their other qualities. To date most smartphones struggle to constantly last more than one to two days off a single charge. The Huawei P9 doesn’t change this trend, but it’s no worse than most competing handsets, including the Samsung Galaxy S7, LG G5 and HTC 10.
With regular use I usually got around one to one and a half day’s use out of the phone’s non-removable Li-Ion 3400mAh battery. Regular use entailed taking and making a few calls, chatting on Hangouts throughout the day, sporadically checking my email and social media feeds, watching a couple of YouTube videos and intermittent music listening.
The phone also dealt fairly well with demanding tasks like video streaming and gaming. Watching Netflix over my lunch break with the screen on 60% brightness the P9 lost 12-15% of its charge, which is pretty standard for a 2016 flagship. Gaming took a bigger toll on the battery. Playing Riptide GP2 the phone lost 15-23% of its charge per hour, which is again normal.
The inclusion of fast charging support also makes it quick and easy to top up the phone’s battery. During my entire time using the P9 it never took more than an hour to fully charge, when connected to a powerful enough plug.
Should I buy the Huawei P9?
The P9 is the best Huawei phone to date. The Leica-branded camera may not fully deliver on Huawei’s claims, but it’s still as good, if not better than, most competing phone cameras.
The P9 doesn’t quite match competing handsets, such as the Galaxy S7, when it comes to its other hardware, but with a £449 starting price it’s over £100 cheaper than its key rivals. The phone’s nippy performance, robust build quality, and solid battery life mean it will meet
most users’ needs.
most users’ needs.
Were it not for the reappearance of Huawei’s EMUI Android skin – which, apart from the LG G5’s UX 5.0, is probably the worst on the market – I’d happily recommend the P9 as a great choice for any smartphone buyer looking for a good deal.
Verdict
The best phone Huawei’s ever made, but it repeats old mistakes.
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