Review: Huawei P8

Introduction

      The smartphone industry increasing widely and competetion is very high.Last year, Huawei managed to pique our interest with the Ascend P7, its flagship phone that showed to us all that the company is capable of delivering a quality performing smartphone in a premium package – while also retaining a pretty svelte chassis. Staying relevant is key to long term growth, so knowing that, the company is hoping that its latest effort is enough to remain competetive.

Design

The P8 looks closely similar to its predecessor in the Ascend P7, so the same tradition to offering a premium design carries on with this. Sporting a hard lined design, one that’s uniformly flat both on the front and back, there’s clearly an edgy look to the entire package – accentuated further by its beveled edges. What’s most profound, though, is the premium touch that we get from the design with its new glass and metal design.

the  HHuawei company was able to shave off just a smidgen off the phone to reach a profile thinness of 6.4mm, which eclipses the iPhone 6 and Galaxy S6 in the process. What’s even more impressive, though, is that there’s no hump near or around the rear camera – making it completely flush, a rare achievement of late, it seems!

Holding the P8, however, there’s a subtle sharp feel due to those beveled edges around its trim. It’s not as bad as some other handsets, but it’s still noticeable nonetheless. The achievements are commendable on so many levels! Its premium design, svelte chassis, and uniformly flush surfaces, all point to the obvious that Huawei is more than capable of coming up with good designs. 

Display

 Huawei P8 comes with a 5.2-inch 1080 x 1920 JDI IPS-Neo display. Of course, 1080p resolution is more than effective on a 5.2-inch sized screen, allowing for strong details for both near and far viewing. Paying our attention to this evolved IPS-LCD based panel, Japan Display’s IPS-Neo technology delivers the goods in giving this new display some respectable qualities like blacks that are truly black, making for a nicely contrasty look.

At the same time, too, the panel clearly favors a more saturated color reproduction when the display is set to the default color temperature setting, which is made more profound by how the color values fall in the color gamut chart. Even though it’s an improvement, the ~7200K color temperature of the display gives the entire panel a colder look – though, it can be adjusted in the settings. For the most part, this IPS-Neo display exhibits enough vibrancy to retain our attention.

Interface and Functionality

Huawei’s new EMUI 3.1 experience running on top of Android 5.0 Lollipop. In comparison to the other handful of customized Android experiences out there, this one favors simplicity over functionality. Visually, there’s a cleaner look to the interface that manages to shed some of the dull, cartoonish look with the previous version. However, we’re again presented with an interface that does away with the traditional apps panel – so for some folks, the homescreen can appear disorganized and cluttered due to all the icons.

There’s a higher degree of personalization in tow with the experience because there are various themes to choose from that changes the look and style of the interface. It’s slick looking, no doubt, but it’s not quite as comprehensive as the customized themes we see offered by HTC Sense 7.0 and the latest Samsung TouchWiz experience. Also, there doesn’t seem to be a hub where additional themes can be downloaded – so there’s only a limited selection.

Huawei doesn’t attack the multi-tasking category as much, giving that duty to the usual Recent Apps tray of Android. Frankly, it might not be widely regarded as true side-by-side multi-tasking, but it’s still effective on its own. In that sense.

Processor and Memory

The P8 is powered by a 64-bit based octa-core HiSilicon Kirin 930 chip, which consists of 4 Cortex A53e cores running at 2GHz – while the other 4 Cortex A53 cores clock in 1GHz. it’s quick, instant, and straight to the point, which is reaffirmed by looking at the processing benchmark scores.3GB of RAM and the Mali-T628 GPU, the P8 stutters in its graphics processing performance. In comparison to other recent phones, like the Samsung Galaxy S6 and HTC One M9, the P8 produces a more choppy performance when it comes to gaming. It’s a shame, really, more so considering how other current, similarly spec’d phones are doing right now.

Internet and Connectivity

Huawei has flawless internet experience with fast page loads, smooth navigational controls, and quick page rendering. Stick with Chrome if you’re used to Google’s browser, but Huawei’s browser is a decent alternative as well. One appreciated feature of the Huawei browser is the ability to perform a zoom using a double tap and swipe gesture. It works pretty well and is useful for one-handed operation.

