Huawei P8 review
Thalefang Charles | Friday April 24, 2015 07:00
When news came in that Huawei has unveiled their latest ‘P8 smartphone’ some people in Botswana questioned whether it is ‘disposal.’ This was because in Botswana ‘P8’ reads as ‘Eight Pula’ an amount, which is almost equal to $1.
In the UK, where Huawei chose to unveil the P8, the Independent newspaper summed it as, “Best phones nobody’s seen from the biggest company nobody’s heard of. ’’ A leading UK technology website, Register.uk chose a warning as a headline on their P8 review saying, “Huawei P8: Chinese mobes have arrived and the West should tremble.”
Only four years ago Huawei, pronounced ‘hwa-wei’ the Chinese company based in Shenzhen, Guangzhou was only making computer network kits as the largest telecommunications equipment maker in the world after overtaking Ericsson in 2012. The new P8 is therefore seen as their bold statement that would ‘tremble’ the smartphone market.
What really is all the fuss about P8?
The smartphone is the successor of Ascend P7 and Huawei has interestingly dropped the name ‘Ascend’ suggesting that they have reached the summit with P8.
It was evident from the lavish launch in London that this phone was designed to compete with Apple iPhone 6 and Samsung S6.
Design
Outside, P8 is strikingly beautiful, sleek and very thin, almost fragile. Not only is it the first Huawei phone to use a full-metal aluminum unibody chassis, but it is also the company’s thinnest one yet, measuring a mere 6.4mm thick. iPhone 6 is 6.9mm while S6 is 6.8mm.
P8 is available in four colours: Mystic Champagne, Titanium Grey, Carbon Black and Prestige Gold, with the last two boasting higher storage capacity at 64GB against the standard 16GB capacity.
All models have a micro SD card slot as well. In the box, the set includes a SIM removal too, power adapter, micro USB port, and stereo headphones.
Camera
The trump card in P8 is the camera. Huawei said they built P8 camera after finding out what really people want from the phone camera. According to Huawei the key features in the camera include, new Optical Image Stabiliser technology up to 1.2°, enabling high-quality photos and videos, and managing camera shake so images are consistently sharp.
They have also introduced the world’s first four-colour RGBW sensor that enhances brightness by 32 percent in high contrast lighting situations reducing it by 78 percent in low light environments.
Another game-changer is the DSLR-level independent image processor that enables noise reduction when shooting and intelligent detection of a high-contrast lighting environment.
P8 camera has four professional quality low-light shooting modes that give access to a virtual photo and video studio to capture artistic inspirations.
Its time-lapse feature and lighting painting mode that provides near-DSLR quality pictures would be a delight to photographers.
The device has two cameras; the primary rear camera has 13-megapixels (MP) while the front has 8MP.
Battery
Another star in the P8 is the battery. Smartphone users know how their supposed cool gadgets are always on the charger because they cannot maintain battery life. P8 contains a 2680mAh non-removable battery and with Kirin 930 Octa-Core 64-bit chipset, delivering outstanding performance that Huawei says outpaces the smartphone market by 20 percent. From my experience the battery claim is true.
Price
The phone comes with a recommended price of €499, and equivalent of P5,500 for 16GB and €599 - P6,500 for 64GB excluding shipping costs and taxes. This is a winner because its competing brands are almost twice its price.
Specifications
Platform: Android 5.0 Lollipop with EMUI 3.1
Screen: 5.2” 1080 x 1920-pixel Full HD display
Dimensions: 144.9 x 72.1 x 6.4mm, weight 144g
System chip: HiSilicon Kirin 930 chip with octa-core CPU (4x Cortex A53 @ 2GHz, 4x A53 @ 1.5GHz)
Network: GSM / HSPA / LTE
Card slot: MicroSD, up to 128 GB (uses SIM 2 slot)
RAM: 3GB
Internal storage: 16GB/64GB
Main camera: 13-megapixel main cam with OIS, RBGW sensor, f/2.0 lens
Front cam: 8-megapixel
Camera features: Geo-tagging, touch focus, face/smile detection, panorama, HDR
Radio: Yes
Battery: 2680mAh