Huawei P8 is one of the most high-end and premium smartphone of Huawei . It comes with lots of interesting features, great design and impressive hardware specs.
We were trying our hands on the Huawei P8 since last few weeks and in this article, we are going to share a detailed hands-on review of Huawei P8 smartphone for all readers of Geeky Stuffs.
This hands-on review of Huawei P8 is divided in multiple section considering the pros and cons of each of them.
Huawei P8 comes in small but beautiful black color retail box. Once you open it, you will get the feel of how premium this device is just by going through the design and interior of retail box. There is plastic case inside which you will find all the stuff placed in various slots.
The accessories included along with the device is a charger, earphone, SIM card tray ejector pin and a USB cable along with the user manual and guides. You can watch our Huawei P8 unboxing video below.
When it comes to the design of Huawei P8, you get the premium feel from every angle of it. We got the Prestige Gold version of the Huawei P8 which looks expensive and premium. Huawei P8 is just 6.4 mm thick and the screen-to-body ratio is around 72% which makes it compact even with a screen size of 5.2 inches.
The primary camera is given on the top left corner along with the dual LED. Huawei logo is given in the middle of the back panel which is non-removable, so you can’t take the battery out of Huawei P8. On the front side, we got the front facing camera coupled with the set of sensors at the top.
3.5 mm audio jack is given at the top of the device and USB port is given along with the speaker at the bottom of the device. You will find that there two grills for the speaker but it is just to for the sake of design and only one of them got the speaker which is pretty disappointing.
Power key, volume rockers, and SIM card trays are given on the right side of the device and there is nothing on the left. Power key got nice texture which looks pretty good. The SIM 2 card sot can be used as the memory card slot as well. The edges are sharp but the sides of the Huawei P8 got nice, smooth curves which gives it a nice look.
Though the device is not officially water resistant, we tried a running water test on our Huawei P8 and it performed pretty good in that. You can watch the Huawei P8 water test video below.
Huawei P8 comes with Huawei’s indigenous HiSilicon Kirin 930/935 octa-core processor out of which four cores are clocked at 2 GHz and remaining four are clocked at1.5 Ghz along with the Mali-T628 MP4 GPU and 3GB of RAM.
There are two versions of Huawei P8 based on the internal memory internal memory – 16 GB and 64 GB. The one we got for our review is the 64 GB version which is also expandable up to 128 GB using the microSD card.
The sensors provided in this device are accelerometer, gyro, proximity sensor, magnetic compass and all of them are very responsive. But being a high-end premium device, it still lacks the heart rate sensor, fingerprint scanner etc.
The performance of the hardware and all sensors of Huawei P8 are pretty good. You can watch our benchmarking tests in which Huawei P8 scored equivalent to the many high-end smartphones of other brands, most of the time pretty equivalent to Nexus 6. Overall performance of the device is nice and you will not feel any kind of lag or any issues while using the device heavily and playing high-end games.
Huawei P8 runs on the Android v 5.0.2 Lolipop OS and planned to receive the Android 6.0 Marshmallow update. It comes with the Huawei EMUI 3.1 which is feature rich UI and also very less resource hungry. For most of the task, you will find the feature in-built in the Huawei P8 UI which is useful as you will not need to download the third party apps.
On the connectivity side, we got the 4G LTE connectivity, NFC and Bluetooth v4.1 with A2DP and LE. It lacks the Infrared port though. As mentioned above, there are two SIM slots provided in this device and SIM 2 slot can be used as the memory card slot too. So if you are looking for a dual-SIM smartphone with memory card feature you can reject the Huawei P8 but if you buy the 64 GB version of Huawei P8 then, you will not feel the need of the memory card.
Huawei P8 sports a 5.2 inches screen with 1080 x 1920 pixels resolutions which provides you 424 ppi pixel density. Since the navigation keys are provided on screen, it occupies a good amount of the screen and reduces the effective size. The screen-to-body ratio we get on Huawei P8 is 71.4% which is still good. The bezel is very thin which gives the beautiful look to the device too.
The IPS-NEO LCD screen is protected by the Corning Gorilla Glass which performs really nice to save the screen from scratches and minor damages. The IPS-NEO LCD display is nice and the viewing angles and sunlight readability is impressive as well.
Huawei P8 comes with a 13 MP primary camera which is capable of recording full HD videos. It is really disappointing that a flagship and premium device lacks the 4K video recording. But this missing feature is compensated by providing more features.
The features which are included in the camera of Huawei P8 are Optical Image Stabilization (OIS), Dual-LED (dual tone) flash, Light Painting, HDR, Time Lapse, Super Night mode, Watermark, Best Photo, Audio Note and All Focus.
Light Painting is one of the highlighted feature of Huawei P8 camera as it is having multiple modes depending on the kind of light painting you want to do. So, you do not need to go all pro and use the manual settings for the light painting on P8 and you can take them instantly just by selecting the right mode. All Focus mode is like the popular Lumia Refocus app which let you adjust the focus on the picture after taking it.
