[Huawei P8 Guides, News, & Discussion] mdabar:
The Huawei P8 is the brand new high range model presented by the Chinese company in May, a device with which doubtless they are pointing high, for its design and finished as well as for the chosen hardware.

We must bear in mind the big bet they did with the previous model (P7) which achieved quite poor results. By the other hand I must also say that those results were understandable due to the difference of performance with the main phones from the competitors.

Huawei is a very big and consolidated company, although not precisely known by being a smartphone manufacturer. A market where they've been working for years, improving yes. But not yet giving the stroke.

They are in fact missing something that other Chinese manufacturers (much smaller and unknown) are already doing: present a real flagship phone.

[IMG="Huawei P8"]http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1C1oR-uispo/VZFeRL3k1VI/AAAAAAAAB1o/hwoxO7g_Hlc/s400/huawei-p8-oficial.png[/IMG]

If we look around the other brands, from the big players (Samsung Galaxy S6Edge, Apple iPhone 6 Plus, LG G4, Sony Xperia Z4/Z5, Lumia Cityman...) to the small and last arriving to the battle field (Xiaomi Mi Note Pro, OnePlus One, Meizu MX 4 Pro, uleFone BeTouch 2, Elephone P8000, UMI Iron...) they all have a unique device representing the company values and... all that the company is able to achieve (technologically and in terms of design speaking). So... why is Huawei taking so long? But most important, will the P8 be a real and worthy candidate?

Design

The new design is very different from the one used on the P7, they go away from the use of crystal surfaces and come closer to the trend of metal, each time more common in high range terminals.

In the front, the screen takes almost all the space (71,63% ratio screen-front), with the secondary camera, the light sensor and the speaker on the top... and without any physical button on the bottom part.

The left side is completely naked, nothing in there. Leaving the volume and power/lock buttons on the right side, where we will also find the slots for memory (microSD) and SIM. On the bottom side we have the plug for the USB cable and the hands free speaker, so we will find the jack connector for audio on the top side.

When we turn it down, on the rear part we find just the main camera (one of this device's treasures), which is completely integrated into the surface, not protruding even a little, together with the dual LED flash on the top, and the Huawei logo in the middle area.

[IMG="Huawei P8 back"]http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ztu3sE9qYgY/VZFeQKBqlDI/AAAAAAAAB1s/jRIrA5oDWCo/s400/HuaweiP8-back.jpg[/IMG]

The finished on aluminum results very elegant and fits very well on the hand, although the truth is that due to its big size of 5,2”, we will need both hands to manage comfortably the phone. Must also say that with just6,4mm of thickness the P8 takes the tittle of thinnest of its category.

Hardware

All the manufacturers have smarten up in the last months. Starting with the 64 bits processors that enhance the Android Lollipop experience and of course a good dose of RAM memory to ensure a good performance at every moment.

Model	P8

OS	Android 5.0 with EMUI 3.1

Processor	Huawei HiSilicon Kirin 930, Octa core with 4 cores @2GHz and 4 more @ 1,5GHz

GPU	Mali-T628 MP4

RAM	3GB

Screen	5,2” IPS LCD FullHD 1920x1080, offering a density of 424ppi with 16M colors

Storage	16GB of internal memory, expandable via microSD card

Cameras	Main camera of 13 Mpx, OIS, sensor RBGW, Image Signal processor DSLR-level, 1080p video recording/1080p video playback; F2.0; Flash color temperature dual. 8 Mpx for the front camera

Connectivity	Wi-Fi 2.4GHz b/g/n with Wi-Fi Direct support // BT 4.1+LE // MicroUSB (Hi-speed USB) ; TDD LTE: B38/B39/B40/B41 (2555MHz~2655MHz) // FDD LTE:B1/B3/B4/B7 // UMTS: 850/900/1700/1900/2100MHz(B8/B5/B4/B2/B1) // GSM :850/900/1800/1900MHz

Other sensors	GPS/A-GPS/Glonass/BDS(BeiDou Navigation Satellite System)

G-Sensor, Gyroscope, Ambient light Sensor, Proximity Sensor, Compass, Accelerometer

Battery	2680mAh

Dimensions	144.9x72.1x6.4mm

Weight	144gr

Price Between 499€ y 520€.

What probably attires the most my attention is the use of a proprietary SoC (System on Chip), instead of using the popular Qualcomm Snapdragon or the (almost equally popular) more economic and with good performance MTK from Mediatek. This can be a very profitable point for Huawei, since if it works well, it will provide a great performance for the P8 , but also will show the sector that the Chinese brand can made competitive SoC, providing them with more revenue if other brands bet for using them.

Use, performance and battery

As starting point, outline that it comes with Android Lollipop 5.0, however it's equipped with the last version of Huawei customization layer, called EMUI 3.1.

