Usually when you think flagships, you think major hole in your wallet. Not the case with the Huawei P8 though they aim to position itself as an equal alternative to your Samsung Galaxy S6’s without burning a hole in your pocket.
To that effect, the Huawei P8 does pay some focus to design. It has a metal unibody design that’s only 6.4mm thick, thinner than the Galaxy S6’s 6.8mm and iPhone 6’s 6.9mms. You get a 5.2” IPS Full HD display with some pretty thinner bezels so it’ll smaller in your hand compared to smartphones of similar screen sizes. One thing’s for certain, its overall build is way more improved than its predecessor the P7.
And what about its guts? The brains powering the P8 is Huawei’s own in-house 64-bit Kirin Octa-Core 930 processor that’s mated to 3GB of RAM. It gets a slightly decent 16GB of storage with the option of memory expansion via microSD. The microSD slot itself is pretty interesting as it shares the same slot as the second SIM slot for the P8. So if you need to run two SIMs and an expanded storage at the same time, you’re going to be out of luck.
Specs aside, the Huawei P8 is putting a lot of emphasis on its photo taking capabilities. To start of, it’s kitted with a 13MP main camera has Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS). This ain’t your normal OIS though according to Huawei. They claim they have improved it to tolerate shakes better at 1.2 degrees. That’s double of what other smart phones are capable of.
That’s not all in the camera department. Huawei also boasts that the P8 has the world’s first 4-colour 13MP sensor. Supposedly this would improve brightness by 32% and 78% noise reduction in low light. It doesn’t end there, the P8 also gets a DSLR-level ISP which helps to optimise its picture quality.
For the more experimental, smartphone photographers, you’ll be glad to know there’s one feature you’ll definitely find interesting. It’s the P8’s light painting capabilities. It’s pretty simple to use as there’s no need to adjust shutter speed or manul settings. Just select the right mode and start drawing with any light source.
Not a still images person? Then you’ll love this video mode. The P8 has a rather unique Director mode that works in-sync with 3 devices. You can have each P8 set up to capture different angles and the director mode lets you select the combine the right footages for the final video on the fly.
Pretty interesting features if might say so ourselves. To round it off, you’d need some decent battery life and Huawei has kitted the P8 with a 2,680mAh non-removable battery. The company reckons that this capapcity could last up to 1.5 days in normal use or up to 1 full day on heavy usage. Surprisingly Huawei lacks any fast charging features on the P8
The Huawei P8 runs on the Android 5.0 Lollipop with its own custom EMUI 3.1. And it comes with a a couple of smart features including the rather odd knuckle sense. This lets you screen capture and crop using your knuckles. Yes we know it sounds pretty weird but hey it might be a thing. There are also a couple of features that help to boost its WiFi and 4G LTE connectivity including a faster network lock-on while roaming.
The P8 wasn’t the only phone to be announced during the regional launch either. Also announced was the Huawei P8 Lite. As the “Lite” would indicate, it’s an affordable compact version of the P8 that’s also coming to Malaysia. As expected, you get some scaled down specs compared to its flagship sibling.
First, there’s a smaller 5″ display that pushes a lower HD 720p resolution. Under the hood, it gets a mid-range Kirin 620 processor with 2GB RAM, though the 16GB of storage is the same. As for camera, it gets a 13MP + 5MP cameras and for battery, it gets a slightly smaller 2,200mAh capacity battery.
So when can we expect to get our hands on these two new smartphones from Huawei? The P8 itself is already available for pre-orded inthe Malaysian market via VMall at RM1,799. Availability is expected around the 18 June period though a set date has yet to be announced. The P8 Lite price and availability has yet to be announced either.
