Huawei announces flagship for 2016 with Leica certified camera

The much awaited Huawei P9 is finally here. Almost a month and a half after the MWC 2016, Huawei held a special event in London today to announce the Huawei P9, and along with it, the Huawei P9 Plus.

Huawei P9:

The Huawei P9 features a 5.2” IPS NEO LCD screen with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels. It also comes with the most recent Corning Gorilla Glass 4 protection. The chipset on the P9 is the new and improved Kirin 955 (Huawei’s very own chipset). The octa core CPU is a duo of a quad core 2.5 GHz with the Cortex-A72 and a quad core 1.8 GHz Cortex-A53. The body on the phone is made of aluminium that gives it that elusive metallic feel. The fingerprint scanner, as tradition with Huawei smartphones, is on the back of the phone.

Next comes the camera, the stand-out feature of the Huawei P9. The smartphone features a 12 MP dual back camera each of which is Leica certified. Leica is a renowned German optics enterprise that is known for its high-quality cameras. Another unique feature about the dual camera is that one of the cameras will capture colors while the other is monochromic (i.e. it will only capture black and white images). They will work together simultaneously to produced highly detailed images in good light and are expected to improve sharpness significantly. The camera also comes with dual-LED flash. However, one omission has been made from the phone and that is Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) that was previously seen in the Mate 8 as well as the P8. The front camera is a 8 MP shooter that is capable of recording 1080p videos.

The smartphone comes with an option of 32 GB storage with 3 GB RAM or 64 GB storage with 4 GB RAM. Either way, you will have the facility of a memory card slot that allows you to expand the memory by up to 128 GB. The battery on the P9 is a non-removable 3000 mAh battery that should do well for the screen size. The user interface is Huawei’s Emotion UI 4.1.

Huawei P9 Plus:

The Huawei P9 Plus is the larger, bigger brother to the P9. We’ve seen the Samsung S series and the S edge series, the Xperia X and the Xperia X Performance, the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus, now it’s time for Huawei. The Huawei P9 Plus features a 5.5” Super AMOLED touchscreen. The screen also features a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels with Corning Gorilla 4 as the protection. Huawei has also made the screen on the P9 Plus pressure sensitive – tagging this feature as 3D touch. Like the P9, the P9 Plus will also feature a metallic body with a fingerprint sensor on the back.

The memory configuration on the P9 Plus is 64 GB internal storage with 4 GB RAM and a memory card slot that allows expansion to up to 128 GB. The CPU on the P9 Plus is also the same as the Huawei P9 – an octa core Kirin 955 with a 2.5 GHz Cortex-A72 and a 1.8 GHz Cortex-A53. The smartphone also features the same Leica certified camera as on the Huawei P9. The battery gets a slight boost to 3400 mAh though. Generally, however, the only primary difference between the P9 and the P9 Plus is the screen size, as expected.

Availability and Pricing:

The price on the Huawei P9 has a tag of €599 (approximately PKR 71,500/-) for the 32 GB and €649 (approximately PKR 76,500/-) for the 64 GB model. The Huawei P9 Plus, on the other hand, has a price tag of €749 (approximately PKR 90,000/-). Sadly though, there is no official word from Huawei on when these smartphones will be released though it is expected to be made available by the end of April.