Earlier today, we were in London to witness the launch of Huawei’s latest flagship smartphone series. The P9 and P9 Plus were shown off, and on first impressions look like they could pack a serious punch in the smartphone market.
While the P9 maintains the premium look and feel of the P8 from 2015, it’s not exactly the same. The P9’s metal chassis seems to have a glossy, hard overlayer on top of the polished and hairline brushed metal casing. The metal edges have a subtle curve, and the Gorilla Glass 4 seems to cover the entire front, which has very slim bezels, but a noticeable black screen gap (conveniently photoshopped out of Huawei’s press images).
The P9 has a 5.2-inch full HD LCD display on the front, as well as an impressive-sounding 8MP selfie camera. On the back is the phone’s main feature: The dual camera system built in partnership with Leica. It promises to capture more light, and can deal better with high contrast and lowlight conditions than practically any other smartphone (according to the manufacturer). Thanks to having both a color and black+white sensor, it also takes really good traditional b+w photos.
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Other specs include an octa-core Kirin 955 processor with a Depth ISP to add better background blur/bokeh and selective focus controls. It has either 3GB or 4GB RAM depending on whether you go for the 32GB or 64GB storage option. Both models are expandable to 128GB. Huawei’s flagship also has a 3000mAh battery with Rapid Charging support through a Type-C connector.
The P9 Plus pretty much looks exactly the same as the P9, but bigger. It has a larger 5.5-inch screen, still full HD resolution, and still LCD. The only difference between the two displays apart from size is that the Plus’ screen has a pressure sensitive surface, a little like Apple’s 3D Touch, except that it’s called Press Touch.
As you’d expect, the bigger size also means bigger battery, specifically 400mAh more capacity, also with fast charging. Other specs are similar, including the same processor, camera setup and manufacturing/build process. It does have an IR blaster on the top edge, and has an unusual speaker set-up which transforms the bottom firing speaker in to a mini subwoofer when the phone is in portrait mode.
Huawei P9 comes in 6 different colors and will cost €599 or €649 depending on whether you go with the 32GB or 64GB model, while the P9 Plus will be a hefty €749 and comes in four colors. We’ll have an unboxing very soon, but for now, that’s your first look at these new devices.
For the full specs of both devices, see our previous post.
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