The Huawei P9 Plus is a good-looking phone. Designed to take on the might of the iPhone 6S, it is smaller, thinner and easier to handle. It is also better looking with a much smoother exterior. Is it enough to make its mark though?
At first glance, most certainly. The chassis feels premium and has a hefty weight to it. Although weighing in at only 162g, it feels solid and sits nicely in the hand. The exterior is also understated, with only the dual camera lenses and a small Leica lens logo at the top to mark it out.
The Huawei P9 Plus measures 152.3 by 75.3 by 7mm and has a 5.5-inch super AMOLED screen capable of full HD. It uses a Kirin 955 64-bit chipset which features a Quad-core 2.5 GHz Cortex-A72 CPU and a Mali-T880 MP4 GPU. It also has 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage.
Two 12Mp cameras seem a bit of an oddity, especially seeing as they are placed side by side. But Huawei say they work together to deliver much better images. Along with the laser autofocus instead of optical image stabilisation, the separate colour and black and white sensor is what marks the cameras out. Huawei claim a 200 per cent improvement in brightness and a 50 per cent improvement in contrast between the two.
You know how far smartphones have come when reviewers say a screen is ‘only’ high definition. However, with the Samsung Galaxy S7 now delivering QHD, the bar has been raised. That said, the screen on the Huawei P9 Plus is crystal clear, bright and very responsive – it’s more than adequate for the majority of users.
Other highlights of the phone include a microSD slot, IR blaster, fingerprint sensor, NFC chip, 8Mp rear camera and a 3,400mAh battery with a claimed life of up to two days between charges.
Previous Huawei handsets offered very similar specs to the flagships at a lower price. This time, the Huawei P9 Plus is priced similarly to the iPhone 6S and Samsung Galaxy S7. That might be a problem. However, in its own right, the Huawei P9 Plus seems like a top phone that offers something a little different than the norm.
Jesmond Darmanin is a technology enthusiast who has his own blog at www.itnewsblog.com.