Design & Display:
Of
major emphasis during the presentation, Huawei was very keen to push how much
effort has gone into the Huawei P9's design and build. The firm seems very
aware that it is competing in a modern premium market of predominantly metal
and glass flagships such as the Galaxy S7 and iPhone 6s. The Huawei P9 is made
from "one piece of sleek and solid metal," so a unibody design, but
also features glass components too. In terms of shape, well, the leaks showed
it all, and we reckon there's no denying the Huawei P9 is an attractive phone
to look at - there is a hint of Samsung, HTC, and Apple in there, amongst
others, but to be fair there is only so much that can be done with smartphone
slab design and the cohesive whole doesn't really look like anything else. We have
been impressed by Huawei's design and build quality before, and this device
appears to continue the firm's aptitude for good-looks and solid build with a
deft hand.
Camera:
Another
hyped element during the pre-launch rumours was the camera tech, initially off
the back of images showing a dual-lens and then, more recently, because of
Leica branding. The two wide-aperture, f/1.1 sensors fulfill different
purposes, both feature a large pixel size for more light, but one handles RGB
colour while the other is a monochromatic black-and-white sensor. There's also
hybrid laser and depth auto-focus capabilities which can switch to the best
solution for short and long-range photography - the handset has the world's
first dedicated depth image-signal processor (as well as a dedicated Digital
Signal Processor) for this purpose. As expected, you're also able to re-select
a focal point post-capture, but that's not the main point of the dual-camera
setup as it has been with past implementations. Nope, here it's all about the
overall image quality.
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. 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.
Processor & Software:
As
expected, the Huawei P9 and P9 Plus pack Huawei's own Kirin 955 SoC, which is a
pretty astounding bit of kit. It's an octa-core setup with a quad-core cluster
of ARM A72 cores at 2.4GHz and another quad-core cluster of ARM A53 cores at
1.8GHz, together with an i5 co-processor. All of which is on ARM's big. LITTLE
architecture as well as 16nm FinFET Plus semiconductor tech. Needless to say,
Huawei is promising big performance, but also big battery efficiency. There's
3GB of RAM onboard the P9 while the P9 Plus has 4GB, and the software is Android
6.0 together with the firm's own UI.
Battery:
The P9's
battery isn't quite as massive as earlier rumours suggested, but still
impressive nonetheless with a sizeable 3000mAh cell. The handset also packs in
stereo speakers. The Huawei P9 Plus has a bigger 3400mAh cell and is alleged to
offer two-day battery life. Both models have a "new generation"
fingerprint scanner with 3D scanning, which is claimed to improve the security.