[IMG="Huawei P8 colors"]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Oq1_1trfbQo/VZFeQB_ZJAI/AAAAAAAAB1w/6lDsuxDba2s/s320/HuaweiP8-colors.jpg[/IMG]

From the first EMUI versions, the improvement on fluency and suer experience has been notorious, in addition to that, they have included (or improved) a few applications. However it also implies that we will find duplicated tasks and apps in our Android (something that not only happens with EMUI), meaning a bigger load of our system.

The truth is this can happen with any launcher we install, so while the performance and agility of the smartphone are good, it means no problem. Just remember that Android updates will take more time to reach us.

In the case of EMUI, it brings us an extra number of options to the ones included on any Android, so at the end we will have much more ways to adapt the device to our likes.

One of the main characteristics of this P8, comes precisely from its processor. Kirin 930 has the connectivity very present, so in every moment it can calculate and change to the network (data or wifi) which gives us more speed. For that, Huawei has equipped this model with 2 independent antennas, one of the top the other on the bottom, allowing the network change to be very fast.

Regarding the performance, the 64 bits of the Kirin 930 offer very high results, scoring higher than other models like the Galaxy Note S4 on AnTuTu benchmarks, and so, showing it can talks on equal terms to any terminal (mounting Exynos or Snapdragon). All the games, as well as FullHD videos are played smoothly... well with that hardware the remarkable news good be to have some kind of lag.

The 5,2” FullHD screen, maybe perceived as a weak point since other flagship models are starting to mount QHD panels. Nonetheless, viewing the clear quality of the image and the real density of pixels that we receive (424ppi) the experience is more than satisfactory, and surely it impacts on a lower power consumption.

Talking about the battery, after having tested a few smartphones with different battery capacity, I daresay 2680mAh are perhaps few. I have no doubts we will reach the end of the day, but a device of this category could easily have pointed to cross the 3000mAh barrier and, I'm sure any user would mind sacrificing a few tenths thick for that reason. Even though, Huawei promises one day and a half with standard usage.

Something to have in mind is that obviously when we demand it a lot (gaming or doing Skype for example) it becomes hotter, as well as any other smartphone. In this case, since it has that nice metal body and being so thin, the heat is distributed all over the smartphone surface, giving more feeling of warming than with other devices.

Cameras

This is, each time more, a critical point on every smartphone coming to the market. In order to achieve better results, manufacturers are choosing good sensors like the Sony IMX214. Nonetheless, we've already seen in many other cases that the sensor is not everything to take good pictures, imaging software is as important or even more (does anyone question the quality of 8Mpx sensor in the iPhone?)

In this case, Huawei has not share who's manufacturing the sensor or the camera, so we will simply focus on the result achieved by those 13Mpx.

The P8 comes with a optical stabilizer and has a few other improvements for low-light conditions, ultra fast shooting, or shooting without unlocking the device, time-lapse, panoramic pictures, etc. I cannot but congratulate them for the results shown, specially good when doing macro pictures. In general very sharp pictures almost without noise. True that the quality level delivered in the photography area was already very high with the Ascen Mate 7.

Even those low-light situations where almost all Chinese phones get out badly, the P8 takes very worthy pictures.

However, colors don't always look like I see on the reality, i t may be due to the dynamic range... or maybe because of the screen, in any case it's a clear point to improve.

Selfie lovers will be delighted with the 8Mpx front camera, in addition to the good quality , the device recognizes its owner face, and if we have enabled it, apply automatically some face-beauty filters when it detects it.

Finally, something very curious (and funny) is the function known as “light-painting”, capable of capturing the light during a pre-stablished time. So we can capture cars lights, stars moving,... or even what we draw using a lantern.

[IMG="Huawei P8 light-painting"]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9BjtLSLywZA/VZFeQE7l-FI/AAAAAAAAB18/JcLUIGx2o6M/s400/HuaweiP8-LightPainting.jpg[/IMG]

Conclusions

Huawei has chosen it as its 2015 flagship smartphone, so it's clear enough they have put all their talent on it, building a very serious and powerful device that can fearless face the main players of the season.

I have already mentioned the good performance, the screen quality and the great pictures we can take. In addition, the clear design and the metal finish give a premium image.

But (there are always buts), there are a few points to improve, starting by EMUI... which is not new. Every customization layer brings some differentiators over the competitors, but at the same time usually eats more resources and make the updates to arrive later. Huawei proposes some very interesting things on this version 3.1, and many users will like and use them. From my side, I would like it to be as any launcher available on the PlayStore, so if we don't like it, we can just remove it, but this is not the case.

On the other hand, the question with the heating, it's something known and not bad, but there will be a lot of users feeling their phone hotter than other models and will be worried about that.

Finally, which is at least for me the biggest fault... where is the fingerprint? If you really want to compete against the main players, don't forget to bring the same weapons. And almost all the high range smartphones nowadays have a fingerprint or TouchID sensor, as security mechanism.

It's a great terminal, meaning Huawei has received, analyzed and used all the feedback from previous models (specially P7) , also meaning they are working to bring their products where they see themselves.

The price varies depending on where we look for this phone and what extras we include on the package. Normally we should find it between 499€ and 520€. Don't forget to check if your order include shipping cost and other charges.

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