Images coming out from the camera of Huawei P8 are pretty good in all factors. They are sharp, crisp and with lots of details even in low light condition, thanks to the RGBW sensor. And same goes with the 8 MP front facing camera which is also capable of 1080p full HD video recording and provide really good quality images.
Huawei P8 performs good when it comes to gaming and entertainment but also faces some issues.
Gaming performance of Huawei P8 is good and you can play most of the high-end games without any kind of lagging or issues. But the GPU used in this device affects the performance a bit for sure. So sometimes you may feel the issue with graphics quality while playing the heavy games.
Also there is only left speaker which works in real and while playing games in landscape mode, user’s palm covers most of the part of the speaker which is really annoying. So it would be better if the speaker was on the back. Also, the device heats up a bit while playing end games. You can watch our detailed gaming performance test of Huawei P8 to get the better idea.
The default music app of Huawei P8 is pretty good and provides all the basic features of a nice music player. The device lacks the equalizer settings but let you grab the album art, song details etc. Also, you can select the length of music files of which you would like the songs to be included in the playlists.
The video player of Huawei P8 is pretty basic but supports most of the video formats except the AC3 audio but supports the Dolby Mobile enhancements. The sound quality is really nice and clear but average in terms of loudness.
Huawei P8 comes with a non-removable 2680 mAh battery which performs above average with normal usage. Specially the battery performance for web browsing and video player is impressive. So with normal usage, the battery of P8 will survive easily one and half day but if you are a heavy user then you might need to charge it every night.
There is also an Ultra Power Saving mode which can be used to improve the battery performance as it turns off most of the functions of the device, changes the display settings, volume settings etc. to increase the battery life.
Huawei’s EMUI ROM is really a productive and feature rich one. You will find lots of nice and interesting feature for your daily usage. There is even four different methods of taking screenshot on it. There are lots of pre-installed aps and built-in features hidden in the settings which are very useful.
Huawei P8 is a great phone in every aspect. The design is eye catching, build quality is great and very premium. Overall performance of the device is really impressive, though the GPU could be better. Camera performance is nice and it comes with many interesting features though it lacks the 4K video recording. The battery performance is pretty good too along with the speaker quality.
If you are not looking for the 4K video recording, quad-HD screen and fancy sensors like fingerprint scanner then Huawei P8 is a must buy device for its impressive performance and great premium looks.
We were trying our hands on the Huawei P8 since last few weeks and in this article, we are going to share a detailed hands-on review of Huawei P8 smartphone for all readers of Geeky Stuffs.
This hands-on review of Huawei P8 is divided in multiple section considering the pros and cons of each of them.
Huawei P8 : Hands-on Review, Features and Specs
Retail Box and Unboxing
Huawei P8 comes in small but beautiful black color retail box. Once you open it, you will get the feel of how premium this device is just by going through the design and interior of retail box. There is plastic case inside which you will find all the stuff placed in various slots.
The accessories included along with the device is a charger, earphone, SIM card tray ejector pin and a USB cable along with the user manual and guides. You can watch our Huawei P8 unboxing video below.
Design
When it comes to the design of Huawei P8, you get the premium feel from every angle of it. We got the Prestige Gold version of the Huawei P8 which looks expensive and premium. Huawei P8 is just 6.4 mm thick and the screen-to-body ratio is around 72% which makes it compact even with a screen size of 5.2 inches.
The primary camera is given on the top left corner along with the dual LED. Huawei logo is given in the middle of the back panel which is non-removable, so you can’t take the battery out of Huawei P8. On the front side, we got the front facing camera coupled with the set of sensors at the top.
3.5 mm audio jack is given at the top of the device and USB port is given along with the speaker at the bottom of the device. You will find that there two grills for the speaker but it is just to for the sake of design and only one of them got the speaker which is pretty disappointing.
Power key, volume rockers, and SIM card trays are given on the right side of the device and there is nothing on the left. Power key got nice texture which looks pretty good. The SIM 2 card sot can be used as the memory card slot as well. The edges are sharp but the sides of the Huawei P8 got nice, smooth curves which gives it a nice look.
Though the device is not officially water resistant, we tried a running water test on our Huawei P8 and it performed pretty good in that. You can watch the Huawei P8 water test video below.
Hardware Specs and OS
Huawei P8 comes with Huawei’s indigenous HiSilicon Kirin 930/935 octa-core processor out of which four cores are clocked at 2 GHz and remaining four are clocked at1.5 Ghz along with the Mali-T628 MP4 GPU and 3GB of RAM.
There are two versions of Huawei P8 based on the internal memory internal memory – 16 GB and 64 GB. The one we got for our review is the 64 GB version which is also expandable up to 128 GB using the microSD card.
The sensors provided in this device are accelerometer, gyro, proximity sensor, magnetic compass and all of them are very responsive. But being a high-end premium device, it still lacks the heart rate sensor, fingerprint scanner etc.
