Huawei P9 smartphones launch, boast dual-lens Leica cameras

[HEXUS]

The Huawei P9 and P9 Plus set "a new standard in smartphone photography".

Read more.

[crossy]

Hmm, pricing is pretty reasonable but I'm sceptical that they'll be able to deliver photos that are better than those coming from the current leaders. I'm sure I heard that Huawei's skin is pretty light, so maybe the lack of cpu grunt might be "no big deal".

[kalniel]

Why are they so pricey compared to fellow Chinese premium brands? (Xaiomi, OnePlus etc.)

[crossy]

Why are they so pricey compared to fellow Chinese premium brands? (Xaiomi, OnePlus etc.)

Not sure if its true, but I read that they saw premium pricing as a positive thing, a la Apple presumably.

BTW, is 1+ counted as a Chinese premium brand? I thought they were firmly in the mid range group.

[kalniel]

Not sure if its true, but I read that they saw premium pricing as a positive thing, a la Apple presumably.

BTW, is 1+ counted as a Chinese premium brand? I thought they were firmly in the mid range group.

I guess if you define premium by pricing then no - which would explain the Huawei cost

But seriously.. I was kind including Chinese in the term rather than saying they're competing with Apple/Sony. 1+ seem to produce phones with the latest chips and stuff or with high end looks/feel, so something either like a Nexus or like a Sony A series, which I guess is mid-range in the global scheme, but certainly premium compared to much lower spec Chinese phones of which there are plenty.

[daddacool]

I doubt Leica would put their name on the the phone if the camera was duff and the camera was pretty much the focus of the entire presentation yesterday (about an hour and a half of the two hour presentation). Difficult to say without playing about with it more, but the photos that Huawei's band of professional photographers had taken looked pretty stunning.

Once I switched the launcher to Google Now, I was a lot happier with the P9. It certainly feels like a premium phone with it's full metal body, and screen that curves into the frame. It's one of the first with a Type C USB connector. Which is a nuisance as I don't have a lot of type c cables sitting about

[jimborae]

Huawei now very much view themselves as a premium Chinese brand, Honor is their low-mid tier brand, hence the premium pricing, at least that's my take on things. Also @Crossy what makes you think that the latest Kirin cpu lacks grunt, from what I've heard this latest one very much is on par with anything Qualcomm has in real world use, though I've yet to see any figures to prove that. I don't think the leaked AnTuTU scores are a reliable indicator, lets see some now it's launched and with other benchmarks tests as well. Finally the Huawei skin is not what I'd call light (a la Sony)and is very much Huawei's achilles heel, definitely a candidate for a 3rd party launcher.

[flearider]

you can pick up a s7 for £450-500 .. so this is not screaming at me
if they had said £350-400 i could see it ..
an mi5 can be had for £300 ish ..

[jimborae]

you can pick up a s7 for £450-500 .. so this is not screaming at me
if they had said £350-400 i could see it ..
an mi5 can be had for £300 ish ..

I'm sure in couple of months we'll see the P9 at a much more reasonable price somewhere about where you suggest.

[daddacool]

I'm sure in couple of months we'll see the P9 at a much more reasonable price somewhere about where you suggest.

Yeah, the RRP (well it's Carphone Warehouse, so it's bound to be close) of the S7 is £569, so I'd imagine once it's been out a while the price of the P9 will drop.

[crossy]

Huawei now very much view themselves as a premium Chinese brand, Honor is their low-mid tier brand, hence the premium pricing, at least that's my take on things. Also @Crossy what makes you think that the latest Kirin cpu lacks grunt, from what I've heard this latest one very much is on par with anything Qualcomm has in real world use, though I've yet to see any figures to prove that. I don't think the leaked AnTuTU scores are a reliable indicator, lets see some now it's launched and with other benchmarks tests as well. Finally the Huawei skin is not what I'd call light (a la Sony)and is very much Huawei's achilles heel, definitely a candidate for a 3rd party launcher.

I've seen a couple of pieces around on the 'net that the Kirin was a bit "unpredictable" when it came to performance. No idea whether this is the case or not - only had one piece of Huawei gear (not a phone) and that was actually pretty decent so I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

WRT the skin, I misspoke - skins can easily be replaced, (e.g. I'm running Nova on my Yoga2 tablet because the Lenovo supplied setup was embarrasingly awful), what I was actually meaning was all those "marvellous" pieces of "value add" bloat that you're shackled with. Reviews I've seen (mainly TekThing and TWiT) have been complimentary about the amount (minimal/tolerable?) of non-removable blobs that are present.

you can pick up a s7 for £450-500 .. so this is not screaming at me

S7 is region locked, chances are that the P9 won't be. Hopefully Huawei's experiences with the 6P have rubbed off on this phone. Agree though that it's way overpriced, hopefully the lack of brand recognition for Huawei in EU will force a "realignment" of the price into more acceptable levels.

