Huawei finally launched beautiful Huawei P8 flagship last month. The device came with top end specs as well as unique features which made it an attractive offering in the already crowded smartphone market.
Today, we take a look at the Huawei P8 in detail. In this review we will look at the phone’s design as well as the overall specifications of the device and we will check whether the phone lives up to our expectations.
At first glance, you will know that the Huawei P8 is targeted at the high-end premium market. The simple yet refined design as well as the beautiful gold color finish truly helps it stand apart from competitors.
The phone is made entirely out of metal, so its gold color shines bright. The design is simple, with the camera and sensors right on top of the 5.2-inch display, while the capacitive buttons at the bottom. The black screen looks especially good on the full gold body. At the bottom, you have the microUSB port along with dual speakers, which is a nice addition.
On the right side, you will find the power button in the middle. Yes, its almost at the middle, which we feel is a great positioning for the button. In phones larger than 4.7-inches, it always hard to reach out for the power button if its on the top right corner. So, this is just the perfect positioning for the button. Just above the power button, you have the volume rockers keys. And above these buttons, there are the two SIM card + Memory card slots.
The back is clean, with just the logo in the middle and the camera unit on the top left corner. Overall, the phone looks solid and beautiful. So, if you are in search for a clean yet elegant design, the Huawei P8 won’t disappoint.
With this body, you might be concerned about the phone’s grip. But the body thickness of just 6.4mm, body width of 72.1mm and 144 grams in weight makes Huawei P8 extremely easy to carry around. Even though the display is a 5.2-inch full HD panel, the large display size doesn’t seem to reflect in the body proportions which is definitely a good sign.
As for the specs, the phone comes with a Kirin 935 octa-core processor with quad Cortex A53 cores clocked at 2.2Ghz and quad Cortex A53 cores clocked at 1.5GHz. In the benchmark test, the device managed to score just above 50K points which is pretty good for a flagship device. Of course, there are faster alternatives out there, but this chip should be much more power efficient. The overall performance is quite good, thanks to the 3GB LPDDR3 RAM and there is ample storage space with 64GB on board and further expandable option via MicroSD.
Coming to the battery life, the phone won’t last very long with the 2680mAh. But you can easily get a day’s usage on the device, which is the least we can expect. With moderate use, you may get it to run till the next day, but still, its slightly lower battery life than other flagships in the market.
As for the camera, Huawei P8 features the world’s first 13MP RGBW camera unit at the back with OIS and fast focus. Up front, you get an 8MP shooter ideal for taking care of selfies. While, these are big words on paper, in real life, the Huawei P8’s camera does not disappoint.
The pictures were crisp and clear when there was ample light. The color reproduction was good, focus was fast and the f/2.0 aperture brings enough light into the photos. However, like most smartphone cameras in the market, the phone did struggle in low light. Things were not as satisfactory when the light reduced or when there were a lot of shadows. As you can see in one of the picture that was shot at dusk, the image came out too dark. However, under artificial light, the pictures once again came out quite good. That is, if you know how to tweak the camera settings. You can check out the samples from down below.
Huawei P8 runs on the new Android 5.0 Lollipop version with EMUI 3.1 on top. The company’s UI has never been the best feature of its devices, and this time too, the UI is not without flaws. But there’s definitely improvement in the overall looks as well as the feature list. The UI features almost a dozen of new features, including voice wake, gesture control, and knuckles screenshots. However, the color scheme used for the icons and various other aspects of the UI is a bit disappointing. So, we feel Huawei still has a lot to improve in this regard.
So, overall the Huawei P8 turns out to be one of the best offerings from the company till date. Of course, the phone still has some room for improvement, especially in the software department, but otherwise, the looks, specs and the camera performance is top notch.
