It’s a couple of months into 2016 and Huawei has announced its new flagship phone, the Huawei P9. Huawei have already revealed a number of features about the product, the key one being the dual Leica-certified cameras. The P9 has a normal 12-megapixel camera and sitting beside it is another, monochrome 12-megapixel camera. The monochrome camera will, when working in tandem with the normal camera, improve the contrast by up to 50% in photos and triple the amount of light taken in by the phone.
“Leica and Huawei share an uncompromising commitment to imaging excellence, and our partnership will put outstanding photography into the hands of more consumers around the world. We are deepening our collaboration to give users a more optimal smartphone photography experience.”
– Oliver Kaltner, CEO, Leica Camera AG.
The P9 has all the usual trademarks of a flagship device (unlike the Lumia 950 XL): it has an aluminium unibody case, a 3,000mAh battery, a USB-C port, and a Huawei octa-core Kirin 955 processor, upto 64 GB of storage space (depending on the region) and 3GB worth of RAM. Despite the dual cameras the P9 is still surprisingly thin, measuring in at 6.95 mm in thickness. In China, the main market for Huawei, the 64 GB internal storage version of the P9 will be available, along with a rose gold version of the device. However, European versions will only feature 32 GB of internal storage space and will not have the rose gold option. However to compensate for the smaller storage, the European version will feature an external microSD card slot, while in China (and other Asian markets) the microSD card slot will instead be replaced by a second SIM card slot. Both versions will feature a 5.2-inch IPS display at 1080p resolution.
But the P9 isn’t the only thing Huawei have announced: they also followed up with a P9 Plus, borrowing from Apple’s terminology for upgraded phones of the same class. The 5.5-inch P9 Plus features 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB worth of internal storage; China will get a 128 GB version. The battery will also be upgraded to a 3,400 mAh battery and the screen will instead be Super AMOLED though it will still have the same 1080p resolution. The P9 plus will also feature and IR blaster and “Press Touch” technology to make use of the pressure sensitive screen, something we’ve seen before in the iPhone 6s.
The P9 will be available for purchase in both Asia and Europe by April 16th while the P9 Plus will be available in May for both continents.
