After Huawei Mate 8, this Chinese smartphone giant announced the brand new Huawei P9 series smartphones back in April. Almost a month later, the company released another flagship series model, this time in the Huawei Honor series, called as the Honor V8. These two are very similar models, with similar specs and similar design. But when it comes to the pricing of the two handsets, they differ quite significantly. Now, this brings us to the main question, why would Huawei release two different smartphones with similar design and specs in two different series? And why is there such significant difference in the pricing of the two handsets when they are so similar? We attempt to find answers in this article.
First let’s look at the design of both the handsets. Surprisingly, Huawei decided to use the same design as the Huawei P9 series on the new Honor V8 as well. While companies try to differentiate two different series with its own unique design, it looks like Huawei felt that both the phones should have the same design, which in my opinion looks pretty good. But if you had to differentiate between the two models, you would find the fingerprint sensor at the back to be slightly different. And of course, the logos are different, with the P9 coming with ‘Huawei’ branding while V8 coming with ‘Honor’ branding at the back.
Even the specs, including the dual camera setup at the back are similar. But there’s nearly a difference of 1000 Yuan ($153) between the models in the V8 and P9 series. So, why this difference in pricing?
The only major difference between the two models is the Leica certification on the Huawei P9 and its absence on the V8’s dual cameras. Let’s take a look at the setup in detail.
Huawei P9 vs Honor V8 Dual Cameras:
Huawei P9 comes with a 12MP dual camera setup with the components being developed to meet’s Leica’s strict standards. The company reportedly collaborated with Leica to co-engineer the structure of the camera module. Plus, the phone comes with Huawei’s digital image processing. Then there are Laser Autofocus and dual tone LED flash to assist the dual cameras in photography.
Coming to the Honor V8, even this particular device features 12MP dual camera setup. But Lecia was not involved in the development of V8’s dual camera module. But the basic idea remains the same as the P9’s setup. The phone features 1 RGB sensor which collects colour information and another black and white sensor. These two work together to take pictures. The module supports depth of field, laser autofocus and larger aperture ranging from f/0.95 to f/16.
As you can see, on paper, the V8’s dual cameras also looks like a powerful setup, but only when we have real camera samples from both the P9 and the V8 can we ascertain how better the P9 Leica branded camera is as compared to the V8’s setup.
Since we have seen that the major difference in the camera department was the Leica branding, let’s look at what specs both phones bring to the table.
Huawei P9 vs Honor V8 Specs:
The Huawei P9 comes with the Kirin 955 octa-core chipset which is very capable as seen in the earlier benchmarks. There will be 4GB of RAM on board along with 64GB memory, and 1080p 5.2-inch display. This particular configuration on the P9 will cost you 3688 Yuan ($563).
On the other hand, the Huawei V8 comes with Kirin 950 (slightly under clocked) with 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, 5.7-inch 2K display and NFC. This particular model in the V8 series costs 2799 Yuan ($427).
Now, as you can clearly see in the above comparison, the P9 series with similar specs (in fact it comes with just 1080p display as compared to 2K on the V8) costs 1000 Yuan ($153) more than the Honor V8. Leica branding is what drives up the cost of the P9.
End of the day, what matters is whether the Huawei P9 takes better pictures and videos than the Honor V8. If it does, than the difference in the pricing is justified and I am sure, consumers would be more than happy to shell out more for an advanced camera module. We hope to get these two smartphones soon to see their camera performance.
So, what are your thoughts on the difference in the pricing of these two Huawei models?