I'll reserve judgement until someone's had a chance to run it through the review mill - especially the folks at Android Central, they've only done a preview.

[AGTDenton]

Not bad, its just added itself to a growing list of phones I like which is unusual. Can't see justification for a £100 difference from P9 to P9 plus, but I'm sure after a few months the gap will drop quite a bit.

[whatif]

I am not impressed with the price and phone options.
But I am impressed that they have included a USB 3.1 type C port, something that Samsung continually seems to overlook. Why do they still only have a USB 2 port on their latest S7 phone - it is so slow now and definitely not worthy to put onto a flagship product, especially when you look at none of the S6 range having a micro SD card port.
And don't care so much about the camera, after all isn't it supposed to be a mobile phone with other functions, not a camera with other functions - I want to know more about how good is it's reception, talk/use time, standby time, et cetera.
Or are we going to start to see high end Nikon's and other cameras with phones in them?
Maybe a Aus$60,000 Hasselblad with a phone function added, at least it wouldn't add much to the price. :-)
Also, can never understand why there is so much extra to pay for going from 32GB to 64GB in a phone. Example:- a shop here (Australia) selling the S7 edge has the 32GB for $915 and a 64GB for $1109.99. That is almost $200 for only 32GB and other shops have a similar difference.
WHAT A RIP OFF!
Even high end M.2 SSD's don't cost that much per 32GB (would you pay - 256GB 950 Pro M.2 at $200 per 32GB = $1600 or £800)
Does not compare with having a couple of good high speed micro SD cards. I would prefer to pay less and have the smaller amount (phone with 32GB) with several good 64GB (Aus $50) and/or 128GB (about Aus $120) high speed (around 100MB/s) micro SD cards - these prices quoted from major PC shops. But the P9 32GB only comes with 3GB RAM - another RIP OFF.
Is it just me or can anyone else see the rip off?

[whatif]

Quote from Crossy - "S7 is region locked, chances are that the P9 won't be."

When you say this, I thought it was not region locked , but limited due to the chips, their cost, and how their modems are tunes.
I have read it several articles like this one from PC World "What chip will your Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge have?"

Quote -
"The company is using the two chips largely because they have different integrated modems. The Snapdragon 820 modem supports a wider range of bands and runs on older CDMA networks operated by companies like Verizon. The Exynos is tuned for GSM and LTE networks deployed in European and Asian countries.
So why didn't Samsung put Qualcomm's chip in all Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge handsets? The homegrown Exynos chip is cheaper for Samsung to integrate in its handsets, said Jim McGregor, an analyst at Tirias Research.
Carriers also influence the chip decision in some cases, but the Snapdragon 820 is expensive because it's a premium processing unit, McGregor said.
The chips are tied to cellular technology and spectrum use in different countries. Qualcomm's chip is tuned for carrier aggregation in the U.S., in which data transfer speeds could receive a big boost by aggregating bandwidth from multiple bands and carriers. This technology is helpful for dual-SIM handsets with connectivity to two carriers. Samsung's Exynos also supports carrier aggregation, but it is optimized to work on specific networks." End Quote

Is there something else I haven't heard of?

[crossy]

Quote from Crossy - "S7 is region locked, chances are that the P9 won't be."

When you say this, I thought it was not region locked , but limited due to the chips, their cost, and how their modems are tunes.
I have read it several articles like this one from PC World "What chip will your Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge have?"

You're partially right there, if you Google/DuckDuckGo for "Samsung region lock" you'll get a lot of hits, like this one from GSMArena. And from that GSMArena article comes the following quote:

It is a protection mechanism aimed at gray market re-sellers, who might try to offer Unlocked EU units in places they weren't meant to go.

I guess like you, I have little problem with the idea that the US S7's (Snapdragon based) wouldn't work that well in AP/EU/etc, where the "International" versions are Exynos etc. Similarly the Korean ones tend to be a bit strange, so I'd give them a pass there. At the end of the day (apologies for that cliche) you can pretty much clear the region lock by buying a cheap PAYG SIM from wherever you get the phone from and use it for 10-15 minutes. Which leads me to wonder why the "bulk grey importers" that Samsung's attacking can't do exactly the same thing - ship your new cheap phone with a "local" (to the importer) SIM with enough credit for you to bypass the region lock.

Actually my objection to the S7 is more to do with cost, but ymmv.