Huawei P9 Review: From China with Love

[Scorpus]

Huawei has come from nowhere over the past few years, going from producing mediocre budget devices to having a full complement of Android handsets, including impressive flagships. Now one of the biggest smartphone manufacturers in the world, and especially popular in Asia, Huawei has managed to nail important partnerships in recent times, allowing them to create awesome devices like the Google Nexus 6P.

The Shenzhen giant has come to the table in 2016 with their most compelling device ever: the Huawei P9. This is, without a doubt, a high-end flagship constructed with the same precision and quality as Samsung, HTC, and even Apple. This mid-sized phone is packed with modern hardware in every corner, and gives long time incumbents a serious run for their money.

The P9 isn’t just your typical collection of high-end specs, though. Huawei has attempted to think outside the box in some respects, packing in features like two 12-megapixel cameras on the rear, and a home-grown HiSilicon Kirin 955 SoC on the inside. And while the P9 does run Android 6.0, Huawei’s custom UI deviates quite a bit from the design of stock Android.

Read the complete review.

 

[SirDigby]

This phone seems to be a 'Jack of all trades, master of none', unless you're particularly pleased by the design.

 

[p51d007]

The problem I have with Huawei, and I'm still using a 2+ year old Huawei Ascend Mate2, is they went all "iPhone/Galaxy" with their pricing structure. The Mate2, was a mid-spec device with a 720p 6" screen, SD400 processor, but it's a great value for a daily driver. It's fast, smooth, screen easy to read, great camera & a 4,050mAH battery that lasts for 2 days pretty easy. All for less than $300.

Now, their pricing is more along the line of the iPhone/Galaxy. I was hoping they would stay more mainstream with the specs/pricing, as all of these super fast processors, for the bulk of people who use them, is pretty much wasted power. No one, unless they are running top end games, or are nothing more than benchmark/pixel peepers, will ever get close to running the processors to their limits. I'd rather see more LARGER battery phones, than the super duper high end spec/high price phones.

 

[petert]

This phone seems to be a 'Jack of all trades, master of none', unless you're particularly pleased by the design.

I read elsewhere that their business model was to release phones based on market studies which revealed to them what the customer wants. Apparently, the customer is crazy about having bloatware on his phone as well as shitty UI and lack of updates. I am still looking to Huawei. Mostly I am interested in the dual sensor camera feature as well as their 3D Touch like technology which is coming in one of their phones soon. This being said, I would never buy from these guys - just hope that those two features will make their way into future Nexus phones.

 

[Mikkyo]

Can almost guarantee that it is NOT Gorilla Glass 4 that's on the front of the P9; as I dropped mine onto my carpet and it scratched the glass somehow.

Also, you complain about the 1080p display and then praise the battery life (kinda), the battery life is only as good as it is due to the 1080p display.

 

[gsc2000]

Nice phone, cannot fault screen quality, battery life, speed, reliability and overall quality. However don't expect any updates from Huawei because they are shockingly appalling in making updates available. It's 1/2 way through 2017, Oreo has been announced yet Nougat is not available for UK users at all. The Hisuite application for UK users does not show any updates, it's not downloadable from their website although ironically a rollback package is ! There's been no announcements for uk users but huawei support insist it's being rolled out in the uk and you're one of the few who doesn't have the update. Maybe they think the public are droids and robots who will accept any old trashy statement but it's plainly obvious on twitter and facebook it just hasn't been rolled out in the UK. So great phone but bad support with zero updates from Huawei.