The performance of the hardware and all sensors of Huawei P8 are pretty good. You can watch our benchmarking tests in which Huawei P8 scored equivalent to the many high-end smartphones of other brands, most of the time pretty equivalent to Nexus 6. Overall performance of the device is nice and you will not feel any kind of lag or any issues while using the device heavily and playing high-end games.
Huawei P8 runs on the Android v 5.0.2 Lolipop OS and planned to receive the Android 6.0 Marshmallow update. It comes with the Huawei EMUI 3.1 which is feature rich UI and also very less resource hungry. For most of the task, you will find the feature in-built in the Huawei P8 UI which is useful as you will not need to download the third party apps.
On the connectivity side, we got the 4G LTE connectivity, NFC and Bluetooth v4.1 with A2DP and LE. It lacks the Infrared port though. As mentioned above, there are two SIM slots provided in this device and SIM 2 slot can be used as the memory card slot too. So if you are looking for a dual-SIM smartphone with memory card feature you can reject the Huawei P8 but if you buy the 64 GB version of Huawei P8 then, you will not feel the need of the memory card.
Screen and Display
Huawei P8 sports a 5.2 inches screen with 1080 x 1920 pixels resolutions which provides you 424 ppi pixel density. Since the navigation keys are provided on screen, it occupies a good amount of the screen and reduces the effective size. The screen-to-body ratio we get on Huawei P8 is 71.4% which is still good. The bezel is very thin which gives the beautiful look to the device too.
The IPS-NEO LCD screen is protected by the Corning Gorilla Glass which performs really nice to save the screen from scratches and minor damages. The IPS-NEO LCD display is nice and the viewing angles and sunlight readability is impressive as well.
Camera and Imaging
Huawei P8 comes with a 13 MP primary camera which is capable of recording full HD videos. It is really disappointing that a flagship and premium device lacks the 4K video recording. But this missing feature is compensated by providing more features.
The features which are included in the camera of Huawei P8 are Optical Image Stabilization (OIS), Dual-LED (dual tone) flash, Light Painting, HDR, Time Lapse, Super Night mode, Watermark, Best Photo, Audio Note and All Focus.
Light Painting is one of the highlighted feature of Huawei P8 camera as it is having multiple modes depending on the kind of light painting you want to do. So, you do not need to go all pro and use the manual settings for the light painting on P8 and you can take them instantly just by selecting the right mode. All Focus mode is like the popular Lumia Refocus app which let you adjust the focus on the picture after taking it.
Images coming out from the camera of Huawei P8 are pretty good in all factors. They are sharp, crisp and with lots of details even in low light condition, thanks to the RGBW sensor. And same goes with the 8 MP front facing camera which is also capable of 1080p full HD video recording and provide really good quality images.
Entertainment and Gaming
Huawei P8 performs good when it comes to gaming and entertainment but also faces some issues.
Gaming performance of Huawei P8 is good and you can play most of the high-end games without any kind of lagging or issues. But the GPU used in this device affects the performance a bit for sure. So sometimes you may feel the issue with graphics quality while playing the heavy games.
Also there is only left speaker which works in real and while playing games in landscape mode, user’s palm covers most of the part of the speaker which is really annoying. So it would be better if the speaker was on the back. Also, the device heats up a bit while playing end games. You can watch our detailed gaming performance test of Huawei P8 to get the better idea.
The default music app of Huawei P8 is pretty good and provides all the basic features of a nice music player. The device lacks the equalizer settings but let you grab the album art, song details etc. Also, you can select the length of music files of which you would like the songs to be included in the playlists.
The video player of Huawei P8 is pretty basic but supports most of the video formats except the AC3 audio but supports the Dolby Mobile enhancements. The sound quality is really nice and clear but average in terms of loudness.
Battery
Huawei P8 comes with a non-removable 2680 mAh battery which performs above average with normal usage. Specially the battery performance for web browsing and video player is impressive. So with normal usage, the battery of P8 will survive easily one and half day but if you are a heavy user then you might need to charge it every night.
There is also an Ultra Power Saving mode which can be used to improve the battery performance as it turns off most of the functions of the device, changes the display settings, volume settings etc. to increase the battery life.
Productivity
Huawei’s EMUI ROM is really a productive and feature rich one. You will find lots of nice and interesting feature for your daily usage. There is even four different methods of taking screenshot on it. There are lots of pre-installed aps and built-in features hidden in the settings which are very useful.
Conclusion
Huawei P8 is a great phone in every aspect. The design is eye catching, build quality is great and very premium. Overall performance of the device is really impressive, though the GPU could be better. Camera performance is nice and it comes with many interesting features though it lacks the 4K video recording. The battery performance is pretty good too along with the speaker quality.
If you are not looking for the 4K video recording, quad-HD screen and fancy sensors like fingerprint scanner then Huawei P8 is a must buy device for its impressive performance and great premium looks.