[rwp-review id=”0″]
For several years, Huawei’s handsets have been getting progressively better and the Ascend Mate 7 phablet – which was launched at IFA in September last year – finally delivered an experience that reflected its premium price tag.
Fast forward seven months and Huawei took to the stage again, this time to deliver its latest innovation; the Huawei P8. Combining a frameless display with a metal build and an impossibly thin 6.4mm body, the Huawei P8 has the makings of a handset that could offer a credible alternatives to rival devices such as the Galaxy S6, iPhone 6 and LG G4.
Does Huawei’s latest smartphone deliver on the expectations? Let’s find out.
Design
The Huawei P8 is designed to be a combination of the flagship Ascend Mate 7 and last year’s Ascend P7 devices. As a result, the handset features tall bezels both above and below the screen but a near bezel-less experience on the left and right of the Full HD display.
The display itself has improved by quite some margin over the Ascend P7 with colors appearing vibrant and blacks deep and rich. The JDI-Neo display offers 15000:1 contrast ratio and an experience that’s both impressive and immersive, especially wide viewing angles that allow you to share the display amongst several people. The frameless experience means that despite the tall bezels, the handset still offers an impressive 71.4 percent screen-to-body ratio, which is higher than both the Apple iPhone 6 (65.8%) and the HTC One M9 (68.4%).
The P8 keeps the design language first started with the Ascend P6 and as a result, the left side of the handset is completely free of ports as the microSD card tray, SIM tray, power buttons and volume keys all reside on the right. The buttons themselves are easy to press despite being mostly recessed and offer impressive tactile feedback; a trip to China with Huawei revealed that the buttons on flagships are tested several thousands of times so there should be no longevity issues here.
At the bottom, the Huawei P8 follows a similar design to rival smartphones with the speaker, microphone and microUSB port all at the bottom. One difference to other handsets is that the headphone jack is at the top and while there are benefits and pitfalls to both positions, I personally feel that the headphone jack is more suited to the top of a device than the bottom.
The top also has a microphone but unlike most flagships at the moment, the P8 doesn’t come with an infrared port to control your TV, set-top box and air conditioning unit; it’s certainly not a feature I use a lot but it is useful to have, especially when you lose the Sky (cable) remote and need to change the channel.
Moving to the back and the P8 has an aluminum rear flanked by a ceramic panel at the top which houses the improved 13MP camera. Despite the impressive all-metal build, the Huawei P8 doesn’t overheat as much as other devices – the HTC One M9 is a classic example of this – and measuring just 6.4mm thick, the P8 is definitely an engineering marvel.
Software
The Huawei P8 runs on Android 5.0 Lollipop out of the box with Huawei’s own EMUI (formerly known as Emotion UI) skin on top. Like past Huawei devices, the skin is a complete rework of Google’s interface and combines Android with some features that would be familiar to iOS users.
The Spotlight search feature – which can be accessed by swiping down from the homescreen – blurs out your homescreen like Apple’s OS, the folder system is heavily influenced by iOS and rounded app icons all give the impression that Huawei has searched for inspiration in Cupertino. Along with the iOS-inspired features, EMUI also brings some clever software tricks; long pressing on the Recent Apps button instantly hops between the last two used apps, a swipe-gesture on the on-screen buttons opens a smaller one-handed UI and swiping in the Gallery app launches the Camera app in a miniature window.
Rather than use Google’s Material Design, Huawei has also added new skins and redesigned the interface and EMUI is certainly more stable than it was on the Ascend P7 last year. The P8 comes with new themes, which allow you to customize your lock screen, wallpaper, animations and icons but as nice as the themes are, they do feel a little confusing.
At the moment, you’re limited to choosing from the six preloaded themes – as there doesn’t seem to be a way to load them separately – and the choice is sparce; while the default “Magazine” skin might suffice for some people, the alternatives are somewhat suspect.
