By MKPE ABANG
Placing photography at the core of the device, Huawei Technologies has launched its flagship smartphone for 2016, the Huawei P9, sounding a raucous note to other leading smartphone manufacturers that the company is ready to take them on – photo quality at the professional level, global shipment at the leading numbers and iconic features at the optimum.
The formal launch of the P9, Huawei’s 2016 hero smartphone took place April 6, with the company making a bold statement, alluding to photography as a major pull for smartphones:
“Consumers around the world use their smartphones to take billions of pictures each year, making photography critical to user experiences,” said Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s consumer business group.
And to underscore photography as one of the main driving features of the Huawei P9, the company announced that the device was “co-engineered” with the camera maker Leica.
Leica, the German optics enterprise and manufacturer of Leica cameras, is primarily known for its high-quality, lightweight rangefinder cameras, which have gained renown from their use as the camera of choice for several famous street and indeed professional photographers.
And, at the launch of the Huawei P9 in London, Leica’s CEO, Oliver Kaltner, spoke of the partnership with Huawei for the new device:
“Our companies share the same vision when it comes to photography, and we both put a lot of effort into ensuring quality. Our process really starts with the identification of customer need, and then developing the best solution to meet it,” he stated.
The device features a dual camera set-up, with 12MP resolution. This is supported by two image sensors: one captures colour, while the other is monochrome, which is said to deliver better light sensitivity and detail, with Yu saying the combination delivers “more vivid colour and more detail”.
And the low-light performance was also given high attention: “In normal light conditions, most smartphones can take a good photo. But in low light conditions, it’s quite difficult for the smartphone,” Yu observed.
Other features include three film modes, standard, vivid colours and smooth colours, which “faithfully renders the authentic colour and style of Leica”. A wide-aperture feature also enables users to adjust the aperture to create various effects, while keeping the main object in focus.
Away from the camera, the P9 sees a number of updates over the earlier devices in the line, although none of other changes received anywhere near as much screen time. It features an improved finger print sensor, which it said is more than a match for those used by its rivals, and a “virtual triple antenna” designed to offer improved mobile and Wi-Fi connectivity.
Huawei took the opportunity of the launch to make comparisons with the smartphone flagships of its rivals – Samsung and Apple.
Huawei describes the P9 as offering a 5.2-inch screen in a comparable body to Apple’s 4.7-inch iPhone 6s, with 423 pixels per inch compared with 326 ppi for the Apple device.
Also, that the P9 is 0.99mm thinner than Samsung’s Galaxy S7 and 0.15mm thinner than iPhone 6s, while also not having a pronounced camera “bump”.
P9 is powered by Huawei’s new Kirin 955 processor, an octacore chip (4×2.5GHz and 4×1.8GHz cores). It has a 3,000mAh battery, with Yu talking up the battery life of the device.
It is powered by Android 6.0, coupled with the latest version of Huawei’s EMUI customisation.
The standard, 5.2-inch full HD screen standard version is joined by a 5.5-inch full HD “P9 Plus” sibling. This device also sees a bump in battery capacity, to 3,400mAh.
The P9 Plus also gains support for pressure sensitive touch input, a feature that is yet to be widely adopted across its portfolio by the company.
The Huawei comes in four colours: rose gold, prestige gold, titanium grey and mystic silver, with a “deluxe” option available in haze gold and ceramic white. The P9 Plus is available in haze gold, quartz grey and ceramic white.
Pricing starts from €599 for the version with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, rising to €649 with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.
The P9 Plus version is €749 with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.
Availability begins on 16 April, in a number of global markets.