Huawei P8 is packed with the usual set of connectivity features we’d find in any other phone in its class – so the listing include aGPS with Glonass, Bluetooth 4.1, dual-band Wi-Fi, and NFC. Interestingly enough, Huawei rearranges the antenna differently here with the P8, seeing that one is found on the top, and the other positioned oppositely on the bottom. With this implementation, the company claims that users will experience 50% less dropped calls. And lastly, the P8 is available in both single and dual-SIM variants.

Camera

Huawei comes with new type of camera sensor: a 13-megapixel one with RGBW arrangement that should allegedly allow for better performance in limited light conditions. Huawei officially claims that this tech will bring brightness up by 32% in high-contrast lighting scenes, and reduce it by 78% in low-light environments.

Image Quality

P8’s camera quality, it shows us that it’s formidable and can easily replace most point and shoots out there. Not surprisingly, outdoor scenery shots where lighting is abundant produce the best results, which are filled with incredible detail, sufficient sharpness, and slightly saturated colors. For the most part, it handles dynamic range well – albeit, its HDR mode enhances it by delivering a more neutral exposure between areas of hard and soft lighting.

its superior quality is achieved by using the super night mode, since the long exposure helps to retain sharp details and keeps the scenery brightly toned – instead of being muddy and dark. In order to maximize the results, however, we’re required to keep the phone as still as possible, in order to reduce blurring that could be the inherent result from a long exposure. Our best recommendation is either to place the phone on a tripod, or better yet, just prop it up on its side while resting idly on something else. Of course, this is best suited for taking landscape shots, where there’s minimal movement. Another cool thing to use is the Light Painting mode for some slick looking photos where light can be used for some awe-inspiring results.

Video Quality

the Huawei P8 maxes out at only 1080p recording at 30 FPS – there’s no 60 FPS option sadly. It’s a shame, really, but even more when its quality is such a huge disappointment. Indeed, the P8 excels immensely with its still shot quality, but it flounders abysmally with video recording. Yes, we appreciate that there’s optical image stabilization available to keep things steady, but there are just too many displeasing qualities that are apparent.

Multimedia

When it comes to listening to music, we have two options to choose from out of the box – Google Play Music or the Huawei music player. With Huawei’s option, it sports a minimalist layout that’s also light in features. Generally speaking, the music player is generic, but we do like how there’s a section that displays the accompanying lyrics.

Impressively, the single speaker of the Huawei P8 is one of the strongest we’ve tested – reaching a deafening mark of 78.5 dB. No doubt, it’s loud enough and it travels far in large spaces too, but at the loudest volume setting, it emits a thin sounding quality, which doesn’t help when there’s some audible strain in the process

Call Quality

the P8 excels in the call quality department, just like its predecessor. Through the earpiece, voices are strong, vibrant, and audible, which is the same result experienced on the other end of the line with our callers. Switching over to the speakerphone, it’s powerful and clear enough for the most part to make it usable in noisy environments.

Battery

it’s pretty amazing that they’re able to somehow stuff a 2680 mAh battery. In our day-to-day use, the P8 delivers the standard one-day of operation from a normal charge, so we can proclaim that it’s average based on our experience.

Confirming our assertion, the P8 reaches a mark of 7 hours and 12 minutes in our battery benchmark test. The tally is enough to classify it as a ‘good’ performer, which interestingly enough, produces nearly the same result as the Samsung Galaxy S6.Unlike the Galaxy S6, however, the P8 takes an excessively long time to recharge – a painstakingly laborious 180 minutes to be exact. In contrast, the rapid charging of the Galaxy S6 only requires 78 minutes.

Final Words

premium looking smartphones, the pricing of the P8 really comes off as reasonable, having in mind the few limitations it imposes on its users. While it's mostly a well rounded product, some shortcomings in the performance and camera areas keep it from reaching that state of greatness we typically associate with the top dogs in the industry. Nevertheless, the Huawei P8 is poised to be a viable force that can threaten the fragile uncertainty that clouds many other contenders in the space.