The problem with EMUI is that it doesn’t appear to have been optimised much or even tested before rolling out on the P8. There are lots of issues but the two big ones that are frustrating is that it display Gmail notifications individually and together, meaning if you get 10 new emails, your notification menu is completely flooded.
The other issue with EMUI is its compatibility with Android Wear, or lack of it: Huawei is set to launch the Huawei Watch in a few weeks but the company’s flagship handset doesn’t work with Google’s wearable. Rather than work as it should, the P8 disables Android Wear notifications constantly – even if you re-enable them – which essentially means, your Android Wear watch is nothing more than an expensive timepiece.
Overall EMUI offers a very familiar experience if you’ve used a Huawei device before or an iPhone but the latest version does feel like one step forward, two steps backwards. On the Ascend Mate 7, the software is optimised, tested and very fluid but while the P8 brings some new features, it also has a lot of issues and sadly, it detracts away from what is otherwise, a very good smartphone.
Camera
One of the biggest improvements in the P8 is the camera, which Huawei have improved considerably since the Ascend P7 a year ago. The camera is now a 13MP sensor and comes equipped with optical image stabilization that should ensure less noise in both photos and videos in all conditions.
Here’s some daylight and lowlight images captured on the Huawei P8:
Light Painting
Along with the standard camera improvements, the Huawei P8 comes with a couple of unique features to create those special memories. My favorite of these is the light painting feature, which takes an image with a large shutter speed and as long as you hold the P8 perfectly still, you can capture fantastic light images.
Timelapse
Another new feature is the timelapse mode, which allows you to take images at different intervals and stich them together in one large image. This can be really useful when trying to put an entire scene together and lets you create images like the one below.
Director Mode
The last key unique feature on the P8 camera is one for movie and video enthusiasts; simply put, the Director Mode allows you to create professional movies direct from multiple P8s by shooting from different camera angles and then editing and processing them just on your P8 smartphone.
Front Facing Camera
The front snapper on the Huawei P8 is an 8MP sensor, which can shoot Full HD video at 30 frames per second and comes equipped with Huawei’s Beauty Level feature. The camera mode, which originally debuted on the Ascend P6, allows you to set a level between 0 and 10 and when you take the image, the camera automatically accentuates your facial features.
Video
Alongside its impressive photo capabilities, the Huawei P8 is also rather impressive at taking videos. The handset is limited to Full HD video capture at 30 frames per second – and doesn’t offer 4K Ultra HD or 2K Quad HD capture like its rivals – and both video and audio capture is impressive in low-light or optimum conditions. Here’s some videos captured on the P8:
Performance
One area where Huawei handsets have traditionally been very strong is in their performance and the P8 is no different as Huawei has opted to use its own in-house octa-core 64-it Kirin 930 processor, which is coupled with 3GB RAM and a Mali-T628 graphics processing chipset.
On paper, the Huawei P8 is powerful enough to handle everything you throw at it and opting for its own processor means Huawei has been able to optimize the handset’s internals and processor. Despite the unfinished software, the overall handset experience is largely free of lag and seems capable of handling most strenuous tasks.
Benchmarks
In practice, the Huawei P8 offers a smooth experience but how do the numbers stack up against the competition? To test this, we’re using three of the most popular Android benchmarking applications; AnTuTu, 3DMark and GeekBench 3.
In the AnTuTu benchmark – which tests the CPU, RAM and Graphics – the P8 scores 47461, which is lower than the Galaxy S6 Edge (67971) but similar to the LG G4, which scores 48969.
Switching to 3DMark – which tests the graphical capabilities of a handset – the P8 achieved a lowly score of 11739, which is almost half the score of the Galaxy S6 Edge and HTC One M9, which score 21754 and 22588 respectively. The 3D Mark result ranks the P8 considerably down the pecking order and between the Huawei MediaPad X2 (11783) and the Sharp Aquos Phone 304SH (11734).
