Huawei P9 review What a Nice Phone It IS

Huawei P9 review What a Nice Phone It IS

Huawei P9 key features

• Aluminum with sandblasted finish or ceramic unibody


• 5.2" 1080p IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 423ppi


• HiSilicon Kirin 955 chipset: octa-core CPU (4xCortex-A72 @ 2.5GHz plus 4xCortex-A53 @ 1.8GHz), Mali-T880 MP4 GPU


• 3GB of RAM/32GB of built-in storage, or 4GB/64GB;


• Android 6.0 Marshmallow, Huawei EMUI v4.1 overlay;


• Dual 12MP Leica camera with hybrid AF, color and monochrome sensors, f/2.2 aperture; 1080@60fps video recording


• 8MP front camera, f/2.4 aperture; 1080p video recording; wide selfie


• Hybrid DualSIM/microSD card slot (up to 128GB)


• Cat. 6 LTE (300/50Mbps); dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, Wi-Fi hotspot, Wi-Fi Direct; Bluetooth 4.2 LE; NFC; GPS/GLONASS/Beidou; USB Type-C


• 3,000mAh Li-Ion battery, Rapid charging

Main disadvantages

• No 4K 2160p video recording


• Non-removable battery


• Hybrid DualSIM/microSD card slot limits options on the dual-SIM model


• No 3D Touch like the Plus model

Huawei P9 lacks three things the P9 Plus builds upon - the bigger 3D Touch-enabled screen, an AMOLED panel, and an AF 8MP snapper with f/1.9 aperture. Those three account for the €100 price gap. But both devices lack 4K video recording, which is not cool for one of the coolest flagships around. We don't know if it's a GPU thing or Huawei just can't do 4K capturing yet. But we really wish this wasn't the case.



Screen resolution is also not class-leading but Huawei seems to stick to 1080p even for its priciest devices. Since Huawei is more than eager to compare the P9 to the iPhone 6s, we guess 1080p would suffice. However in Android world, these days flagship phones are expected to come with 1440px QHD screens so that's another competitive setback to keep in mind.

Anyway, the Huawei P9 has more than enough to make it worthy of its flagship status, and we can't wait to explore it in detail. Our traditional hardware inspection kicks o