Our last benchmark test is GeekBench 3, which tests both, an individual core and all the cores, of the smartphone’s processor. In this test, the Huawei P8 scores 689 in the single-core test and 2999 in the multi-core test. In comparison, this is lower both the Galaxy S6 Edge – which scores 1253 and 4241 – and the LG G4 – which scores 1122 and 3716.
Dual SIM and Standby
One of my favorite Huawei P8 features is the dual SIM functionality; as mentioned above, the handset sports a microSD card – which lets you expand the 16GB/64GB internal storage by up to 128GB – but if you don’t need additional storage, the microSD card tray doubles up as a nano SIM card slot. This allows you to use two SIM cards at the same time and the Huawei P8 supports dual 4G standby with the SIM Management menu allowing you to customize which of the two SIMs is used by default for calls and texts and LTE browsing.
Connectivity & Signal+
Dual SIM aside, the P8 shows that Huawei totally understands smartphone antennae. The Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge are Samsung’s first mass produced metal and glass handsets and having used Samsung devices for the past two years, I know that the change in build materials has definitely impacted upon the signal quality.
In comparison, the Huawei P8 antennae are arguably the strongest on any modern smartphone and remains connected to an LTE connection even when other smartphones – like the LG G4 and Galaxy S6 – are dropping down to 3G or even 2G connections at the same time on the same mobile network.
The P8 is equipped with LTE Cat 6 and Carrier Aggregation support meaning it offers download speeds of up to 300Mbps and upload speeds of up to 100Mbps when connected to a supported network. The LTE and Wi-Fi performance have no issues with holding connections and the network equipment in the handset appears to be stronger than most of its rival devices, while Wi-Fi+ means the handset will automatically switch between Wi-Fi networks to provide the best experience.
One feature that Huawei made a point of announcing at the launch was its new proprietary Signal+ feature, which allows the dual antenna and rapid switching technology to work together and intelligently recognize the best mode to use. The feature means that if one antenna is covered, the P8 will automatically switch to the other antenna and this provides incredible network reliability and performance. Signal+ is designed to reduce dropped calls by addressing the “death grip” issue that all handsets face and also improves the call connection rate meaning that the handset won’t drop connection and can hold a mobile connection even when travelling on a train at speeds of up to 300km/h.
Battery Life
The Huawei P8 is powered by a non-removable 2680mAh battery and just like the Ascend Mate 7, the battery life is certainly premium. On paper, the battery should last at least one day and most users should achieve between one and two days’ battery life on a single charge.
In my experience with the Huawei P8, the battery life is absolutely fantastic. During the past few weeks with Huawei’s new flagship, the handset has never died in less than 22 hours on a single charge and while things like media playback at full brightness will certainly drain the battery, on average you can expect around two days battery life with medium usage.
The standby time on the Huawei P8 is absolutely incredible as well; with low usage but all notifications and email accounts syncing and the handset connected to Wi-Fi, the battery life will easily last four to five days and I’ve personally had it last even longer than this. Actual usage and battery life will vary depending upon your usage but the overall battery life should not be a concern for most, if not all, users.
Conclusion
The Huawei P8 has all the makings of a great handset and it continues the stylish design philosophy of past Ascend P-series devices while also adding the performance, reliability and experience of the flagship Ascend Mate 7 in a smaller handset. On paper, the handset offers a premium experience that can rival any other flagship but in actual usage, the software of the handset definitely lets it down considerably.
If Huawei were to fix the various software issues we’ve highlighted, the handset’s rating (which you can see below) would increase quite drastically and while some of these can be fixed by using an alternative launcher, the current state of the handset out-of-the-box certainly needs some improvements.
Like mentioned several times, this is a pre-release handset we’re using for the review and hence, we need to factor that this is not a final retail model. That being said – despite the various flaws – the handset offers a premium experience and with a price starting at AED1699 for the 16GB version, it’s certainly a handset worth considering as your next smartphone.
